INTRODUCTION.

ON February the First 1887, the Lady Vain was lost by collision
with a derelict when about the latitude 1 degree S. and longitude
107 degrees 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 degrees 3' S. and longitude 101 degrees 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 degrees S. and longitude 105 degrees 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 Story written by Edward Prendick.)




I. IN THE DINGEY OF THE "LADY VAIN."


I DO not propose to add anything to what has already been written
concerning the loss of the "Lady Vain." As everyone knows,
she collided with a derelict when ten days out from Callao.
The longboat, with seven of the crew, was picked up eighteen days after
by H. M. gunboat "Myrtle," and the story of their terrible privations
has become quite as well known as the far more horrible "Medusa" case.
But I have to add to the published story of the "Lady Vain"
another, possibly as horrible and far stranger. It has hitherto
been supposed that the four men who were in the dingey perished,
but this is incorrect. I have the best of evidence for this assertion:
I was one of the four men.

But in the first place I must state that there never were four men
in the dingey,--the number was three. Constans, who was "seen
by the captain to jump into the gig,"{1} luckily for us and unluckily
for himself did not reach us. He came down out of the tangle
of ropes under the stays of the smashed bowsprit, some small rope
caught his heel as he let go, and he hung for a moment head downward,
and then fell and struck a block or spar floating in the water.
We pulled towards him, but he never came up.

{1} Daily News, March 17, 1887.

I say lucky for us he did not reach us, and I might almost
say luckily for himself; for we had only a small breaker
of water and some soddened ship's biscuits with us, so sudden
had been the alarm, so unprepared the ship for any disaster.
We thought the people on the launch would be better provisioned
(though it seems they were not), and we tried to hail them. They could
not have heard us, and the next morning when the drizzle cleared,--which
was not until past midday,--we could see nothing of them. We could
not stand up to look about us, because of the pitching of the boat.
The two other men who had escaped so far with me were a man named Helmar,
a passenger like myself, and a seaman whose name I don't know,--a short
sturdy man, with a stammer.