He swore angrily at us—at me for coming on deck without leave, and at Tommy for letting me get up. "But please, sir," I began, "Tommy did not——" I just stopped in time, for I was going to tell him that Tommy had been asleep. Tommy, however, looking very ashamed, blurted out, "I went to sleep, sir, and Glover got up without waking me." That made Mr. Parker all the more angry, and he sent us both below. "Both of you will go back to the _Laird_. Have your chest ready in half an hour!" he said, snapping our heads off. We saw the _Laird_ steaming to meet us, and went below again, feeling absolutely wretched, and commenced slowly to stow our things away in the chest which Tommy shared with me. The next thing we knew was that we were being roughly shaken by Pat Jones, and we woke to find that we had both been asleep. Tommy was sprawled right across the chest, face downwards, with a pair of boots in his hand. We could have cried, we were so angry with ourselves. A cutter from the _Laird_ was alongside, and we two and Tomlinson, the wounded man, were pulled across to her, Mr. Parker coming too to make his report. As we went up the gangway we could hardly face all the midshipmen who crowded round us—Mellins, and Dumpling, and all the others—we felt so much in disgrace, and I had not even the heart to tell them that I’d been wounded. I had to hobble for’ard to the sick-bay, and the bandage was taken off my leg. "Just a skin wound, Glover," Dr. Fox said, and put in some stitches, which didn’t pain me half as much as I expected. "I needn’t go on the sick-list, sir, need I?" The Fleet Surgeon smiled in his nasty way, and then fastened a long splint to the leg, and, of course, that made it certain that I could not go back to "No. 3". How I did wish that I had not gone to sleep in the boat, and then no one would have known that my leg had been hit, and I might still have been aboard her. What a fool I had been! All my chances were gone, and, feeling utterly wretched, I couldn’t manage to keep back a tear, and Dr. Fox saw it before I could brush it away. "Pain you, youngster?" he asked, and then he must have understood, for he laughed and called me a young fire-eater, and wanted to know if I wasn’t content with having been wounded twice, which made me get red and uncomfortable, and made me hate him. It was impossible to walk with the beastly splint, so they carried me aft and put me in the Captain’s spare cabin. Tommy came along, too, and spread his hammock on deck, the sentry outside shut the door, and we slept soundly for nearly ten hours. Wasn’t that a sleep? and weren’t we hungry, too, when we did wake up?