Rajah
Hamet's men, as they says are our enemies."

"No, no; he's our friend."

"Then it must be t'other one, sir. You remember when you come by in the
boat that moonlight night?"

"Boat! What moonlight night?"

"Oh, Lor' ha' mussy!" muttered Peter. "He can't be fit to talk."

"What's that you are saying to yourself? Why don't you speak?"

"Don't you remember hailing me, sir, when I was on sentry-go?"

"No."

"Nor me telling you to mind the crocs didn't try to come aboard your
boat?"

"No. What are you talking about?"

"Oh, my word!" sighed Peter. "Here's a pretty go! Talk about a poor
fellow being off his chump!" Then aloud, as he felt the lad's hand
feebly feeling for his, "It was like this 'ere, sir. You must have got
into some row with a boatful of the niggers, and they knocked you over
the head."

"Knocked me over the head?" said Archie dreamily. "No, I don't
remember. Here, give me some more water."

Peter Pegg hurriedly filled the cup--half a cocoa-nut shell--and Archie
drank a mouthful and pushed it away.

"Let me lie down again," he said.--"Now go on. Knocked me over the
head?" he said very slowly and thoughtfully, as if weighing his words.
"Did you know that?"

"Yes, sir."

"You said you were on sentry?"

"That's right, sir."

"Then why didn't you come and help me?"

"I was coming, sir, bull roosh, when just as I was running along the
river-bank, wondering how I was to swim out to you among them
crocodiles, some one popped out from the bushes and fetched me down with
an awful crack on the pan."

"Struck you down?"

"Yes, sir. Hit me crool. There's a lump on the top now as big as your
fist. Regularly knocked me silly. Just as they must have served you--
knocked every bit of sense out of me. There warn't much in, as old
Tipsy says, but I didn't know no more till I found myself here, feeling
sick as a dog, and not able to move, for I was lying awkward-like on my
back, with some of them thin rotan canes tied round my arms and legs so
tight that it was only at times I knowed I had any arms and legs at
all."

"Poor fellow!" said Archie pityingly.

"Yes, I just have been a poor fellow, sir--poor creature, as they called
them up in my part of the country. Why, I have been quite mazed-like.
That topper I got seemed to do for me altogether; and when I come-to,
here I was lying in this place, not knowing where I was, and, like you,
sir, I couldn't make out what it meant."