There was no sign of Captain Poynings on the quarterdeck, so I went towards his cabin. As I passed underneath the break of the poop I came face to face with young Greville Drake.
He stood stockstill for a moment, his eyes starting from his head in terror, till, realizing that I was flesh and blood, and not a phantom, he gasped: "Good heavens, 'tis Aubrey Wentworth back from the dead!"
Seeing I was like to fall, he took me by the arm and led me below. "But I must report myself," I said.
"Then report to me, Aubrey."
"You? Why not the captain?"
His answer was a suggestive jerk of his thumb towards the cockpit hatch, where the grim procession of mangled seamen still continued.
"What!" I exclaimed. "Is Captain Poynings down?"
"Yes; struck down at the last of the fight, and so are all the other officers. In me you see the senior unwounded officer, and as such I am in command of the Gannet."
It was only too true. Our gallant captain had been hurled to the deck by a piece of falling timber from the doomed ship. The lieutenants were all either killed or dangerously wounded; the master, though he remained at his post during the engagement, had fallen through loss of blood; and the purser, who took his part in the fight as bravely as the rest, had had his left arm shattered above the elbow.
With the crew the mortality had been fearful, while hardly forty men were uninjured. With an undermanned, severely damaged ship, it was a question whether we should ever reach port again. Only a continued spell of fine weather would guarantee our safety.