e cheeks
of the block and down she came, her stern thudding thickly into the
deck, while the Captain, limp and senseless, rolled inertly to the
scuppers.

When he came to he was in his bunk. He opened his eyes with a shiver
upon the familiar cabin, with its atmosphere of compact neatness, its
gleaming paint and bright-work. A throb of brutal pain in his head
wrung a grunt from him, and then he realized that something was wrong
with his right arm. He tried to move it, to bring it above the
bedclothes to look at it, and the effort surprised an oath from him,
and left him dizzy and shaking. The white jacket of the steward came
through a mist that was about him.

"Better, I hope, sir?" the steward was saying. "Beggin' your pardon,
but you'd better lie still, sir. Is there anything I could bring you,
sir?"

"Did the boat fall on me?" asked the Captain, carefully. His voice
seemed thin to himself.

"Not on you, sir," replied the steward. "Not so to speak, on top of
you. The keel 'it you on the shoulder, sir, an' you contracted a
thump on the 'ead."

"And the wreck?" asked the Captain.

"The wreck's crew is aboard, sir; barque Vavasour, of London, sir.
The mate brought 'em off most gallantly, sir. I was to tell 'im when
you come to, sir."

"Tell him, then," said the Captain, and closed his eyes wearily. The
pain in his head blurred his thoughts, but his lifelong habit of
waking from sleep to full consciousness, with no twilight of muddled
faculties intervening, held good yet. He remembered, now, the new
pins in the blocks, and there was even a tincture of amusement in his
reflections. A soft tread beside him made him open his eyes.

"Well, Arthur," he said.

The tall young mate was beside him.

"Ah, father," he said cheerfully. "Picking up a bit, eh? That's good.
Ugly accident, that."

"Yes," replied the Captain, looking up into his face. "Block split, I
suppose?"

"Yes," said the mate. "That's it. How do you feel?"

"You didn't notice the block, I suppose, when you put the new pins
in?" asked the Captain.

"Can't say I did," answered the mate, "or I'd have changed it. You're
not going to blame me surely, father?"

The Captain smiled. "No, Arthur, I'm not going to blame you," he
said. "I want to hear how you brought off that barque's crew. Is it a
good yarn for Minnie?"

At Barcelona the Captain went to hospital and they took off his right
arm at the shoulder. The Burdock went back without him, and he l