"Only a flesh-wound, colonel; no cause for alarm," said the captain, looking at it with the eye of experience. "It will be all right in a day or two. But now she must go below. I can't understand how you were allowed to stay here, or be here. What were they thinking of? But you saw one of the hottest and most desperate battles ever fought between two ships since you were here. They can fight; you were right, colonel," he went on in ungrudging admiration.
"Here, Desborough," he added, addressing the lieutenant, who just then put his foot on the deck, "take Miss Wilton below, and ask the surgeon to attend her at his convenience; she 's gone and got herself wounded by her friends."
Lieutenant Desborough, black and grimy, streaked with smoke and powder, turned pale at the captain's words, and sprang forward anxiously and led the object of his love down the steps to her cabin. "Wounded!" he murmured. "Oh, my love, why did no one take you to a place of safety?"
"'T is nothing," she replied, going on as if in a dream.
Desborough had his wish: his rival was gone; he had the field to himself; but he was too manly to feel any exultation now that it was over, and too sorry for the vacant despair he saw on her face. He tenderly whispered to her as he led her on,—
"Believe me, dear Katharine, it is not thus I would have triumphed over
Mr. Seymour. He was in truth a knightly gentleman."
Overwhelming pity for her filled his heart, and he went on magnanimously,—
"I am sorry—"
She made no answer; she did not hear. In the cabin the body of little Montagu was lying on a table. He would never get his frigate now. How small and frail and boyish looked the Honorable Giles to-day! Why did they send children like that to war? Had he no mother?—poor lad! Moved by a sudden impulse, she stooped and kissed him, as she had done an hour before. No throb of the proud little heart answered responsive to her caress now. Alas! she might kiss him when and as she pleased; he would not feel it, and he would not heed. Entering her own berth at last, she closed the door and sank down upon her knees,—alone with God!
"A sail coming down fast,—the little brig, sir," reported the officer of the deck to Captain Vincent. "Shall we come about and give him a broadside?"