water along the ship's side, yet I'll swear she is not moving an inch.
What is the explanation?"

"I'll tell you in a minute or two," answered Billy. "But, first, let me
get you some broth, for I can see that you're about done up, and need
something to strengthen you. I thought, this morning, that you seemed a
bit different, and when you stopped raving and dropped off to sleep I
seized the chance to get something ready for you against the time when
you woke up. I'll fetch it in half a jiffy."

So saying, Billy disappeared into the main cabin, returning a minute or
two later with a bowl of steaming-hot, savoury-smelling soup, with
which, after propping me up with cushions, he cautiously fed me, a
little at a time, until he thought I had taken as much as was good for
me. Then, removing the cushions, he lowered me gently back into a
reclining position, made me comfortable and, seating himself by my
bedside, proceeded to make me acquainted with the happenings succeeding
my accident.

CHAPTER SEVEN.

Billy tells how we became wrecked.

"My word," began Billy, "I shan't forget in a hurry the awful look of
the sky, that night, when you ordered me to come below, and I heard you
slam the companion doors behind me, and draw over the slide. I felt
certain that, with a sky blazing like that, when it was gettin' on
toward the middle of the night, something dreadful was goin' to happen;
and--it did, didn't it? I was frightened enough, to start with, but
when you battened me down I tell you, Mr Blackburn, I was fairly
terrified, and two or three times I climbed half-way up the companion
stairs, intendin' to shout to you to let me out; then I thought again
that you wouldn't have sent me below if you hadn't known it was the best
place for me, so I crept back again and curled up on the locker
cushions. And then came the hurricane. I heard it, even before it
struck the ship; and when it hit her, and I felt her shiver, I made sure
that it was all up with us, and I knelt down on the cabin floor and kept
on sayin' my prayers, over and over again.

"I was still sayin' 'em when I suddenly heard the slide pushed back and
the companion doors flung open; there was a scuffling of feet on the
stairs, and I heard Enderby and Chips warnin' one another to be careful.
Then they came into the cabin, carryin' you between 'em; and they laid
you on the cabin table, and said you'd met with an accident; and I saw
that your head was bleedin