It is to be regretted that the paper cannot be given in its entirety;
the omissions, indicated by asterisks, being the result of damage caused
by salt water to the MS., which has made it undecipherable in those
places; the total thus lost amounting to more than a hundred pages.
The following is an exact rendering of the decipherable parts of the
Attlebridge papers, handed me by the captain of the Voorne.
*I.*
I am to write roughly of the past—more carefully of the present. Of the
past that our identity may be established by reference to certain events
which many will remember, should we be lost. Of the present, for
reasons that will be obvious as I proceed.
On the morning of the 16th of November, 1894, I awoke to find myself the
occupant of a narrow iron bedstead, in a small, poorly furnished room.
The wall paper was mildewed, and the ceiling discolored with smoke. I
was unable to remember where I was, and called aloud:
"Torrence!"
A sleepy answer recalled the situation, and assured me that all was
well. Torrence, who was my twin brother, occupied the mate to my bed,
on the opposite side of the room. Not wishing to disturb him, I lay
quietly watching the approach of dawn through a small window with
Venetian blinds, crank-sided and broken. Later, I was myself aroused by
a curse coming from the other bed. The curse was launched broadly
against the town, and concentrated into a deeper venom as it reached its
objective climax—the room. I smiled and turned over.
"Glad you’re awake at last," I ventured, observing that he was looking
around the place with a disgust equal to my own. It was our first
experience of London. We were Americans, and had just landed. Torrence
yawned and declared that he had been awake all night, despite my
assurance that he had been snoring shamefully.
"I wonder when the old lady will want her pay for all this finery," he
said, feeling the quality of the sheets, and looking up at the ceiling
dismally. Indeed we had a right to feel blue, having but little money,
and no friends, in a strange land.
"She wants it as soon as she can get it," I replied, having consulted
our landlady on the subject the previous evening. "In fact, she told me
on our way up the stairs last night, that she generally required her
lodgings to be paid for in advance; but that as we were Americans she
would not insist, although she trusted that we would be able to settle
in a day or two."
"She’s too trustful by a jugful. We may not be able to pay her at all!"
yawned Torrence.
"Don’t talk that way; you scare me!" I exclaimed.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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