Page:Guy Boothby - The Beautiful White Devil.djvu/39

 "My goodness, man, you're wounded," he cried, spinning me round to find out whence the blood was dripping.

And so I was, though in my excitement I had quite forgotten the fact. A ball had passed clean through the fleshy part of my left arm, and the blood flowing from it had stiffened all my sleeve.

With a gentleness one would hardly have expected to find in him, my friend drew off my coat and cut open my shirt sleeve. Then bidding me stay where I was while he procured some water with which to bathe the wound, he left me and went forrard. I did not, however, see him return, for now that the excitement had departed, a great faintness was stealing over me. The sea seemed to be turning blade, and the deck of the junk to be slipping away from under me. Finally, my legs tottered, my senses left me, and I fell heavily to to the ground.

When I came to myself again I was lying on a pile of fibre sails under the shelter of an improvised awning. My companion, whose name I discovered later was Walworth, was kneeling beside me with a preternaturally grave expression upon his usually stolid face.

"How do you feel now?" he inquired, holding a cup of water to my lips.

I drank eagerly, and then replied that I felt better, but terribly weak.

"Oh, that's only to be expected," he answered reassuringly. "We ought to be glad, considering the amount of blood you must have lost, that it's no worse. Keep up your heart. You'll soon be all right now."

"Has anything happened?"