I suppose my wits must have been reasserting themselves by that time, for these words conveyed some sort of definite meaning to me, especially that last statement: “You’re the only one of the crew left.” The only one of the crew! What crew? Why, of course, the crew of the Stella Maris, in which I had some recollection of having spent a very pleasant time. Then, as memory began to work, I recalled the tremendous shock which had hurled me, scarcely awake, out of my bunk, and the jarring, rending crash that had reached my ears in the very act of falling. What did these things mean? I asked myself, and the answer came without much groping for. What could they mean, except that some disaster had overtaken the yacht?
I opened my eyes, and by the light of a rapidly growing dawn perceived, first, that I was still in my own cabin, and secondly, that Julius was bending over me with a water jug in one hand and a tumbler in the other, from the latter of which he had just dashed a quantity of water in my face. Also I was conscious of a splitting headache, and a burning, smarting sensation in the right temple. I put up my hand, passed it over the seat of the pain, and was immediately conscious of an increased smart. As I lowered my hand I looked at it stupidly: it was smeared with blood.
“Oh, that’s nothing!” commented the boy, as I looked questioningly at the ruddy stain; “you’ve cut your forehead a bit, that’s all. Thank goodness, you’ve woke up at last! I thought at first you’d handed in your checks. Now, I say, just get up and come with me to the drawing-room. Momma’s somehow pinned in her cabin, and I want you to get her out.”
“All right!” I said; “I’ll come. But what has happened to the ship? She seems to be—”
“I dunno,” replied the boy. “She’s wrecked, that’s all that I can tell you. Her three masts are broken; and, exceptin’ Momma, ’Thea, and I, you’re the only person left.”
“The only person left!” I ejaculated, as I staggered to my feet. “Good Heavens, boy, what do you mean?”
“Just exactly what I say,” returned Master Julius. “And see here, you,” he continued aggressively, “don’t you dare to call me ‘boy’ again. I don’t like it, and I won’t have it. See?”
“Certainly,” I replied, with a smile at the lad’s astonishing touchiness at such a moment; “I both see and hear. All right! I apologise. And now, what is this you say about your mother? She is jammed in her cabin and can’t get out? I will go and attend to her first; and when she has been released I must look into that other matter of the missing crew.”
“I guess the first thing you’ll do after you’ve got Momma out of her cabin will be to get my breakfast ready, and don’t you forget it!” retorted the boy.
While we talked I had been hastily dressing, and until I had finished I said nothing. I suppose it was the blow on the head that I had received, coupled with the growing consciousness that some disaster, far more frightful than I had thus far dreamed of, had befallen us, that made me suddenly irritable and short-tempered then. Anyhow, the lad’s manner jarred upon me at the moment to such an extent that, as I was about to lead the way through the doorway of my cabin, I halted and turned upon the youngster.