Fortunately for the China Doll the armoured hatch leading down to it was shut down and must not be opened.
On the way back to the gun-room with him, they had to pass the Surgeon's cabin, where Doctor Crayshaw Gordon was sitting, busy censoring letters. Dr. Crayshaw Gordon, R.N.V.R.--in private life he had a big consulting practice in London--hearing the noise and seeing the stretcher, thought there had been an accident, so jumped out of his cabin. "Hello!" he sung out, in his funny chuckling way of talking--fixing his gold eyeglasses on his nose, opening his mouth wide, and pulling nervously at his little pointed tawny beard. "Hello! what's the matter?"
"The China Doll, sir!" they shouted, dropping him on the deck. "Both legs blown off!--he can't kick you, sir, we've lashed him up too tightly."
"It's very painful," the China Doll bleated, all the pink gone out of his face.
Dr. Gordon went down on his knees and began to unlash him.
"Rather too much--too much," he said in his agitated manner, when he found how tightly the handkerchiefs had been fastened, and cried out with alarm when the China Doll's head suddenly dropped back.
They unbuckled the straps and untied the handkerchiefs in double-quick time.
"Put him on my bunk," Dr. Gordon told them; and, very frightened, they laid him there.
The China Doll's eyes opened, and he looked round not knowing what had happened. "Don't play ass tricks; get out of it; leave him here!" Dr. Gordon ordered gently; and they trooped away, dragging the stretcher along after them--rather sobered for the moment--to get a lecture from the Sub and Uncle Podger when they crowded into the gun-room and told what had happened.
In half an hour the China Doll was back again--none the worse, except that the pink had not all come back in his doll's face--rather pleased with himself than otherwise.
That happened on a Wednesday afternoon. On the Thursday, orders came by wireless for the _Achates_ to rendezvous off the Gulf of Smyrna; and as dawn broke on Friday, the 5th March, she found herself half-way between the islands of Mytilene and Chios.
No one knew what was going to happen except, perhaps, Captain Macfarlane. "And he's probably forgotten," the irrepressible Orphan said.