During the first few moments of noise and confusion, while the other sailors were rushing hither and thither upon their very pressing duties, Up-na-tan and Coco had been kneeling by Guert.
A pike-thrust in his right thigh, a slight sword-cut on his left shoulder, a bruise upon his head, told for him that he had been in the very front of the fray.
"Both cut cure up quick," said Up-na-tan, as he bandaged the wounds. "Boy no die. Ole chief glad o' that. Take him home to ole woman."
From the Ashantee came nothing but an apparently gratified chuckle.
Their first work was to get him back upon the _Noank_ and into a bunk in Captain Avery's cabin, by Morgan's especial direction. All the other wounded, on both sides, were well cared for. Then there was a short, sorrowful hour given to sea funerals, and all the dead were buried in the ocean.
Mate Taber, with more than half of the _Noank's_ company, was put in charge of the _Lynx_. All of the prisoners, also, were left in her.
"Homeward bound, Taber," shouted Captain Morgan, as the ships parted from their too close companionship. "Take your own course to New London. The main thing is to get in."
"Ay, ay!" called back the old Groton sailor. "We'll get there. We'd best keep within signal distance as long as we can, but the schooner's riggin' needs repairs, and ours doesn't."
"All right," said Morgan. "Keep company!"
The first few hours after a sea-fight are apt to have a great deal in them. There was not a moment of time wasted on board the _Noank_, for the spare spars taken from the _Arran_ were just the right things to be sent up in place of the sticks which had been shattered by the fire of the _Lynx_. Not until they should be in place could the swift schooner show her paces, and they had been going up even while the ocean burials were attended to.
"This is awful news to carry home to poor Mrs. Avery," groaned Guert, as he lay in his bunk. "I don't care much for my hurts, but I wish I could be on deck. I'm almost glad I'm wounded. I know how Nathan Hale would feel about it. He'd say it was little enough for a fellow to suffer for his country and for liberty. I'll never forget him."
Away off there on the ocean, therefore, in a schooner bunk, in the dark, the memory of America's hero was doing its beautiful work, as it has been doing ever since, a bright example set, as a star that will not go down.