r was given to Dick, while some pure spirits poured
down his throat soon recalled Jack to consciousness. The latter, upon
opening his eyes, would have got up, but this his officer would not
allow; and he was placed on a stretcher and carried by four tars up to
the heights, where he was laid in one of the sod huts, and his arm,
which was badly fractured, set by the surgeon.

The sixteen rescued men had, as they gained the top, been at once
taken down into Balaklava, the sole survivors of the crews of over
twenty ships which had gone to pieces in that terrible hurricane.

Of the fleet of transports and merchantmen which, trim and in good
order, had lain in the bay the afternoon before, some half-dozen only
had weathered the hurricane. The "City of London" alone had succeeded
in steaming out to sea when the gale began. The "Jason" and a few
others had ridden to their anchors through the night. The rest of the
fleet had been destroyed, victims to the incompetence and
pig-headedness of the naval officer in charge of the harbor. That
there was ample room for all within it, was proved by the fact that,
later on, a far larger number of ships than that which was present on
the day of the gale lay comfortably within it.

The largest ship lost was the "Prince," with whom nearly 300 men went
down. Even inside the harbor vessels dragged their anchors and drifted
ashore, so terrible was the gale, which, indeed, was declared by old
sailors and by the inhabitants of the town to be the most violent that
they ever experienced. Enormous quantities of stores of all kinds,
which would have been of immense service to the troops in the winter,
were lost in the gale, and even in the camps on shore the destruction
was very great.

CHAPTER XI.

TAKEN PRISONERS

"That arm of yours always seems to be getting itself damaged, Jack,"
Hawtry said next morning, as he came into the hut. "You put it in the
way of a bullet last time, and now you've got it smashed up. How do
you feel altogether?"

"I am awfully bruised, Dick, black and blue all over, and so stiff I
can hardly move."

"That's just my case," Dick said, "though, as you see, I can move. The
doctor's been feeling me all over this morning, and he said it was
lucky I was a boy and my bones were soft, for if I had been a man, I
should have been smashed up all over. As to my elbows and my knees,
and all the projecting parts of me, I haven't got a bit of skin on
them, and my unifo