PART V
MY SEA ADVENTURE
CHAPTER XXII
HOW I BEGAN MY SEA ADVENTURE
There was no return of the mutineers—not so much as another shot out of the woods. They had "got their rations for that day," as the captain put it, and we had the place to ourselves and a quiet time to overhaul the wounded and get dinner. Squire and I cooked outside, in spite of the danger, and even outside we could hardly tell what we were at, for the horror of the loud groans that reached us from the doctor's patients.
Out of the eight men who had fallen in the action only three still breathed—that one of the pirates who had been shot at the loop-hole, Hunter, and Captain Smollett—and of these the first two were as good as dead; the mutineer, indeed, died under the doctor's knife, and Hunter, do what we could, never recovered consciousness in this world. He lingered all day, breathing loudly like the old buccaneer at home in his apoplectic fit; but the bones of his chest had been crushed by the blow, and his skull fractured in falling, and some
190
