"Steward, bring me a light.--Ask the doctor how many are killed and
wounded; and, do you hear, tell him to come to me when he is done forward,
but not a moment sooner. To have been so mauled and duped by a cursed
buccaneer; and my poor boat's crew"
Splinter groaned. He started--but at this moment the man returned again.
"Thirteen killed, your honour, and fifteen wounded; scarcely one of us
untouched." The poor fellow's own skull was bound round with a bloody
cloth.
"God help me! God help me! but they have died the death of men. Who
knows what death the poor fellows in the boat have died?" Here he was cut
short by a tremendous scuffle on the ladder, down which an old
quarter--master was trundled neck and crop into the cabin. "How now,
Jones?"
"Please your honour," said the man, as soon as he had gathered himself up,
and had time to turn his quid, and smooth down his hair; but again the
uproar was renewed, and Donnally was lugged in, scrambling and struggling,
between two seamen--"this here Irish chap, your honour, has lost his wits,
if so be he ever had any, your honour. He has gone mad through fright."
"Fright be d--d!" roared Donnally; "no man ever frightened me: but as his
honour was skewering them bloody thieves forward, I was boarded and
carried aft by the devil, your honour--pooped by Beelzebub, by--," and he
rapped his fist on the table until every thing on it danced again. "There
were four of them, yeer honour--a black one and two blue ones--and a
piebald one, with four legs and a bushy tail--each with two horns on his
head, for all the world like those on Father M'Cleary's red cow--no, she
was humbled--it is Father Clannachan's I mane--no, not his neither, for
his was the parish bull; fait, I don't know what I mane, except that they
had all horns on their heads, and vomited fire, and had each of them a
tail at his stem, twisting and twining like a conger eel, with a blue
light at the end on't.
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