On February the First 1887, the \emph{Lady Vain} was lost by collision with
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 \emph{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 \emph{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 \emph{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 \emph{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 \emph{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.

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CHARLES EDWARD PRENDICK.