Macallister gently pushed him back.
"I ken. A bad job, but we might have lost ye both." Then he took up a piece of linen. "It's lucky ye'll no' need stitching, but maybe this will nip."
Walthew's head smarted intolerably after the bandage was applied, but the dazed feeling left him when Macallister gave him something to drink, and he began to ask questions.
"Miguel heard a shot and ran back up the beach with the others," Macallister told him. "They found ye reeling aboot and brought ye down to the gig, with two or three rurales no' far behind; the rest must have gone off with Grahame before our men came up. They had just time to launch her before the rurales began to shoot, but nobody was hit. Looks as if ye had been knocked oot with a carbine butt."
"Where are we now?" Walthew asked.
"Steaming back to the lagoon as fast as I can drive her, and that's aboot four knots against the gale. The best thing we can do is to send Don Martin word, but ye'll go to sleep in the meanwhile. I canna' look after ye; I hae my hands full."
The clanging of hard-driven engines, which quickened to a furious rattle when the screw swung out, made the need for watchfulness plain, and Walthew crept away to his berth. He wanted to help, but knew that to attempt this would probably result in his falling among the machinery. Dazed by the blow on his head, he soon fell asleep, and when he wakened the vessel was at rest. There was no pounding of engines, and the water no longer gurgled along her side, but he heard voices behind the bulkhead.
Scrambling awkwardly out of the berth, he made his way on deck with some difficulty. The fresh air revived him, and he saw that the Enchantress was anchored in the lagoon, but he opened a door close by instead of stopping to look about. Two or three of the revolutionaries whom he knew were sitting round a table in the saloon, and as Walthew came in, white-faced, with staring eyes and a red bandage round his head, one of them threw up his hands.
"Ave Maria!" he exclaimed.
Walthew sat down with a jerk and nodded to Macallister.