"Well, you chaps, I think they must have knocked me on the head. I didn't remember much about it—didn't see anything I could swear to—rather fancy, though, there were two boats, and, now you mention it, that I did hear a girl's scream just before. Don't remember anything else till I woke up, with a beastly headache, and a mouth like a limekiln, in a jolly sight better cabin than I've got on board here."
"That must have been Hobbs's yacht! What happened then?"
"Nothing at all—couldn't shave—had forgotten to bring my razors and" (yawning) "my dressing case with me—there wasn't a towel there, or water even—and there they kept me till they shoved me ashore, where young Ford found me."
"Ford?" I said, chipping in. "I thought Rashleigh did that." The Skipper had just shown me his report.
"Rashleigh! No, sir. He was shoving out of it as hard as he could go. Young Ford came along and picked me off—he and the rest of his junk's crew—in the Ringdove's cutter. The Chinamen wasted a lot of good ammunition over the lot of us, and I'd have made 'em pay for it if I'd been in" (yawning) "charge of 'em.
"Plucky chap that," he went on placidly, ordering the marine servant to bring him more sugar for his coffee. "I told him so. Hope it won't make him more conceited than he is.
"How about that Chinese cove who came along with me in the Ringdove!" he asked, with some little display of interest.
"He's all right, B.-T.," someone said. "Came aboard with the wounded."
"Um! I thought I'd given him the slip. Promised him a hundred dollars for getting me out of it, and" (yawning several times) "I haven't got a hundred cents in the world."
"That's all right. You've got your last month's pay due to you," Old Bax growled impatiently. "But, man alive, shove on with your yarn."