At this news Orace, finding that he had not to play odd man out at a deathbed scene, moved the girl aside and picked Algy up. He carried him round behind the hut and then switched the torch on him. Blood was running down the side of Algy’s face from an ugly furrow which was scored from the outside end of his eyebrow to the top of his ear, and there was a black cordite burn on his temple. “Point-blank,” he said. “It stunned me. But I’ll soon be as fit as a fiddle.” Orace had found a bucket, and in this he fetched water from the sea. Algy heaved himself and plunged his head in the pail for three or four long douches, coming up for breath in between. The salt water stung his wound painfully, but his head was rapidly clearing. While they tied a handkerchief round his head he told the story, and it was much as the girl had surmised. “So, like a little hero,” he concluded ruefully, “I walked up and said ‘Hands up!’ in the approved manner. And then I got this.” “Did you recognise anybody?” “It was too dark to see their faces—I didn’t even see the jolly old pea-shooter they used on me. But one of them was short and fat, which must have been the Sausage-meat Sultan, and I’m blowed if another hadn’t got something doocid like the height and shape of Uncle Hans!” “How many were there?” “Three or four—they stood in a group, so I can’t be quite certain.” He was struggling to his feet, and he stood leaning against the wall of the hut. The shock must have been worse than he admitted, for his face was white and drawn. “How do you feel now?” she asked. “Fine,” he said. “I feel as if the top of my head’s breaking off, but otherwise I’m absolutely O.K. Let’s get along—the string’s where I dropped it, round in front. Lead on!” Orace had faded away to fetch the rope, and in a moment he returned with a heavy coil of it slung over his shoulder. “Don’t chew fink ya better go ’ome?” he asked. “Yer carn’t be yupter much after this.” The honourable wound which Mr. Lomas-Coper had received in the Cause had immediately destroyed Orace’s animosity towards him. In another second Orace would call him “sir.” “No, I don’t,” said Algy strongly, and roughly he shook off their hands. “I’m going through with this now. Blast it, those unmitigated blighters shot me up! I’ve jolly well got to meet them again, and I shall be fearfully vindictive about it. The cold water ’ll do me no end of good, and by the time we’re aboard the lugger I’ll be ready for anything.” “Well, I’m glad jer nor worse ’urt, sir,” said Orace in a tone of encouragement. “But if I might just take yerrarm while yer gettin yer bref, so ter speak. . . .” The girl also was not unwilling to let Algy have his own way; in the grimness of her purpose she was as incapable of sparing anyone else as she was of sparing herself. “But we ought to get Carn,” she said. “I went to look for the sleuth just before I started back,” Algy answered. “He hasn’t returned. We’ll have to do without him.”