A Bit of Blue.
As if to endorse these words there was once more a deafening explosion, the blood-red glow toward which they were being driven suddenly flashed out into a burst of light so dazzling that all present covered their blinded eyes; a spurt of fiery blocks of incandescent stone curved over and fell into the boiling sea, and as the occupants of the deck were driven prostrate by the shock which followed, silence and darkness once more reigned.
“Much hurt, sir?”
Oliver Lane heard those words quite plainly, and lay wondering who it was that was hurt, and why he did not answer so kindly an inquiry.
Then, as a hand was laid upon his shoulder, he grasped the fact that it was the mate who was speaking, and that he was the object of the sailor’s solicitude.
“I—I don’t know,” he said, making an effort to sit up, and succeeding. “Whatever is the matter? My head aches a good deal.”
“No wonder, my lad, seeing how you were pitched against the mast. But you won’t hurt now. I doctored it as well as I could. It bled pretty freely, and that will keep the wound wholesome.”
“Bled?” said the young fellow wonderingly, as he raised his hand, and found that a thick bandage was round his forehead.
“Yes; we were all thrown down when she struck, but you got the worst of it.”
“She struck?—the ship? Then we have all been wrecked?”