The wounded, dying and dead lay scattered thickly around. The groans of the living were more appalling than the ghastliness of the dying or the dead.
All that were still breathing were at once tenderly removed to the cockpit, where the surgeon of the Xyphias, assisted by the surgeon of the Sea Scourge, dressed their wounds, administered opiates, or in other ways sought to alleviate their sufferings.
Body after body of the dead was brought up, sewed in a sail-cloth winding sheet, with a weight at head and foot, and solemnly consigned to the deep to remain until that dread day when “the sea shall give up its dead.”
This sacred duty having been performed, the deck was swabbed and put in as good order as circumstances would admit.
The carpenter now reported that he had plugged all the shot-holes of both ships under or near the water lines, and sounded their pumps, and that neither of them now gained any more water.
Lieutenant Ethel then ordered that the further repairs needed by both vessels should be continued by watches both day and night, so that the benefit of the present calm might not be lost.
And then he went below and turned in to take the rest he so much needed.
Britomarte, on leaving Justin, had gone, as I said, down into the cockpit to look after her own especial cases among the wounded, and also to dispatch a messenger in search of Judith. An hour passed away, during which Britomarte had ministered to the wants of all her patients, and at the end of which her messenger returned without any news of Judith, who was nowhere to be found.
Miss Conyers now felt seriously alarmed lest some fatal accident had happened to the girl, or lest she, in her delirium of terror, had cast herself into the sea. In the midst of this anxiety, however, it occurred to her that at the cessation of the cannonading Judith might have returned to the cabin. With this hope Britomarte returned thither.
She had scarcely reached the foot of the companion ladder, when she thought she heard a groan coming from the direction of the stateroom occupied in common by herself and Judith.