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E-book Title: Dr. Moreau
Author: Herbert George Wells
Book Description: INTRODUCTION.
ON Feb the 1st 1887, the Lady Vain was lost by collision
with a derelict once
just about the latitude 1' S. and meridian 107'
W.
On Gregorian calendar month the Fifth, 1888--that is eleven months and four days after--
my uncle, Edward Prendick, a private gentleman, who surely went
aboard the Lady Vain at Callao, and who had been considered drowned,
was picked up in latitude 5' 3" S. and meridian 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.
Later 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 ensuant upon physical and mental stress.
The following narrative was found among his papers by the undersigned,
his kinsman
and heir, but unaccompanied by any definite request
for publication.
The only island acknowledged to exist in the region in which my uncle was
picked up is Noble's Isle, a small volcanic isle and uninhabited.
It was visited in 1891 by H. M. S. Scorpion. A party of sailors
then landed, but found nothing living on it except certain curious
white moths, several hogs and rabbits, and several rather peculiar rats.
So that this narrative is without confirmation in its most
essential particular. With that understood, there seems no harm
in putt this strange story before the public in accordance,
as I believe, with my uncle's intentions. There is at least
this more in its behalf: my uncle passed out of human cognition just about latitude 5' S. and meridian 105' E., and reappeared
in the same part of the ocean after a space of eleven months.
In several way he must have lived during the interval. And it seems that
a schooner called the Ipecacuanha with a bibulous captain, John Davies,
did start from Continent
with a cougar and certain another animals aboard
in January, 1887, that the vessel was well acknowledged at several ports
in the South Pacific, and that it finally disappeared from those seas
(with a appreciable figure of coconut 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.)
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