Still, that was enough, and I do believe that Sharpe was a little bit husky too; and I wanted him to let me shove on a little more sail, so that we could get back to the Ringdove all the more quickly, but he wouldn't let me do it. "She's carrying all she can do with, sir, and the men are asleep." He was right, too, because we should have had to turn them out to hoist more sail.
Ah Chee knew all right where he was going, and at daybreak we sighted the island at which we had to meet the Ringdove, and two hours later saw her three masts and her funny little funnel sticking up.
I had signalled across all my news, and you can imagine how thankful I was to run the Sally alongside her, and to see Dr. Hibbert clambering on board us over her "nettings", smoking his pipe and looking jolly.
"Find my medicine stuff any use?" he asked me.
"Both bottles were broken, sir," I told him, "so I hadn't the chance," and took him under the poop, and a lot of men came and hoisted all three of the wounded on board the Ringdove.
Dicky woke up and managed a bit of a smile as they took him away, but he was still dazed and half silly. They took Hicks's and Barton's bodies on board too, and before we went off again buried them overboard.
Then Mr. Rashleigh sent for me. He was angry that I hadn't reported to him directly I had come alongside. I told him all that had happened, and how Scroggs had done nearly everything, and when he'd been killed, how Sharpe had practically done everything, and how Mr. Trevelyan had taken all my Maxim ammunition and gone back to have a look at the pirate place himself. The last bit seemed to make him jolly angry, and he muttered something about "confounded disobedience".
The wind, too, had gone round to almost due north, so that Mr. Trevelyan couldn't possibly get back for at least three days.
"That ass Trevelyan would put his head into a lion's mouth, if he thought he could get any news there," he said, and swore angrily. "I'll have to go and haul him out by the feet, and hope the pirates won't have snapped his head off. If they haven't, I will."
We had to go back with him, he couldn't leave us there, and as soon as his people had set up some more rigging, and done a bit more to make our poop water-tight, and the stern as well, we had to follow the Ringdove back again. It was a fair wind for us, and we didn't delay her very much. Mr. Rashleigh had offered to let me sleep aboard his gunboat, in order that I could get a good rest; but I had had a jolly good feed in the ward room, and had had a bath, so this made me rather angry. "Just as you like; I don't care a tuppenny biscuit," he said, and gave me another petty officer to take Scroggs's place, so at last Sharpe was able to get a little sleep.