“All right, Fortescue,” he said, in a low voice, “I’ll attend to you in a brace of shakes.”
He laid Nugent’s head very gently back upon a jacket which had been folded to serve as a pillow, and then, refilling the pannikin from a bucket which stood close at hand, he came to me.
“Feeling bad, old chap?” he asked, as he raised my head and placed the pannikin to my lips. I emptied the pannikin before attempting to reply, and then said—
“Not so bad but that I might easily be a jolly sight worse. Bring me another drink, Jack, there’s a good boy; that was like nectar.”
“Ah; glad you enjoyed it,” was the reply. “But you’ll have to wait a spell for your next drink; Hutchinson’s orders to me are that water is to be administered to you fellows very sparingly, as it is drawn from the river and is probably none too wholesome. What are your hurts?”
“Broken arm and a cracked skull, so far as I know,” I answered. “What’s the matter with poor Nugent?” I added, in a whisper. “He looks as though he is about to slip his cable.”
Jack nodded. “Yes, poor chap,” he whispered. “No chance of his weathering it. Ripped open by one of those broad-bladed spears. Can’t possibly recover. Well, I must go and look after my other patients; I’m acting surgeon’s mate, you know.”
“Surgeon’s mate!” I ejaculated. “Why, you surely don’t mean to say that Murdoch has been bowled over, too, do you?”
“No; not so bad as that,” answered Jack. “He’s away with the rest in the boats. The skipper’s gone to pay a return visit to those fellows who beat up our quarters last night. And now I really must be off, you know. Go to sleep, if you can; it will do you all the good in the world.”
Go to sleep! Yes, it was excellent advice, but I did not seem able to follow it just then; the throbbing and aching of my arm and the racking pain of my sore head were altogether against it, to say nothing of the continuous groaning and moaning of the injured men round about me, and the occasional sharp ejaculations of agony extorted from the unfortunate individual who happened at the moment to be under the surgeon’s hands. So, instead, I looked about me and endeavoured to form some idea of the extent of our casualties during the past night. Judging from what I saw, they must have been pretty heavy, for I counted twenty-three wounded, including myself, and I realised that there might be others elsewhere, for the tent in which we lay was full; there did not seem to be room enough for another patient in it without undue crowding. And even supposing that we comprised the sum total of the wounded, there must have been a large proportion of dead in so desperate an affair as that of the past night. I estimated that in so obstinately contested a fight as that in which we had all sustained our injuries, and against such tremendous odds as those which were opposed to us, there must have been at least half as many dead as wounded, which would make our casualties up to thirty-five; a very heavy percentage out of a crew that, owing to various causes, was already, before this fresh misfortune, growing short-handed. When to these came to be added the casualties sustained on the preceding day in the attack upon the barracoon, it seemed to me that our new captain would have little more than a mere handful of men available for service on this fresh expedition upon which he had embarked—for I did not suppose that he had gone off taking with him every sound man and leaving the camp and the wounded entirely unprotected and exposed to a renewed attack by the savages.