“Arn’t loosened no teeth, have yer, sir?”
Aleck shook his head.
“Go on,” he said. “What about my nose? It’s swollen, isn’t it?”
“Well, yes, sir, it is a bit swelled like. Puffy, as yer might say; but, bless yer ’art, it’s nothing to what Big Jem’s is. I shouldn’t mind about that a bit now, for it have stopped bleeding. There’s nothing like cold sea water for that, though it do make yer tingle a bit. I ’member what a lot o’ good it used to do when we’d been in action and the lads had got chopped about in boarding the enemy. The Frenchies used to be pretty handy with their cutlasses and boarding-pikes. They used axes too.”
“Oh, I don’t want to know about that,” cried Aleck, pettishly. “There’s a scratch or something on my forehead, isn’t there?”
“It’s ’most too big and long to call it a scratch, sir. I should call that a cut.”
“Tut, tut, tut!” ejaculated Aleck.
“That’ll soon be all right, sir,” continued the sailor, cheerfully. “Bit o’ sticking plaster’ll soon set that to rights. What I don’t like is your eyes.”
“My eyes?” cried Aleck. “Yes, they do feel stiff when I wink them. Do they look bad, then?”
The sailor chuckled softly.