river right ahead, with the sloop of war well in view; and in place of bemoaning their fate or heeding their sufferings the scorched and hair-singed men were full of jocular remarks about each other’s state.
One of the first things observable was the fact that to a man all save the officers were bare-headed, the men’s straw hats having suffered early in the struggle against the flames, while the caps of the officers were in such dismal plight that it was questionable as to whether it was worth while to retain them.
Titely, the seaman who had been speared, was the butt of all his messmates, and the requests to him to show his wound were constant and all taken in good part; in fact, he seemed to revel in the joke.
But there was another side which he showed to his young officer as, cheering at intervals, the party began to near the river edge and get glimpses of the boats waiting with a well-armed party to take them off to the sloop.
“It’s all werry fine, Mr Murray, sir,” said Titely, “and I warn’t going to flinch and holloa when one’s poor mates wanted everything one could do to keep ’em in good heart; but I did get a good nick made in my shoulder, and the way it’s been giving it to me all through this here red-hot march has been enough to make me sing out chi-ike like a trod-upon dog.”
“My poor fellow!” whispered Murray sympathetically. “Then you are in great pain?”
“Well, yes, sir; pooty tidy.”
“But – ”
“Oh, don’t you take no notice, sir. I ought to be carried.”
“Yes, of course! Yes, I’ll tell Mr Anderson.”
“That you don’t, sir! If you do I shall break down at once. Can’t you see it’s the boys’ chaff as has kep’ me going? Why, look at ’em, sir. Who’s going to make a party of bearers? It’s as much as the boys can do to carry theirselves. No, no; I shall last out now till I can get a drink of cool, fresh water. All I’ve had lately has been as hot as rum.”
“Hurray!” rang out again and again, and the poor fellows joined in the cheers, for they could see nothing but the welcome waiting for them, and feel nothing but the fact that they had gone to clear out the horrible hornets’ nest with fire, and that the task had been splendidly done.
Chapter Twelve.
After the Lesson
As the suffering party gathered together upon the river shore preparatory to embarking in the boats, Murray’s first care was to see that A.B. Titely was placed where he could lie down and rest, and while looking after the poor fellow, and seeing that he was one of the first to be helped into the stern sheets of the first cutter, Roberts came up.
“Oh, I say!” he cried. “Who’s that wounded?”
“Hallo! Who are you?” said his fellow middy sharply. “Don’t disturb the poor fellow.”
“Why, eh? Yes – no,” cried Roberts, with a mock display of interest, “I was wondering where – well – it can’t be! Why, Frank, you do look a pretty sweep! Hardly knew you. I say: is it you?”
“Is it I, indeed!” growled Murray. “You’re a pretty fellow to try that on! Go and look at your face in the water if you can find a still pool. I might grin at you.”
“Am I browned, then – scorched?”
“Are you scorched brown! No, you are scorched black! Where are your eyebrows? I say, Dick, those two little patches of hair in front of your ears that you believed were whiskers beginning to shoot – they’re quite gone. No, not quite; there’s a tiny bit left in front of your right ear.”
The conscious lad clapped his hands up to the sides of his face.
“I say, not so bad as that, is it, Frank? No games; tell us the truth.”
“Games? No, I’m too sore to be making game,” cried Murray, and he gazed carefully at both sides of his messmate’s cheeks. “You’re scorched horribly, and the whisker shoots are all gone – No, there’s about half of one left; and you’ll have to shave that off, Dick, so as to balance the other bare place. No, no; it’s all right; that’s not hair, only a smudge of sooty cinder off your burnt cap. I say, you do look a beauty, Dick.”
“Oh, I say!” groaned the youth, patting his tingling cheeks tenderly. – “Here, what are you grinning at, sir?” he cried, turning upon the wounded sailor angrily.
“Beg pardon, sir. Was I grinning?” said the sailor apologetically.
“Yes; and he can’t help it, Dick. Don’t be hard upon the poor fellow; he has had a spear through the top of his shoulder. But you do look an object! Enough to make a cat laugh, as they say.”
“Well, I don’t see that there’s anything to laugh at.”
“No, old fellow, because you can’t see your face; but I say, you can see mine.”
“Humph!” grunted Roberts sulkily, and his fingers stole up to pat the scorched portions of his face.
“Case of pot and kettle, eh, Dick?” said Murray, laughing, then pulling his face straight again as he winced with pain. “Oh, I say, don’t make me grin at you again. It’s just as if my skin was ready to crack all over. There, poor old chap, I’m sorry for you if you feel as bad as I do. But you began it.”
“Beg pardon, then,” grumbled Roberts.
“Granted. But I say, why doesn’t Anderson hurry us all on board?”
“I don’t know. Yes, I do,” cried the midshipman excitedly. “The beggars – they must have quite escaped the fire! They’re gathering together over yonder, hundreds of them, with spears. I believe they’re going to make a rush. Fancy, after destroying the hornets’ nest!”
“Then we shall have to kill the hornets,” said Murray; and the two lads were among the first to answer to the boatswain’s whistle, which now chirruped out loudly.
“Here we are, Mr Murray, sir,” said Tom May, as the midshipman hurried up to his little party. “This is us, sir – your lot.”
“Well, I know that,” said the lad petulantly, as he winced with pain.
“Beg pardon, sir,” said the man. “Thought you might take us for the niggers, seeing what colour we are and how our clothes are tumbling off.”
“Yes, we’re black enough, Tom, but I hope you don’t feel as I do,” said his leader.
“Much of a muchness, sir,” said the man, with a grin half of mischievous mirth, half of pain. “The first luff said something about hornets, sir. I don’t know much about them insecks, but we chaps feel as if we’d been among their first cousins the wopses; eh, lads?”
“Ay, ay!” growled another of the men. “But aren’t we soon going to have a chance to use our stings?”
At that moment the preliminary order rang out – an order which sent a thrill through the suffering band, making them forget everything in the opportunity about to be given them for retaliation upon the advancing body of warlike blacks stealing cautiously forward from the shelter of a patch of mangroves away to the left, which had from its nearness to the margin escaped
