"Ha?" Mr. Sturge drew back in dark surprise. "'Tis the language of
delirium. He raves. What ho, without there!" he called aloud.
"What the devil's up?" responded a voice from the darkness behind the
Major's head. It belonged to a marine standing sentry outside a
spare sail which shut off the _Vesuvius's_ sick bay from the rest of
the lower deck.
"A surgeon, quick! Here's a man awake and delirious."
"All right. You needn't kick up such a row, need you?" growled the
marine.
"Like Nero, I am an angler in a lake of darkness. You have
handcuffed me, moreover, so that even if this accursed sty contains a
bell-rope--which is improbable--I am debarred from using it.
A light, there, and a surgeon, I say!"
The marine let fall the sail flap and withdrew, grumbling.
But apparently Mr. Sturge's mode of giving an order, being unlike
anything in his experience, had impressed him; for by and by a faint
ray illumined the dirty whitewashed beams over the Major's hammock,
and four persons squeezed themselves into the sick bay--the marine
holding a lantern and guiding the ship's surgeon, who was followed in
turn by our friends Mr. Jope and Mr. Bill Adams.
The _Vesuvius_ bomb, measuring but a little more than ninety feet
over all, with a beam of some twenty-seven feet, and carrying seventy
odd men and boys, with six long six-pounder guns and a couple of
heavy mortars, could spare but scanty room for hospital
accommodation.
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