He saw Simon Lake, very pale, and bleeding from a big cut in his head, laid out on the forward lounge, while Zeb Hunt and several of the others bent over him.
“It all comes of crackin’ on so,” Hunt was saying. “If we hadn’t carried all that canvas, we wouldn’t never have had that sail rip loose, and then Bully here wouldn’t have got hit with that block.”
“Is it a bad cut, Zeb?” asked one of them.
“Well, it’s purty deep,” said Zeb, who by this time had opened a locker and was selecting some bandages from it. “But I reckon we kin fix it. How d’yer feel now, Bully?”
The injured man gave a groan. It was evident that he was partially stunned by what Tom guessed, from what he had overheard, was a falling block. Soon after he was carried into his cabin, the tall Chinaman being left to watch him.
After that the hours wore on somehow. From time to time Tom fell into an uneasy nap to awaken with a start of alarm and a horrible fear that the schooner was at last going to the bottom.
There was a clock in the cabin, affixed to the forward bulkhead, and after one of these sudden awakenings he decided to peep out and see what time it was. He longed for the coming of day with every nerve within him. If the schooner was to sink, he felt that it would be better in the daylight than in the pitchy darkness.
Steadying himself by the side of the bunk in which Mr. Chillingworth lay sleeping as peacefully as if he were at home, Tom peered out. He caught his breath with a start as he did so, and saw the figure of the tall Chinaman standing upright above the table in the center of the cabin.
In front of him was a glass of water. He had evidently just fetched it from the small keg at the after-end of the cabin for the injured man.
Tom could hear Simon Lake’s voice from another stateroom: