First of all I managed to help Marah down from his perch over the tiller: he had fallen across it with his head and hands almost touching the deck. I helped him, or rather, lifted him--for he could not help himself--to the deck; it was as much as I could do, he was so big and heavy. I put a tub under his head as a pillow, then I cut his shirt open and saw that he had been shot in the chest. I ran forward with a pannikin, drew some water, and gave him a drink. He drank greedily, biting the tin, but did not recognise me; all that he could say was "Rip-raps, Rip-raps," over and over again. The Rip-raps was the name of a race or tideway on the Campeachy coast; he had often told me about it, and I had remembered the name because it was such a queer one. I bathed his wound with the water. After I had done what I could for Marah, I did the same for the wounded soldier. He thanked me for my trouble in a little, low, weak voice, infinitely serious--he seemed to think that I didn't believe him. "I say, thank you; thank you," he repeated earnestly, and then he gave a little gasp and fainted away in the middle of his thanks. At that, I stood up and began to cry. I had had enough of misery, and that was more than I could bear. Between my sobs I saw--I did not observe, I just saw--that the lugger was drifting slowly northward, clear of Little Stone Point, as the smugglers had called it. I didn't much care where we drifted, but having seen so much, it occurred to me to see where the other luggers were. One of them, I saw, was on her course for France, a couple of miles away already; the other was going for Dungeness, no doubt to pick up more hands somewhere on the Dunge Marsh. It was like them, I thought, to go off like that, leaving us to have the worst of the fight and every chance of being taken; they only thought of their own necks. When I saw that they had deserted us without even pausing to put a helmsman aboard us, I knew that there was no honour among thieves. There is not, in spite of what the proverb says. We were left alone--a boy, two drunkards, and some wounded men, within half a mile of the shore.