, having bathed the wound and bound it with three strips
of plaster, took up the blister, and was on the point of applying it,
using persuasions indeed, but with the air of one who would take no
denial, when a terrible outcry at once arrested him and drowned the
Major's protestations.

The cry--it sounded like the roar of a wounded bull--came from the
deck overhead. Its echoes sounded the very bowels of the ship; but
at the first note of it Ben Jope had clutched Bill Adams by the arm.

"He's seen 'em!" he gasped. "Run, doctor, run--there's a dear soul--
or he'll be doin' murder!"

"Seen what?"

"Run, I tell you! Come!" Suiting the action to the word, Mr. Jope,
still gripping his comrade's arm, rushed him out of the sick bay, the
doctor and the marine at their heels. In the excitement, the Major
tumbled out of his hammock, tore aside the sail-flap, and staggered
after them along the dim and empty lower-deck to a ladder which led
up to daylight.

How to describe the spectacle which met his dazzled eyes as he thrust
his head above the hatchway? Aloft the _Vesuvius_ spread her full
sails in cloud upon cloud of dove-coloured grey (for, in fact, she
carried very dingy canvas) against the blue of heaven, and reached
along with the northerly breeze on her larboard quarter, heeling
gently, yet just low enough for the Major to blink as his gaze,
travelling beyond the lee bulwarks, caught the dazzle of foam knocked
up and spreading off her blunt bows. But not long did he gaze on
this; for in the scuppers under the bulwarks, in every attitude of
complete woe, some prostrate, some supine, all depicted with the
liveliest yellows and greens of seasickness beneath their theatrical
paint, lay the crew of H.M.S. _Poseidon_. Yes, even the wicked
Lieutenant reclined there with the rest, with one hand upraised and
grasping a ring-bolt, while the soft sway of the ship now lifted his
garish tinselled epaulettes into the sunlight, now sank and drew
across them, as upon a dial, the edge of the bulwarks' shadow.

Right above this disconsolate group, and almost right above the
Major's head as he thrust it through the hatchway--or, to be more
precise, at the head of the ladder leading to the _Vesuvius's_ poop--
clung a little wry-necked, red-eyed, white-faced man in dishevelled
uniform, and capered in impotent fury. But as when a child is
chastised he yells once and there follows a pause of many seconds
while he gathers up lung an