He reflected, and then repeated: “That is so.” “There was a ship,” I continued, “called the _Rainbow_, that lay astern of you by some ten ships’-lengths.” He gazed at me very earnestly, and looked as though he guessed what was coming. “One morning,” said I, “a boat put off from the _Raja_. She hoisted sail and went away toward Cape Town. A burst of wind came down the mountain and capsized her, whereupon a boat belonging to the _Rainbow_ made for the drowning people, picked them up, and put them aboard their own ship.” He thrust his arm into the hammock and grasped my hand. “You are Mr. Fielding. You were the second mate of the _Rainbow_. You it was who saved my life and the lives of the others. Strange that it should fall to my lot to save yours; and for me to suppose that you had been hanged! By Isten! but this is a little world. It is not astonishing that I should not have known you. You are something changed in the face; likewise you have been very nearly drowned. We shall be able to find out how many hours you lay washing about in the Channel. And add to this a very long spell of emaciating insensibility.” “I was never hanged,” said I. “No, no,” he said, “but all your babble was about gibbets and chains.” “If it had not been for a gibbet and a man dangling from it in chains, in all human probability I should not now be here. I was delayed by an object of horrible misery, and the period of my humane loitering tallied to a second with the movements of a press-gang, or I should be on board my own ship, the _Royal Brunswicker_ of which vessel I am mate. Where will she be now?” I considered awhile. “Say she got under weigh at two o’clock this morning--how is the wind, Captain Greaves?” “It blows fresh, and is dead foul for the _Royal Brunswicker_ if she be inward bound.” “Then,” said I, “she may have brought up in the Downs again. I hope she has. I may be able to rejoin her before the wind shifts. In what part of the Channel are you?” “Out of it, clear of the Scillies.” “_Out of the Channel?_” I cried. “Do you sail by witchcraft? What time is it, pray?” “A few minutes after eleven.” “You were off Margate this morning at daybreak,” said I, “and now, at a few minutes after eleven o’clock, you are out of the Channel?” “I was off Margate three days ago at daybreak,” he answered. “Have I been insensible three days? It is news to strike the breath out of a man. Three days! Of course the _Royal Brunswicker_ has arrived in the Thames and---- Out of the Channel, do you say? How am I to get ashore?” “We will talk about that presently.” I lay speechless, with my eyes fastened upon the beam above the hammock. “You have talked enough,” said Captain Greaves; “yet there is one question I should like to ask, if you have breath enough to answer it with: How came you to hear that this brig’s name is the _Black Watch_?” “I read of the brig in an old newspaper that I was hunting over for news at my uncle’s house last evening.”