“That's it, you're all right,” said the voice encouragingly, and about the half of Niagara fell on my face.
I sat up and beheld the room whirling about, the walls, the furniture, and the people dancing madly together to a strange wailing sound that carried me back to the dens of Chinatown. Then the mists before my eyes cleared away, and I found that I was on the floor of the inner bedroom and Wainwright had emptied a water-jug over me. The light of a small kerosene lamp gave a gloomy illumination to the place. Lockhart and Fitzhugh leaned against the door, and Wilson bent with Wainwright over me. The boy was sitting on the bed, crying shrilly over the melancholy situation.
I tried to stagger to my feet.
“Wait a bit,” said Wainwright. “You'll get your head in a minute.”
I felt acutely conscious already that I had my head. It seemed a very large head that had suffered from an internal explosion.
“What is it?” I asked, gathering my scattered wits. “What has happened?”
“We've been licked,” said Wainwright regretfully. “The rest of the boys got took, but we got in here. Fitz and me seen the nasty knock you got, and dragged you back, and when we got you here the parlor was full of the hounds, and Porter and Abrams and Brown was missing. We found you was cut, and we've tried to fix you up.”
I looked at my bandaged arm, and put one more count in the indictment against Terrill. He had tried to stab me over the heart at the time he had wrenched free, but he had merely slashed my arm. It was not a severe wound, but it gave me pain.
“Only a scratch,” said Wainwright.
I envied the philosophic calm with which he regarded it.