way behind him, though not so deftly but that I caught a glimpse
of it out of the corner of my eye and saw that it was drenched with
blood. By the time that he had removed the bandage, gently clipping
away, with a pair of scissors, the hair that stuck to it here and there,
Burroughs, the assistant surgeon, had turned up with hot water and a
number of odds and ends, and Wilson took the sponge in his hand, saying:

"Now, I shall probably hurt you a little; but don't yell, if you can
help it, because if you do you will disturb the poor fellows around you.
So set your teeth and, if you feel anything, just grin and bear it. I
will be as gentle as I can."

And he was gentle--no man could have been more so; nevertheless, during
the next quarter of an hour he inflicted so much agony upon me as he
extracted little splinters of bone with his forceps, and so on, that
long before he had finished I was drenched with perspiration, and felt
so sick that I finally swooned again; and he completed his operation
upon my senseless body.

That night, I afterward learned, I passed in a state of high delirium,
and for several days I had only a very vague idea of where I was and
what was happening around me; my predominating sensations being that the
top of my head was on fire and blazing furiously, while I was consumed
by fever and a thirst that was almost as exquisite a torture as the pain
of my head. The only radical difference between the two was that when I
was permitted to quench my thirst that particular form of torture was
alleviated for a few brief seconds, while the other was continuous and
distracting almost to the point of being unendurable. It seemed to me
that I lay for an age in that suffocating sick-bay, every moment of the
time being heavy with indescribable torment; but as a matter of fact I
was there little more than forty-eight hours, the skipper cracking on
for Jamaica, in order that several bad cases--of which I was one of the
worst--might have the advantage of the lofty, airy wards of the naval
hospital at Port Royal, where we arrived on the morning but one after
our attack upon the pirate brigantine. I may as well complete the story
of that adventure by saying--what I only learned afterward--that we
captured the vessel, with a loss to ourselves of five killed, and
eighteen wounded, of whom seven--including myself--were so badly hurt
that Wilson gravely doubted whether we should ever pull round. As for
the pirate