“Well, sir, if he ever had a bottle or two of grog in his cabin, that must have gone a long time ago.  I saw him throw some broken glass overboard after the last gale we had; but that didn’t amount to anything.  Anyway, sir, you couldn’t call Mr. Bunter a drinking man.”

“No,” conceded the captain, reflectively.  And the steward, locking the pantry door, tried to escape out of the passage, thinking he could manage to snatch another hour of sleep before it was time for him to turn out for the day.

Captain Johns shook his head.

“There’s some mystery there.”

“There’s special Providence that he didn’t crack his head like an eggshell on the quarter-deck mooring-bits, sir.  The men tell me he couldn’t have missed them by more than an inch.”

And the steward vanished skilfully.

Captain Johns spent the rest of the night and the whole of the ensuing day between his own room and that of the mate.

In his own room he sat with his open hands reposing on his knees, his lips pursed up, and the horizontal furrows on his forehead marked very heavily.  Now and then raising his arm by a slow, as if cautious movement, he scratched lightly the top of his bald head.  In the mate’s room he stood for long periods of time with his hand to his lips, gazing at the half-conscious man.

For three days Mr. Bunter did not say a single word.  He looked at people sensibly enough but did not seem to be able to hear any questions put to him.  They cut off some more of his hair and swathed his head in wet cloths.  He took some nourishment, and was made as comfortable as possible.  At dinner on the third day the second mate remarked to the captain, in connection with the affair: 

“These half-round brass plates on the steps of the poop-ladders are beastly dangerous things!”

“Are they?” retorted Captain Johns, sourly.  “It takes more than a brass plate to account for an able-bodied man crashing down in this fashion like a felled ox.”

The second mate was impressed by that view.  There was something in that, he thought.

“And the weather fine, everything dry, and the ship going along as steady as a church!” pursued Captain Johns, gruffly.

As Captain Johns continued to look extremely sour, the second mate did not open his lips any more during the dinner.  Captain Johns was annoyed and hurt by an innocent remark, because the fitting of the aforesaid brass plates had been done at his suggestion only the voyage before, in order to smarten up the appearance of the poop-ladders.

On the fourth day Mr. Bunter looked decidedly better; very languid yet, of course, but he heard and understood what was said to him, and even could say a few words in a feeble voice.

Captain Johns, coming in, contemplated him attentively, without much visible sympathy.

“Well, can you give us your account of this accident, Mr. Bunter?”