"I came out of it all right. I don't go ashore on one of these 'ere shows with my second best things on. Thank you very much, sir, but you've forgot to pay me anything for the last three months."
I knew that perfectly well, and it closed the discussion. Financial matters are peculiarly distressing to me in the early morning.
He roused me presently with "'Ere's your usual breakfast, sir," and put down a tray with a bottle of soda water and a biscuit on it, and looked amazed when I clambered out and demanded shaving water and a bath. It was somewhat out of my ordinary routine to turn out much before 9.30, and he, I saw, thought that that crack on my head had affected my brain.
The old Skipper came in whilst I was dressing. I had never seen the old chap so gentle. "I'm all right, sir, thank you—right as a trivet—my head's the only part of me which would have stood it. Very sorry we couldn't do much for you last night. How's the Commander?"
"Umph! Can't say. Mayhew can't say either. Pretty bad, I fear. The others are doing all right. Ran you up against a bigger thing than I thought. 'Old Lest's' sorry."
"Fortune of war, sir. I'm paid twelve-and-sevenpence a day for it by a grateful country—less income tax."
The dear old chap grunted and went out again.
It wasn't till I went into the ward room that I heard that, besides young Ford and Tuck missing, Martin, one of my chaps, and Miller, an armourer belonging to Whitmore's party, had been left behind.
The Skipper sent a boat to try and communicate with the pirates, and find out whether young Ford and these two men were alive and kicking. The boss pirate man was most polite, wrote back that they were doing well (we didn't know whether that meant that they were wounded or not), and implored the Skipper not to attack the island again, as he was certain that it would provoke a massacre, or something equally unpleasant, of all the Europeans there, including little Sally Hobbs herself.
He added that he was keeping his prisoners, and as they would probably be the first victims, he thought this knowledge might add force to his entreaties to be let alone.