"Another bit of sleep and you shall tell us all about it." And he went out, and I fell asleep again.
I woke next time to my wits, and could sit up in the bunk without my head going round. The little doctor came in presently with another whom I took to be the captain of the Indiaman. He was elderly and jovial-looking, face like brown leather, with a fringe of white whisker all round it.
In answer to his questions I told him who I was, and where from, and how I came to be on the spar.
"But, by ——!" he swore lustily, when I came to the flying flails and the shooting of the drowning men, "that was sheer bloody murder!"
"Murder as cruel as ever was done," I said, and told him further of the round hole that bored itself in John Ozanne's forehead right before my eyes.
"By ——!" he said again, and more lustily than ever. "I hope to God we don't run across him! Which way did he go, did you say?"
"He went off nor'-east, but his prowling-ground is hereabouts. What guns do you carry, sir?"
"Ten eighteen-pound carronades."
I shook my head. "He could play with you as he did with us, and you could never hit back."
"—— him!" said the old man, and went out much disturbed.