Somers sprang to his feet, and attempted to explain; but the indignant seaman struck him a heavy blow on the head, which felled him senseless on the floor.
When Somers opened his eyes, about half an hour after the striking event just narrated, and became conscious that he was still in the land of the living, he was lying on the bed in his chamber at the Continental. By his side stood Lieutenant Pillgrim and a surgeon.
"Where am I?" asked the young officer, using the original expression made and provided for occasions of this kind.
"You are here, my dear fellow," replied the lieutenant.
This valuable information seemed to afford the injured party a great deal of consolation, for he looked around the apartment, not wildly, as he would have done if this book were a novel, but with a look of perplexity and dissatisfaction. As Mr. Ensign Somers was eminently a fighting man on all proper occasions, he probably felt displeased with himself to think he had given the stalwart seaman so easy a victory; for he distinctly remembered the affair in which he had been so rudely treated, though there was a great gulf between the past and the present in his recollection.
"How do you feel, Mr. Somers?" asked the surgeon.
"The fact that I feel at all is quite enough for me at the present time, without going into the question as to how I feel," replied the patient, with a sickly smile. "I don't exactly know how I do feel. My ideas are rather confused."
"I should think they might be," added the surgeon. "You have had a hard rap on the head."
"So I should judge, for my brain is rather muddled."
"Does your head pain you?" asked the medical gentleman, placing his hand on the injured part.
"It does not exactly pain me, but it feels rather sore. I think I will get up, and see how that affects me."
Somers got up, and immediately came to the conclusion that he was not very badly damaged; and the surgeon was happy to corroborate his opinion. With the exception of a soreness over the left temple, he felt pretty well. The blow from the iron fist of the burly seaman had stunned him; and the kicks received from the big boots of the assailant had produced sundry black and blue places on his body, which a man not accustomed to hard knocks might have looked upon with suspicion, but to which Somers paid no attention.