“It is no time for jesting,” said I, with some dignity.

“My dear fellow,” the surgeon answered, “your wound is no jest.  You are not fit for duty.”

I looked down at the big hole in my trousers and the cut in my thigh, of which I had known nothing until then.  I had no sooner seen it and the blood than I saw that I also was in some need of repair, and lay down with a quick sense of faintness.  My wound was no pretty thing to see, but was of little consequence, a missile having torn the surface only.  I was able to help Surgeon Usher as he caught the severed veins and bathed the bloody strands of muscle in D’ri’s arm, while another dressed my thigh.  That room was full of the wounded, some lying on the floor, some standing, some stretched upon cots and tables.  Every moment they were crowding down the companionway with others.  The cannonading was now so close and heavy that it gave me an ache in the ears, but above its quaking thunder I could hear the shrill cries of men sinking to hasty death in the grip of pain.  The brig was in sore distress, her timbers creaking, snapping, quivering, like one being beaten to death, his bones cracking, his muscles pulping under heavy blows.  We were above water-line there in the cockpit; we could feel her flinch and stagger.  On her side there came suddenly a crushing blow, as if some great hammer, swung far in the sky, had come down upon her.  I could hear the split and break of heavy timbers; I could see splinters flying over me in a rush of smoke, and the legs of a man go bumping on the beams above.  Then came another crash of timbers on the port side.  I leaped off the table and ran, limping, to the deck, I do not know why; I was driven by some quick and irresistible impulse.  I was near out of my head, anyway, with the rage of battle in me and no chance to fight.  Well, suddenly, I found myself stumbling, with drawn sabre, over heaps of the hurt and dead there on our reeking deck.  It was a horrible place:  everything tipped over, man and gun and mast and bulwark.  The air was full of smoke, but near me I could see a topsail of the enemy.  Balls were now plunging in the water alongside, the spray drenching our deck.  Some poor man lying low among the dead caught me by the boot-leg with an appealing gesture.  I took hold of his collar, dragging him to the cockpit.  The surgeon had just finished with D’ri.  His arm was now in sling and bandages.  He was lying on his back, the good arm over his face.  There was a lull in the cannonading.  I went quickly to his side.

“How are you feeling?” I asked, giving his hand a good grip.

“Nuthin’ t’ brag uv,” he answered.  “Never see nobody git hell rose with ’em s’ quick es we did—­never.”

Just then we heard the voice of Perry.  He stood on the stairs calling into the cockpit.

“Can any wounded man below there pull a rope?” he shouted.