"We ’aven’t paid for it, ’ave we, sir? We couldn’t send it back as a misfit or some’ow, I s’pose? I knew you’d being doing som’ut like that, sir, if I let you wear it, and your third best pair of trouses is all split over one knee another three-pun’-ten gone slosh, sir—that is, if they won’t take ’em back, and there’s another of our hye-glasses gone too."
He shook his head reproachfully at me, and told me that I’d had a crack on the "nut". When I pressed him as to who had been so kind as to see me safely home, he wouldn’t answer, but went on brushing the mud still more firmly in.
"Beggin’ your pardon, sir, I hauled on your legs—a little," he said at last. "An’ I’m feared that ’twas I who split them trouses." He said it as if he didn’t think he’d done a very praiseworthy thing in probably saving my life; possibly he hadn’t.
"I’ll double your pay, Grainger; ’twas jolly good of you. Hope you came out of it all right?"
"I came out of it all right. I don’t go ashore on one of these ’ere shows with my second best things on. Thank you very much, sir, but you’ve forgot to pay me anything for the last three months."
I knew that perfectly well, and it closed the discussion. Financial matters are peculiarly distressing to me in the early morning.
He roused me presently with "’Ere’s your usual breakfast, sir," and put down a tray with a bottle of soda water and a biscuit on it, and looked amazed when I clambered out and demanded shaving water and a bath. It was somewhat out of my ordinary routine to turn out much before 9.30, and he, I saw, thought that that crack on my head had affected my brain.
The old Skipper came in whilst I was dressing. I had never seen the old chap so gentle. "I’m all right, sir, thank you—right as a trivet—my head’s the only part of me which would have stood it. Very sorry we couldn’t do much for you last night. How’s the Commander?"
"Umph! Can’t say. Mayhew can’t say either. Pretty bad, I fear. The others are doing all right. Ran you up against a bigger thing than I thought. ’Old Lest’s’ sorry."
"Fortune of war, sir. I’m paid twelve-and-sevenpence a day for it by a grateful country—less income tax."
The dear old chap grunted and went out again.
It wasn’t till I went into the ward room that I heard that, besides young Ford and Tuck missing, Martin, one of my chaps, and Miller, an armourer belonging to Whitmore’s party, had been left behind.