Lives of Alcyone

there spoke this language which he could not understand. The
people were not Indians, but were apparently of some Mongoloid
race, with a sprinkling of darker men who had probably some relics
of Lemurian blood in their reins. He was distinctly therefore a
stranger in a strange land, and though his good-natured sailor
companions took him before some person who was evidently in
authority, and seemed to be explaining his case, he was left quite in
ignorance as to what they intended to do with him. It was evident
that many questions were put to him, but he could only shake his
head, and indeed he felt that even if the language had been
intelligible to him he could have told practically nothing about
himself.
He did not of course understand what was passing, but it
afterwards transpired that he had been assigned practically as a
kind of slave to a certain man who employed him to do light work in
his fields. He did willingly enough such work as was assigned to
him, feeling grateful for the food and lodging accorded to him, and
realising that, unless he himself could remember something more
clearly, he must just take anything which came in his way. To speak
of his recovering his memory is perhaps too definite an expression,
for he did not actually realise that he must have had a past, just as
other people had, but it simply seemed to be missing.
Then it came to him suddenly in the middle of the night, as he
was sleeping with other labourers in a kind of large hut or shed. He
seemed to wake from sleep and see his father, and with that came a
rush of recollection of his home and of all his previous life. He father
spoke to him, adjuring him to return to his sorrowing family, telling
him that he himself was growing old and surely needed his help.
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