“You look sharp, and we’ll pull him and the doctor through, see if we don’t. I don’t think no bones is broke. Them chesties sheltered ’em.”
Then I felt water being trickled into my mouth and some poured over my forehead, while, though I could neither move nor speak, I heard Jarette’s voice giving orders apparently ever so far away.
“Look sharp, lads,” said Bob Hampton, “or Frog-soup ’ll be back and bully us.”
“Must give the jollop purser a drop more,” said Dumlow. “Here, he arn’t dead neither; takes the water down as free as if it were grog. They’ll come right agen, won’t they?”
“Ay, to be sure,” said Bob Hampton. “Now then, heave ahead afore he comes. Rum games these here, messmets.”
“Rum arn’t the right word,” said Dumlow, and then all was perfectly still again, and I lay there wondering what was the matter, and why I couldn’t think as I should, and make out why I was lying there on my back in the hot sun listening to a low moaning sound, and some one close to my ear talking in a muttering tone.
Then there was silence again for I don’t know how long: before there was another low moan, and the voice close by me muttered—
“Oh, for more strength—could have saved—”
The words died out, and I lay there wondering still. Then I felt that people were coming near me, and stopped talking together.
I must have grown a little more sensible then, for I recognised the voices as some one gave me a rude thrust with the foot.