"What the devil's up?" responded a voice from the darkness behind the Major's head. It belonged to a marine standing sentry outside a spare sail which shut off the Vesuvius's sick bay from the rest of the lower deck.
"A surgeon, quick! Here's a man awake and delirious."
"All right. You needn't kick up such a row, need you?" growled the marine.
"Like Nero, I am an angler in a lake of darkness. You have handcuffed me, moreover, so that even if this accursed sty contains a bell-rope—which is improbable—I am debarred from using it. A light, there, and a surgeon, I say!"
The marine let fall the sail flap and withdrew, grumbling. But apparently Mr. Sturge's mode of giving an order, being unlike anything in his experience, had impressed him; for by and by a faint ray illumined the dirty whitewashed beams over the Major's hammock, and four persons squeezed themselves into the sick bay—the marine holding a lantern and guiding the ship's surgeon, who was followed in turn by our friends Mr. Jope and Mr. Bill Adams.
The Vesuvius bomb, measuring but a little more than ninety feet over all, with a beam of some twenty-seven feet, and carrying seventy odd men and boys, with six long six-pounder guns and a couple of heavy mortars, could spare but scanty room for hospital accommodation. At a pinch, a dozen hammocks could be slung in the den which the marine's lantern revealed; but how a dozen sick men could recover there, and how the surgeon could move between the hammocks to perform his ministrations, were mysteries happily left unsolved. As it was, the two invalids and their visitors crowded the place to suffocation.
"Delirious, you say?" hemmed the surgeon, a bald little man with a twinkling eye, an unshaven chin and a very greasy shirt frill. "Well, well, give me your pulse, my friend. Better a blister on the neck than a round shot at your feet, hey? I near upon gave you up when they brought you aboard—upon my word I did." The Major groaned. "You seemed a humane man, sir," he answered feebly. "Spare me your blisters and get me put ashore, for pity's sake!"
The doctor shook his head. "My good fellow, we weighed an hour ago with a fresh northerly breeze. I haven't been on deck, but by the cant of her we must be clear of the Sound already and hauling up for Portsmouth."
"On your peril you detain me, sir! I'll have your fool of a captain broken for this—cashiered, sir—kicked out of the service, by Heaven! I am a Justice of the Peace, I tell you!"
"And coram," put in Mr. Sturge, "and custalorum. He'll make a Star-Chamber matter of it.… The poor fellow's raving, I tell you. A curse on your inhumanity! But I can wait for my revenge at Portsmouth. Approach, fellows, and knock off those gyves."