“You deserve it for smuggling yourself on shore.”
“Didn’t you smuggle yourself ashore too, sir?” said Pan, innocently.
Sydney and Roylance exchanged glances, and went to see how Mr Dallas was getting on.
The morning had broken bright and fine, the wind had gone down, though the sea was still fretting and breaking on the rocky islet; but the high spirits in which the lads were became damped directly as they stood gazing down at the wreck of the fine handsome man lying there before them, hovering as it were between life and death.
“I wouldn’t care, Roy,” said Syd, “if I could only do anything but attend to those wretched bandages.”
“You do a good deal,” was the reply.
“Oh, it seems like nothing. One gets no further, and I always go in to see him feeling as if it was for the last time.”
Partly to get rid of his painful thoughts Sydney worked hard with the men till everything possible under the circumstances had been done. Rocks had been shifted, breastworks built, and the place was so added to, that if an enemy should come, the scaling of the cliff over the landing-place and capture of the lower gun did not mean defeat. There was quite a little fort to attack half-way up the gap, and then there was a stout wall built across behind the second gun, which could be slewed round ready for an attack from the land side.
Two mornings later, just after Sydney had been again combining the duties of surgeon and commander, Strake came up to him.
“Going to order that boy a rope’s-ending now, sir?” he said.