“What!” cried Syd.
“Don’t you know?”
Syd shook his head. He felt half suffocated.
“In that last scuffle when we took back the battery, he was one of the fellows we drove over the side. I didn’t know it then. No one did till he was picked up from where he crouched. The doctor has gone to him now.”
Syd hurried away, and after a time was able to find his old messmate lying where he had been left by the surgeon, side by side with one of the many wounded who filled the lower decks.
There was a lanthorn swinging overhead, and Syd started as he saw the ghastly change in the young man’s countenance.
He could not think of enmity or treachery at such a moment as that, but went close up.
“Terry,” he said, “I’m sorry it has come to this.”
The midshipman’s face lit up, and he feebly raised his hand.
“Better so,” he said, in a faint whisper. “Good-bye.”