“I’ll indulge you, young gentlemen—I’ll indulge you; and as I look upon what I am going to tell you as the most interesting part of my adventures, no one must interrupt me. The king on his throne mustn’t and sha’n’t—till I have finished my authentic and veracious narrative.”
“Mr Johnson! Mr Johnson! the captain wants you—sharp!” shouted Toby Bluff, running along the deck. Mr Johnson gave a grunt, and, springing from his seat, disappeared up the hatchway.
Chapter Six.
I had a good constitution which had not been impaired by any excess, and as Mr Perigal and the other oldsters of the mess kept strictly to the law by which they had awarded to themselves two-thirds of the youngsters’ grog, my blood was not inflamed by having imbibed spirituous liquors. I therefore, under Macquoid’s judicious care, very rapidly recovered from the effects of my wound. In a few days I could have got up and run about, but as poor Grey, who was much more hurt than I had been, was too weak to leave his hammock, I promised to remain in mine to keep him company. When Macquoid came to me, therefore, one day and told me that I might dress and go on deck, I replied in a very faint voice, that I had not strength to move, and groaned a great deal when he moved me to dress my wound.
“Some internal injury, I fear,” he observed, “I must see to it.”
He then turned to Spellman, to dress his cheeks. He groaned exactly in the way I had done, and spoke in the same faint tone, declaring his inability to rise.
“Ah, poor fellow, some internal injury, I fear; I must see to it,” remarked the assistant-surgeon in the same tone, as he left us.
Miss Susan, thinking that he had quitted the sick bay, sat up in his hammock, and made a well-known and expressive signal to me with his thumb to his nose, which Macquoid, who happened at that moment to turn his head, could not have failed to observe.