"I was only on deck until my lord had
had his say in the poop cabin with the master and a gentleman 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 gotten 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 perversity.
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.
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