d my wound. (It has been healed these many long years; but, no
other hands have ever touched it.) Mr. Pordage was kept tolerably quiet
now, with pen and ink, and began to pick up his senses a little. Seated
in the second boat, he made documents with Mr. Kitten, pretty well all
day; and he generally handed in a Protest about something whenever we
stopped. The Captain, however, made so very light of these papers, that
it grew into a saying among the men, when one of them wanted a match for
his pipe, "Hand us over a Protest, Jack!" As to Mrs. Pordage, she still
wore the nightcap, and she now had cut all the ladies on account of her
not having been formally and separately rescued by Captain Carton before
anybody else. The end of Mr. Pordage, to bring to an end all I know
about him, was, that he got great compliments at home for his conduct on
these trying occasions, and that he died of yellow jaundice, a Governor
and a K.C.B.

Sergeant Drooce had fallen from a high fever into a low one. Tom
Packer--the only man who could have pulled the Sergeant through it--kept
hospital aboard the old raft, and Mrs. Belltott, as brisk as ever again
(but the spirit of that little woman, when things tried it, was not equal
to appearances), was head-nurse under his directions. Before we got down
to the Mosquito coast, the joke had been made by one of our men, that we
should see her gazetted Mrs. Tom Packer, _vice_ Belltott exchanged.

When we reached the coast, we got native boats as substitutes for the
rafts; and we rowed along under the land; and in that beautiful climate,
and upon that beautiful water, the blooming days were like enchantment.
Ah! They were running away, faster than any sea or river, and there was
no tide to bring them back. We were coming very near the settlement
where the people of Silver-Store were to be left, and from which we
Marines were under orders to return to Belize.

Captain Carton had, in the boat by him, a curious long-barrelled Spanish
gun, and he had said to Miss Maryon one day that it was the best of guns,
and had turned his head to me, and said:

"Gill Davis, load her fresh with a couple of slugs, against a chance of
showing how good she is."

So, I had discharged the gun over the sea, and had loaded her, according
to orders, and there it had lain at the Captain's feet, convenient to the
Captain's hand.

The last day but one of our journey was an uncommonly hot day. We
started very early; b