I woke up feeling very bruised and sore and perceived that light was flowing into the saloon.  The door was still shut, but it had been wrenched off its hinges, and that was where the light came in; also some of the teak planks of the decking, jagged and splintered, were sticking up through the carpet.  The table had broken from its fastenings and lay upon its side.  Everything else was one confusion.  I looked at Bickley.  Apparently he had not awakened.  He was stretched out still wedged in with his cushions and bleeding from a wound in his head.  I crept to him in terror and listened.  He was not dead, for his breathing was regular and natural.  The whisky bottle which had been corked was upon the floor unbroken and about a third full.  I took a good pull at the spirit; to me it tasted like nectar from the gods.  Then I tried to force some down Bickley’s throat but could not, so I poured a little upon the cut on his head.  The smart of it woke him in a hurry.

“Where are we now?” he exclaimed.  “You don’t mean to tell me that Bastin is right after all and that we live again somewhere else?  Oh!  I could never bear that ignominy.”

“I don’t know about living somewhere else,” I said, “although my opinions on that matter differ from yours.  But I do know that you and I are still on earth in what remains of the saloon of the Star of the South.”

“Thank God for that!  Let’s go and look for old Bastin,” said Bickley.  “I do pray that he is all right also.”

“It is most illogical of you, Bickley, and indeed wrong,” groaned a deep voice from the other side of the cabin door, “to thank a God in Whom you do not believe, and to talk of praying for one of the worst and most inefficient of His servants when you have no faith in prayer.”

“Got you there, my friend,” I said.

Bickley murmured something about force of habit, and looked smaller than I had ever seen him do before.

Somehow we forced that door open; it was not easy because it had jammed.  Within the cabin, hanging on either side of the bath towel which had stood the strain nobly, something like a damp garment over a linen line, was Bastin most of whose bunk seemed to have disappeared.  Yes—­Bastin, pale and dishevelled and looking shrunk, with his hair touzled and his beard apparently growing all ways, but still Bastin alive, if very weak.

Bickley ran at him and made a cursory examination with his fingers.

“Nothing broken,” he said triumphantly.  “He’s all right.”

“If you had hung over a towel for many hours in most violent weather you would not say that,” groaned Bastin.  “My inside is a pulp.  But perhaps you would be kind enough to untie me.”

“Bosh!” said Bickley as he obeyed.  “All you want is something to eat.  Meanwhile, drink this,” and he handed him the remains of the whisky.

Bastin swallowed it every drop, murmuring something about taking a little wine for his stomach’s sake, “one of the Pauline injunctions, you know,” after which he was much more cheerful.  Then we hunted about and found some more of the biscuits and other food with which we filled ourselves after a fashion.