Jo Portugais saw that memory was gone; that the past was blotted out.

He had watched that first terrible struggle of memory to reassert itself, as the eyes mechanically looked out upon new and strange surroundings, but it was only the automatic habit of the sight, the fumbling of the blind soul in its cell-fumbling for the latch which it could not find, for the door which would not open.

The first day on the raft, as Charley had opened his eyes upon the world again after that awful night at the Cote Dorion, Jo.

had seen that same blank uncomprehending look--as it were, the first look of a mind upon the world.

This time he saw, and understood what he saw, and spoke as men speak, but with no knowledge or memory behind it--only the involuntary action of muscle and mind repeated from the vanished past.
Charley Steele was as a little child, and having no past, and comprehending in the present only its limited physical needs and motions, he had no hope, no future, no understanding.