“No fear of that, young gentlemen,” said Mr Johnson, who had overheard us. “Keep up your spirits; young flesh and sinews soon grow together, and there are no bones broken in either of you, I hope.”
We all got at length safely on board, when the wounded were without delay carried below, and placed under the surgeon’s care. He repeated the boatswain’s advice to Grey and me, and told us that if we followed it we should soon be well. Two or three of the poor fellows brought on board alive, died of their wounds that night. We heard that Captain Collyer and Commander Ceaton were very much cut up at the failure of the expedition, and the loss of so many officers and men. I was especially sorry for McAllister’s death. Though eccentric in some of his notions, he was every inch an officer and a gentleman.
We at once made sail, I understood, from the fatal spot, but the general wish was that we might fall in with the schooner elsewhere, or return and take her.
Before many days had passed, I received a visit from my cousin. Sorrow had worked a sad change in him, and I felt grieved as I looked up at his countenance, at the bad report I should have to give of him to poor Bertha.
It was fortunate for Grey and me that we kept at sea, for the weather was tolerably cool, and our hurts rapidly healed.
The Doris had now been nearly four years in commission, so that we expected, as soon as the cruise was up, to be sent home. We had all had enough of the West Indies, and we looked forward with eager satisfaction to the time when the white cliffs of Old England should once more greet our eyes. One sorrow only broke in on our anticipations of pleasure. It was when we thought of our gallant shipmates who had been cut off, who had hoped, as we were doing, once more to be united to those they loved so dearly at home. I should have been more sorry for Perigal than for anybody else, had he been killed, but happily neither bullet nor fever seemed to hurt him, and I hoped that he might once more be united to his wife. I thought, too, of poor McAllister’s Mary, and of the sad news I should have to convey to her. However, I cannot say that I indulged in these, or other mournful reflections, for any length of time. I was more thoughtful than I had been when I came to sea four years ago, but that was only at times when some occurrences made me think. Generally I spoke of myself as Merry by name and merry by nature, and was, I fear, still but a harum-scarum fellow after all.
As may be supposed, the general subject of conversation in the berth or during the night-watches, was home. Those who have never been from home, can scarcely understand the pleasure seamen experience, who have been long absent, in simply talking about returning home. There they expect to find peace, and quiet, and rest, those who love them, and can sympathise with them, and listen to their accounts of all their exploits, and dangers, and hardships. Such at that time were my feelings, and those of my friend Grey, but I am very certain that they cannot be the feelings of those who have given way to vicious habits, and whose only expectation is to enjoy their more unbridled indulgence. The thought of a pure and quiet home can afford no joy to them; they lose, I may say, one of the chief recompenses which those obtain whose duty calls them away from home, and all the loved ones there.
Still our hope was deferred. We were, however, the gainers, in one respect, by this, for we took some of the richest prizes captured on the station, so that even we midshipmen began to feel that we were persons of boundless wealth. At length our orders arrived, and the shout ran along the decks—
“Hurrah, we are homeward-bound!”