Meleager : $b A fantasy — John Stuart Mill — John Shaqi
Meleager : $b A fantasy
John Stuart Mill · en
I spent a restful night lulled by the throbbing of the engines and
the swirling of the waters displaced by our keel. The good doctor
slept on the cabin sofa opposite my berth, and once or twice rose in
the night hours to attend to my wants. On the following morning I had
completely recovered, and news to this effect having been bruited
throughout the ship, various uninvited visitors came to inspect the
castaway in Dr Wayne's cabin. At my urgent entreaty I was spared a
good many of these intrusions, but my kind protector could not well
exclude the baboon-faced captain, whose empurpled visage framed in
masses of ochre hair thrust itself more than once through the doorway
and inquired in rasping accents after my welfare. The bibulous ship's
surgeon too invaded my retreat, and expressed a desire to astonish my
stomach with special concoctions of his own mixing. Good Dr Wayne did
all that was possible to save me from these well-meaning persons, and
finally he closed the cabin door on the pretence of my exhaustion. Left
thus in peace, my companion began to address me seriously in regard to
certain matters. I had so far refrained from giving the name I bore on
earth, and was firmly resolved not to betray it, nor could any attempt
draw the required information from me. Acknowledging his failure, the
Doctor with a sigh of resignation desisted to apply, at the same time
begging me to mention some name, a fictitious one if I were so minded,
for the benefit of the authorities on landing. The suggestion seemed
reasonable enough, and after some further parley I agreed to accept
temporarily the absurd name of Theodore King, concerning which Dr Wayne
made some jocose observations. In the name then of Theodore King, man
rescued at sea in latitude 38° by longitude 18° or thereabouts, was my
official report endorsed, and in this nominal disguise I was eventually
disembarked at Liverpool stage.
But for the all-pervading sensation caused by the recent declaration
of war and the many ramifying minor excitements of the moment, I much
doubt whether this ingenious attempt at self-concealment would have
succeeded so easily. But for this crucial event I might easily have
become a centre of inquisitive interest that would have caused great
inconvenience and delay; as it so fell, however, everybody on board the
_Orissa_ was far too engrossed with the supreme agitation of the moment
to pay much attention to the eccentric, not to say insane, individual
who had been picked up from a collapsed aeroplane off the coast of
Portugal.