The Orphan, huddled down at the bottom of the boat between two thwarts, felt sick and faint. His left foot was quite numb. He looked at it. The toe and front part of the sole of his boot was all ripped up and torn, and his sock was dripping with blood. He did not know what had happened. The two Greeks lay under the thwarts—very silent. Fletcher, near him, kept on saying: "If only I'd found 'Kaiser Bill' and brought him along with us, it wouldn't have happened."
Although a few bullets followed them, no one was hit, and in ten minutes they were alongside the destroyer, and the Orphan was being hoisted up the side. They wanted to carry him, but he would not let them; he hobbled on his left heel to the ward-room hatch, and got down it somehow; found a chair, and sat on it. He heard the Kennet's 12-pounder still firing, and guessed what she was firing at—his beloved picket-boat—the poor old lady. She had shared so many adventures with him, and now was being ripped open by the Kennet's shells, even if her own boiler did not burst with the added fuel and the screwed-down valves. It was better than that she should fall "alive" into the hands of the Turks, and the Orphan hoped she understood.
A chief stoker belonging to the Kennet came along presently, cut away his boot, and took it off (how it did pain!), and cut away the sock. He knew how to dress wounds, and did his work well.
"A bullet, sir, right along the top of the boot, then through that toe; broken the bone, I think—it's all 'wobbly'. I've a lot of doctoring to do this morning. That there young Greek chap has a bad smash, my word! but I don't rightly know about the other. Stomachs are rather beyond my 'line'. That there seaman—he'll be all right."
By the time the foot had been dressed, the guns had left off firing, and the Kennet's engines began to make the whole stern rattle. The Sub came down, looking haggard, but trying to be cheerful. "We did our best, sonny; don't bother. It was all my fault. If we hadn't been steaming so fast, we might have got her off. So you've got a bullet through your foot, have you? I thought I saw the sole of the boot all ripped off. When did that happen?"
"Just after Plunky Bill was hit the second time. Just after I'd started firing the maxim."
"So you kept going, did you?" said the Sub. "Good for you, Orphan! If you hadn't, those chaps might have got across, and we should have been 'in the soup' in next to no time. There wasn't a sign of a patrol-boat there," the Sub went on. "The Kennet's skipper, from her bridge, could see every square yard of the creek. You remember how those confounded Greeks kept pointing over to port directly after they began singing out 'Turko', 'Turko'. So long as they kept away from the toll-house, where they had seen them, and gave them a wide berth, they didn't care a 'fish's tail' what happened to the picket-boat—never thought of the channel. That chap you call the Hired Assassin—I expect he came along with that 'cock and bull' yarn just to get us to go in there and smash up the village—a girl had jilted him, or something like that, I expect. Oh, if only that motor-yacht had come in!"
"Have you seen Mr. M'Andrew?" the Orphan asked.
"Yes! He wouldn't speak. He wouldn't look at me. He was fumbling with his watch-chain. He looked as if he'd been blubbing. That Greek engineer found out what was wrong with the motors directly everything was over. Curse the chicken-livered swine!"
"Did they smash her up? The Turks won't be able to use her?" the Orphan asked.