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 wound, a deep, irregular gash at the edge of his hair, not serious, but ugly enough.

"I didn't know it hit me so hard," he said, as Joan poured some water into a basin and searched Jim's medicine-chest for the iodine. "What a mess! I'm awfully sorry."

"What hit you? How did it happen?"

She was trying desperately hard to speak in a perfectly matter-of-fact tone. She still saw the great bow of the transport reeling back from the Reef. She wished that Garth would cry, that she might, too.

"It was when I got the knife," he said. "That was the hardest part. I got on the chest—it took an awfully long time—and I couldn't reach, so I knocked the knife off with my chin, or something, and of course the telescope went, too."

"That was what I heard, then."

"Partly, but perhaps some of it was me, because I sort of fell off the chest then, and the iron corner of it hit me a whack on the head. That was why I didn't answer you for a minute; I felt rather funny. Oh!"

He stiffened under the blanket and caught Joan's hand. The iodine was not pleasant.

"Better in a minute," Joan said. "Think