When I awoke it was still daylight, and on opening my eyes they at once rested on the figure of a man seated by my bedside, who was evidently watching me with the deepest concern. His countenance, which appealed to my fastidious taste, was honest, intelligent and kindly, though its features were rugged and suggestive of humble origin. From his grizzled hair and heavily lined face I concluded him to be on the border-line of old and middle age, perhaps some sixty years old. Our two pairs of eyes met in a searching but friendly survey, after which encounter I smiled graciously, as I should smile upon one of my nobles in Meleager, and at the same time extended my hand for salutation. Naturally it was not kissed--how could I expect such behaviour from a Herthian equal?--but it was clasped with a gentle reassuring pressure that in no wise prejudiced me against my companion, who after a pause began to address me. His voice owned the same quality as his features, and was by no means spoiled by a trace of north-country doric that still lingered in his speech. His opening questions were of the usual type that would be found in the secular rituale (did such a compilation exist), in the section relating to the case of a ship-wrecked waif. To these I replied in a brief and (I fear) obscurantist manner. That my questioner was equally puzzled and interested, I could easily see; so that I found a somewhat malicious amusement in increasing his perplexity. Contrariwise, I soon began to examine my would-be interrogator much in the style I might have employed towards dear old Anzoni or Hiridia. My new friend seemed somewhat surprised, but good-naturedly supplied all the information I sought, whereby I learned that the ship now sheltering me was the _Orissa_, of seven thousand tons' burden, a cargo-boat of the Pheon Line but also carrying first-class passengers, on her way home to Liverpool from Rangoon. It would appear that the officer on the bridge at break of day had seen the airship strike the water and disappear at no great distance on our port side, and had promptly given orders for a boat to be lowered to effect a rescue. On nearing the scene of the recent disaster I had been found floating in an apparently unconscious state but otherwise uninjured by my late shock and immersion. He himself was Doctor Charles Wayne, a native of Cumberland and until lately a medical practitioner in Burmah, where he had spent most of his life in Government service. He was now returning home on a pension in his sixty-second year. He was a widower without children. The _Orissa_ had passed through some exciting experiences in her voyage from Suez to Gibraltar, for on their way they had learned of the declaration of war between Germany and Britain. They had hurried with a sharp look-out by day and with darkened decks at night through the Mediterranean for fear of prowling German cruisers, so that all aboard were impatient to make the mouth of