Captain Dave sat down again.
"Perhaps you are right, my dear. At any rate, till he is getting strong we will not tell him what we think of him. Anyhow, it can't do any harm to tell him we know it, and may do him good, for it is clear he does not like telling it himself, and may be dreading our questioning about the affair."
Mrs. Dowsett and Nellie went into Cyril's room as soon as they had finished breakfast. Captain Dave followed them a few minutes later.
"We have been hearing how you got burnt," he began. "Your friend, Lord Oliphant, sent a letter about it by the skipper of his yacht. That stupid fellow, John, has been carrying it about ever since, and only remembered it just now, when we were at breakfast. It was a plucky thing to do, lad."
"It turned out a very lucky one," Cyril said hastily, "for it was the means of saving my life."
"Saving your life, lad! What do you mean?"
Cyril then told how Robert Ashford and Black Dick had been brought on board as impressed men, how the former had been killed, and the confession that Black Dick had made to him before dying.
"He said he had made up his mind to kill me during the fight, but
that, after I had risked my life to save the Henrietta, he was
ashamed to kill me, and that, rather than do so, he had resolved to
take his chance of my denouncing him when he returned to land."
"There was some good in the knave, then," Captain Dave said. "Yes,
it was a fortunate as well as a brave action, as it turned out."
"Fortunate in one respect, but not in another," Cyril put in, anxious to prevent the conversation reverting to the question of his bravery. "I put down this wound in my shoulder to it, for if I had been myself I don't think I should have got hurt. I guarded the blow, but I was so shaky that he broke my guard down as if I had been a child, though I think that it did turn the blow a little, and saved it from falling fair on my skull. Besides, I should have had my helmet and armour on if it had not been for my having to take a swim. So, you see, Captain Dave, things were pretty equally balanced, and there is no occasion to say anything more about them."
"We have one piece of bad news to tell you, Cyril," Mrs. Dowsett remarked, in order to give the conversation the turn which she saw he wished for. "We heard this morning that the Plague has come at last into the City. Dr. Burnet was attacked yesterday."