But then, as I have already explained in a preceding chapter, Captain Ladmore did not know whether I had a home or friends in England or not. For all he could tell I might be the sole survivor of a shipwreck, or the surviving occupant of one of the boats which had put off before the ship went down, and if that were so--and there was nothing improbable in the supposition--then I might have been a passenger coming from America, or Australia, or India. It would not follow, according to his humane reasoning, that, because I was undeniably an Englishwoman, I lived in England and had friends in that country. And if I had no friends and no home in England, then his sending me there at the first opportunity whilst my memory remained a blank would be nothing short of cruelty; for when I landed I should be destitute, without money and without friends, and, being without memory, more helpless and worse off than the veriest beggar that might crawl past me in rags. But by keeping me on board his ship he hoped to give my memory time to recover its powers, so that, as he himself had said, whatever steps he took to restore me to my friends would be sure, for he would know where to send me. Then, again, it must be remembered that I had begged and prayed to remain on board whilst my memory continued dark, and that I had spoken with horror and with tears of the prospect of being landed without a shelter to go to. This, then, is my answer to the wonder that has been expressed by my friends since this frightful passage of my life came to an end, and I enter it here as much to explain Captain Ladmore’s motives as to accentuate his humanity. Propelled by pleasant winds, which sometimes blew over the stern and sometimes off the beam, the fine ship _Deal Castle_ stemmed her way into the tropics, and every twenty-four hours brought the equator nearer to us by many leagues. All day long the deck was kept shadowed by the awning, in whose violet-tinted coolness lounged the passengers. It was growing too hot for active exercise. The deck quoit was cast aside, the walk to and fro the white planks was abandoned for the American folding-chair, the piano was but languidly touched, seldom were the voices of the singers amongst us heard, and there were hours when it was too sultry to read. But the weather continued gloriously beautiful, the sky cloudless, the ocean a rich dark blue with the slopes of the swell wrinkled by the wind, and here and there a glance of foam as the ship stole through the waters, rippling the blue into lines as fine as harp-strings, which the sun turned into gold as they spread from the bows. And the flying-fish flashed from the side, and steadily in the blue calm of the water astern hung the slate-coloured shape of a shark, the inevitable attendant of the mariner in those fiery waters.