“We picked you up off Ramsgate, floating on an oar belonging to a boat of one of His Majesty’s ships. Now, should I have found anything suspicious in that? Not at all. Your dress told me you were not a navy Johnny. There was a story, and I was willing to wait and hear it; but when, being housed in this hammock, you turned to and jawed about a gibbet and about hanging in irons; when I’d listen to you singing out for help to unhook the body, to stand clear of the lightning--‘Now is your time,’ you’d sing out; ‘by the legs and up with it,’ ‘’Tis for a poor mother’s sake,’ a poor mother’s sake--I say, when I’d stand by hearkening to what the great dramatist would call the perilous stuff which your soul or your conscience, or whatever it might have been that was working in you, was throwing up as water is thrown up by a ship’s pump, why----” The color of temper had left my face. I eyed him, slightly smiling, munching my sandwich quietly. “Captain Michael Greaves,” said I, “I am no half-hanged man.” On hearing the name I gave him he started violently; then, catching hold of the edge of the hammock, so tilted it as to nearly capsize me, while he thrust his face close to mine. “What was that you said?” cried he. “I am no hanged man.” “You pronounced my name,” he cried, continuing to hold by the hammock and swinging with it as the ship rolled. “I know your name,” I replied. “Have you ever sailed with me?” “No.” “How does it happen that you know me?” “Is not this a brig called the _Black Watch_,” said I, “and are not you, Captain Michael Greaves, in command of her?” “Chaw! I see how it is,” he exclaimed, the wonder going out of his face while he let go of my hammock. “You have had what they call lucid intervals, during which you have picked up my name and the name of my vessel--though who the deuce has visited you saving me and the lad? and neither of us, I swear, has ever once found you conscious until just now.” “Will you give me some more brandy-and-water? I am still very thirsty. A second draught may enable me to converse. I feel very weak, but I do not think I am as weak as I was a little while ago;” and I lifted my head to test my strength, and found that I was able to look over the edge of the hammock. In doing this I got a view of Captain Michael Greaves’ figure. He was a square, tall, well-built man--as tall as I, but more nobly framed; his face, his shape, his air expressed great decision and resolution of character. He wore a pea-coat that fell to his knees, and this coat and a pair of immense sea-boots and a fur cap formed his visible apparel. He stepped out of the berth, and in a minute after returned with a glass of brandy-and-water. This I took down almost as greedily as I had emptied the contents of the first glass. I thanked him, handed him the tumbler, and said: “You were chief mate of a ship called the _Raja_?” “That is so.” “In the month of November, 1809, you were lying in Table Bay?”