The Captain looked very sourly at me and growled out, "Where's that chap Ching, and the little lass and Hobbs?" and wanted to know whether Martin and Miller were with me. I must have looked a most awful sight, I know, because I could still only just manage to see out of my left eye by lifting up the lid with my fingers, and of course I was covered with mud, and my left sleeve was dangling down, and my arm was inside my monkey jacket, where the old Chinaman had bandaged it. But, for all that, he didn't even ask me how I was, and that made me miserable.
"Pongo" came panting along after him, and when he had recovered his breath, I asked if the Commander had landed with them.
It was then that I heard that he had been shot through the body, and that Dr. Mayhew didn't know whether he would live or die. That made me feel even more wretched, and the Captain, hearing me ask about him, turned round and growled: "If you hadn't been such a blamed little idiot, he'd never have been shot. Umph! His little finger is worth more than all you confounded young midshipmen—umph!—put together;" and he stalked off to meet the American Captain.
"Pongo" told me that Dicky was going on all right, and then wanted to know all about my arm, and my face, and everything that had happened; but I wanted to be left alone and be miserable, and went away and hid somewhere—I didn't care what happened; and wanted to run away and get killed, or something like that, till I heard Jim's voice calling for me. And he found me and comforted me a little, and said that Dr. Barclay did not think that the Commander would die, but that Dr. Mayhew wouldn't say for certain till another day had gone by. But all the joy and the excitement had gone out of me, and I felt wretched and ill, and had a bit of a "weep", and didn't mind Jim seeing me, not in the least, and he cleared out and left me, and went away to Mr. Whitmore and presently came back, and told me all about Mr. Whitmore's party, and how they'd had a pretty tough job getting back to the boat, and never got halfway to the gun. He hadn't been wounded at all—he didn't even remember falling down—so Miller must have made a mistake. He was awfully keen to see over the house, and went everywhere, and before I could stop him he poked his nose into the little room place where they had put Mr. Hoffman and five dead bluejackets, and that made him feel rather ill.
Everybody seemed to come up after this. Dr. Barclay had a look at my arm, and I saw the corners of his mouth go down. "'Twill be a long job," he said, and did it up again as comfortably as he could. Miller had coiled himself up behind the wall, and was fast asleep, and so were Mr. Ching and most of his bluejackets—I would have done anything in the world for them. Old Sharpe came up to have a yarn, and cheered me up a little, and Captain Marshall caught sight of me, and came along and said something nice, and I knew that he was sorry, and I was so longing for someone to be pleasant that I made friends. He didn't "hee-haw" either, as I expected he would, when he first saw my face, and he told me that the Commander knew that I had sent off that message in the letter which the Englishman had written, and was pleased about it. This cheered me a little.
But the Captain took no notice of me, and every time he passed, my heart just felt like lead inside me, and everyone seemed to know that I was in disgrace, even old "Blucher".
It seems silly to say so, but I did fancy that he was not so affectionate as he usually was, and it hurt me.
Then they brought a dead man along with his face covered up, and someone told me that it was Wilkins, the marine bugler, who had helped me to set fire to one of those huts, and throw stones at the dogs, and that made me sadder than ever again.
Both of the landing parties must have managed to slip through in the fog without really running up against many of the Chinese; but now they were swarming all round us, and there was so much to do to keep them off, that I was left alone, and got into a safe corner, and watched the ships firing at the town and the six-inch gun. Sally had been put in a safe place, so the Captain didn't care in the least where their shells went; and a good many did come pretty close to us, and one of the Vigilant's eight-inch shells didn't burst, and came roaring overhead, and fell into the paddy fields below.
Presently a number of houses in the town caught fire, and a lot of the Chinese ran away to try and put the fires out, so that we were not so much worried with them.