"That Chinaman didn't come back at daylight, sir. I don't know how he intended to do so, but, at any rate, we saw nothing of him."
I told him that Trevelyan had gone round to the back of the island, in case he tried to get off there.
"I hope you don't think I shoved off too soon, sir?" Whitmore asked me anxiously. "We were very nearly hit several times—as it was."
"My dear chap, of course not. Go down, have a hot bath and some food; you look as though you wanted both pretty badly. You've not had much of a time, I should fancy."
"I've never spent such a night in my life," Whitmore said, and I could quite believe him.
"That steamer is as safe as 'eggs', sir. She's right over on her side," he called out as he went below.
That was one thing accomplished satisfactorily.
As it turned out, he might have waited for that Chinaman till he was blue in the face—well, hardly that, for he was already blue in the face, but till he'd been sunk—because the Chinaman came off with Trevelyan a couple of hours later.
The Skipper was waiting for his return before making any plans; but long before that, something occurred which thoroughly upset him.
We were all at breakfast, when suddenly we heard the distant report of a heavy gun, and through the open scuttles could hear the "swish, swish" of a shell. Everyone jumped up and rushed on deck, the gunroom people clattering up behind us. "They've fired a gun at us, sir," the midshipman of the watch told me. "It went right between the masts and fell over there, sir," and he pointed to where you could still see the spray of the splash, just drifting to leeward, about four hundred yards away. "Don't think it was a shell, sir; no one heard it burst." He was extremely nervous and excited, twitching all over.