The Skipper came up to congratulate him, and I went off to shake hands with the ’Gnome’—he hadn’t put on any rotten sashes—and with José, who was squatting outside, on the steps, holding Gerald’s horse. Then we went back to the _Hector_. ’Couldn’t get your brother to dine with me,’ the Skipper said, looking as if he’d been snubbed, ’he’s too busy and has no clothes.’ I was very sorry, because I had so looked forward to showing him off to every one on board. Next day we crawled across to Prince Rupert’s Island, the _Hercules_ close by, in case we wanted assistance, and people came swarming off to see us and the wreck we were. Navarro was sent ashore to the Colonial Hospital, the mids. were still kept aboard the _Hercules_, and the local ship-repairing yard commenced to patch us up and make it safe to find our way to Bermuda for a more thorough repair. The black ’washer’ ladies came crowding aboard, as before, and were struck all of a heap when they saw the mess we were in. Arabella Montmorency had brought back some of the ’Angel’s’ washing—it had been left behind—and when I told her that he’d been killed, she burst out crying, sobbing out, ’De Good Lo’d take de pretty little boy; why He no spare him for Arabella to vash his clo’s. Oh, de pretty boy, de pretty boy!’ She was terribly upset about Perkins’s washing too. A shell had entirely destroyed his cabin and everything in it, so that he had absolutely nothing to wear except what he stood up in. She burst out into fresh sobs. ’Poor Massa Perkins! poor Massa Perkins!—no clo’s—no vash clo’s—Arabella more sooner vash for him for noddings than Massa Perkins have no clo’s for Arabella to vash.’ For five weeks we remained anchored off Princes’ Town, and everybody began gradually to brighten ’up’ as the memory of that awful fifteen minutes and the next week of woe became less vivid, though we still had not the heart to arrange any matches with the _Hercules_ or with Princes’ Town. At first the shore people were always saying, ’Couldn’t you arrange a cricket-match for this day or that?’ and we’d answer, ’Ask our doctor, ask Clegg. He runs the cricket,’ and then remember that he had disappeared, and that Bigge, our best bat and bowler, and Montague and Pearson, two others of our team, had also been killed. It was very difficult to forget about them.