No news had come from the French on the Asiatic side. "They seem to be doing all right," the Navigator said; "but it's precious difficult to make out what's happening there."
Some men came through the battery door carrying a stretcher with a man on it, his face covered with a cloth. They bore it right aft on the quarter-deck, lifted back a tarpaulin, which the Orphan then noticed for the first time, laid the body on the deck, drew the tarpaulin over it, and went for'ard.
"That's the seventeenth," the Navigator told him; "most of them soldiers."
Dr. O'Neill, capless and haggard, came up the after hatchway. "By the powers that be, but the General has a bad leg!" he said as he hurried past them on his way to the sick-bay.
"That's the General you brought off this morning," the Fleet-Paymaster explained.
The Sub and the China Doll came up from below, the China Doll just wakened by the heavy firing.
"That R.H.A. chap promised to send you off your rifle, China Doll; he called out to us just before he landed," the Orphan said; but the Assistant Clerk shook his head sorrowfully. "No, he's dead; he died as they brought him on board; he and that chum of his are both there," and he pointed to the tarpaulin.
"Someone told me," said the Sub, "that the R.H.A. chap got ashore all right, fixed up his signal things, and sent off one or two messages before he was knocked over. He was more lucky than a good many of those there; they never got out of the boats."
"Why did the Captain want you?" asked the Orphan.
The Sub took him aside, his eyes very bright. "He'd forgotten why he sent for me, but then wanted to know if we'd had orders to go after those crippled boats that time. I told him that we hadn't, but that I couldn't stand by and do nothing. I thought he was angry; he said that if the steamboats had been disabled it would have meant a serious delay. I told him we'd only had a bullet through the funnel and a bit chipped out of the gunwale. He looked me up and down, tugged at his beard, and I saw that he was smiling. So that's all right, my jumping Orphan!"