while the fight was still in full swing, I suddenly received a terrific
blow on the top of my skull and fell senseless upon the deck. My last
conscious sensation was that of being trampled remorselessly under foot
by a furious rush of men.

When at length I recovered my senses I found that I was lying,
undressed, in a cot, suffering from a nerve-racking headache of so
violent a character that I could scarcely endure to open my eyes to the
brilliant sunlight that flooded the cabin of which I was an occupant.
For the first minute or two after my recovery my senses were so utterly
confused that I found it impossible to recall anything that had happened
save that, somehow, I had been struck down in a fight. Gradually, as I
lay there wrestling with the state of confusion in which I found myself
plunged, my memory returned, and I recollected everything up to the
moment when I had been struck down on the deck of the pirate brig. Then
I began to look about me, with the view of ascertaining where I was. I
found that the exceedingly roomy and comfortable cot in which I was
lying was slung from the beams of an equally roomy and luxurious cabin
which was furnished with a degree of mingled elegance and comfort that
was seldom found afloat in those days, and indeed is very far from being
common even now. The whole of the after end of this cabin was occupied
by a series of windows of semi-elliptical shape, beyond which the
sparkling sea could be seen, and through which a delicious, balmy,
refreshing breeze was blowing. A broad locker arrangement, handsomely
worked in choice mahogany, stretched right athwart the cabin immediately
beneath the stern windows, and upon this stood several beautiful
flowering plants in pots of elaborately hammered brass, this locker
forming the top of a long sofa, or divan, upholstered in crimson velvet,
which also stretched across the full width of the cabin. The interior
paintwork of the apartment was a rich, creamy white, imparting a
deliciously cool and bright appearance to it. The furniture which it
contained, and which consisted of, among other less important matters, a
table of elaborately carved mahogany, a large bookcase full of books,
many of which were in sumptuous bindings, a rack containing about a
dozen charts, four chairs, each one of different pattern from all the
others, and a very fine, thick carpet, was all exceptionally good. The
only fault that I could find with it was that it