Somers sprang to his feet, and attempted to explain; but the indignant seaman struck him a heavy blow on the head, which felled him senseless on the floor.
CHAPTER V.
SOMERS COMES TO HIS SENSES.
When Somers opened his eyes, about half an hour after the striking event just narrated, and became conscious that he was still in the land of the living, he was lying on the bed in his chamber at the Continental. By his side stood Lieutenant Pillgrim and a surgeon.
"Where am I?" asked the young officer, using the original expression made and provided for occasions of this kind.
"You are here, my dear fellow," replied the lieutenant.
This valuable information seemed to afford the injured party a great deal of consolation, for he looked around the apartment, not wildly, as he would have done if this book were a novel, but with a look of perplexity and dissatisfaction. As Mr. Ensign Somers was eminently a fighting man on all proper occasions, he probably felt displeased with himself to think he had given the stalwart seaman so easy a victory; for he distinctly remembered the affair in which he had been so rudely treated, though there was a great gulf between the past and the present in his recollection.
"How do you feel, Mr. Somers?" asked the surgeon.
"The fact that I feel at all is quite enough for me at the present time, without going into the question as to how I feel," replied the patient, with a sickly smile. "I don't exactly know how I do feel. My ideas are rather confused."