"Probably not, unless madam has enlightened them. I did n't take the trouble,—they would n't have believed me,—and I can take my oath my lord has n't. He was only our helpless prison- er, you know; and they would think madam mistaken or bewitched." "It 's not a likely tale," I said grimly, "seeing that we had already opened fire upon them." "I trust in heaven the sharks got the men who fired the cul- verins!" he cried, and then laughed at his own savagery. I lay still and tried to think. "Who are they on board?" I asked at last. "I don't know," he replied. "I was only on deck until my lord had had his say in the poop cabin with the master and a gentle- man who appeared most in authority. Then the pirates were strung up, and we were bundled down here in quick order. But there seems to be more of quality than usual aboard." "You do not know where we are?" "We lay at anchor for a day,—whilst they patched her up, I suppose,—and since then there has been rough weather. We must be still off Florida, and that is all I know. Now go to sleep. You'll get your strength best so, and there's nothing to be got- ten by waking." He began to croon a many-versed psalm. I slept and waked, and slept again, and was waked by the light of a torch against my eyes. The torch was held by a much-betarred seaman, and by its light a gentleman of a very meagre aspect, with a weazen face and small black eyes, was busily examining my wounded shoulder and arm. "It passeth belief," he said in a sing-song voice, "how often wounds, with naught in the world done for them outside of fair water and a clean rag, do turn to and heal out of sheer per- versity. Now, if I had been allowed to treat this one properly with scalding oil and melted lead, and to have bled the patient as he should have been bled, it is ten to one that by this time there would have been a pirate the less in the world." He rose to his feet with a highly injured countenance. "Then he's doing well?" asked Sparrow. "So well that he could n't do better," replied the other. "The arm was a trifling matter, though no doubt exquisitely painful. The wound in the shoulder is miraculously healing, without |
No hay comentarios:
Publicar un comentario