“Be jabers!” exclaimed Garry O’Neil, unable to keep silent any longer. “The baste! An’, sure, that’s how you came by that wound in the groin, faith?”
“Yes, sir, doctor. The shot struck me when I was all of a heap, and where it went heaven only knows, till you probed the wound and extracted the bullet.
“I must have tumbled into the boat while in a state of insensibility, like poor Captain Alphonse, for I do not recollect anything that occurred immediately after I felt the sting of the shot as I was hit, and when I came to myself again I was horrified to find I was far away from the ship, which I could only dimly discern in the distance.
“But this did not daunt me at first, for I thought I should be able to row alongside again and get taken aboard through one of the stern ports; but, will you believe it, when I came to search the boat for the oars, which Basseterre had expressly told those clumsy sailors in my hearing to be sure to put into the boat the very first thing of all, can you credit it? lo and behold, not a scull nor oar was in her; not a stick of any sort or kind whatever!”
“The lubbers!” said Captain Applegarth, indignant again as he paced backwards and forwards impatiently, casting an occasional hurried glance at the “tell-tale” suspended from the deck above the saloon table, the shifting dial of which showed we were now changing course to the westward. “The damned lubbers; the damn—”
The colonel here broke in with— “This discovery, I think, broke my heart,” cried he, heaving a heavy sigh. “It took the last flickering gleam of hope away from me, and I sank back again to the bottom of the boat, appalled and terrified in my mind by
the reflections and thoughts of what might happen to my darling child and those others whom I had left on board the Saint Pierre, deprived at one fell blow of both Captain Alphonse and myself.
“When daylight dawned after a night that seemed a century long, so full of pain and awful thought it was to me, I saw the Saint Pierre low down on the horizon to the westward of where I and my poor friend, Captain Alphonse, were drifting on the desert sea. The sight of the ship again, even in the distance, and the warmth of the sun’s bright beams, which made the stagnant blood circulate in my veins once more, gave me hope and renewed courage, for I recollected and thought that after all, there were eight white men still left on board the ill-fated vessel to keep possession of her and defend my little one—eight good men and true, not counting that dastardly coward Boisson, who was skulking below!
“But, sir, the wind and tide wafted the Saint Pierre away beyond my vision; and—and—sirs, the—the end of it all you all know better than I can tell you!”