Bab Bab 1 · INTRODUCTION

. INTRODUCTION

a derelict when about the latitude 1° S. and longitude 107° W.

On January the Fifth, 1888—that is eleven months and four days after—my

uncle, Edward Prendick, a private gentleman, who certainly went aboard

the _Lady Vain_ at Callao, and who had been considered drowned, was

picked up in latitude 5° 3′ S. and longitude 101° W. in a small open

boat of which the name was illegible, but which is supposed to have

belonged to the missing schooner _Ipecacuanha_. He gave such a strange

account of himself that he was supposed demented. Subsequently he

alleged that his mind was a blank from the moment of his escape from

the _Lady Vain_. His case was discussed among psychologists at the time

as a curious instance of the lapse of memory consequent upon physical

and mental stress. The following narrative was found among his papers

by the undersigned, his nephew and heir, but unaccompanied by any

definite request for publication.

The only island known to exist in the region in which my uncle was

picked up is Noble’s Isle, a small volcanic islet and uninhabited. It

was visited in 1891 by _H. M. S. Scorpion_. A party of sailors then

landed, but found nothing living thereon except certain curious white

moths, some hogs and rabbits, and some rather peculiar rats. So that

this narrative is without confirmation in its most essential

particular. With that understood, there seems no harm in putting this

strange story before the public in accordance, as I believe, with my

uncle’s intentions. There is at least this much in its behalf: my uncle

passed out of human knowledge about latitude 5° S. and longitude 105°

E., and reappeared in the same part of the ocean after a space of

eleven months. In some way he must have lived during the interval. And

it seems that a schooner called the _Ipecacuanha_ with a drunken

captain, John Davies, did start from Africa with a puma and certain

other animals aboard in January, 1887, that the vessel was well known

at several ports in the South Pacific, and that it finally disappeared

from those seas (with a considerable amount of copra aboard), sailing

to its unknown fate from Bayna in December, 1887, a date that tallies

entirely with my uncle’s story.

CHARLES EDWARD PRENDICK.

The Island of Doctor Moreau

(The Story written by Edward Prendick.)