“Then carry on, old son. I’ll tell the others to keep clear a bit and not to disturb him. You can manage all right?” Peter went below. He found that the Scoutmaster was nearly asleep and that the water was boiling. It seemed an unpleasant duty to have to rouse the patient, but it had to be done. The poultice was made and applied. It was a very hot one, and Mr. Grant winced; but in a few minutes the warmth began to act soothingly upon the fiercely throbbing finger. “That’s ever so much better, Peter,” remarked Mr. Grant gratefully. “Good business, sir,” rejoined the Sea Scout. “Now, try and go to sleep.” “Not much doubt about that,” said the patient. “I’ll try a couple of hours’ sleep. Tell Brandon to inform me when Portland Bill is in sight. It ought to show up one point on our port bow.” “Very good, sir.” As he was leaving the cabin, Peter signed to Heavitree. “I’ll send Wilson down to relieve you,” he said. “There’ll have to be someone in the saloon in case Mr. Grant wants anything. Give an eye to the kettle before you come on deck, and bring some grub with you. We’ll have dinner on deck, then we won’t disturb him.” Peter found the stowaway still hemmed in by the justifiably inquisitive Sea Scouts. The boy had dropped much of his stiffness of manner and seemed more at ease, although he retained his quaint method of speech. Possibly he had been nervous and had concealed his anxiety under a mask of forced self-assurance. Now, finding that the youthful crew of the _Kestrel_ were not in any way antagonistic, he was becoming quite communicative. His name, he told them, was Eric Little. He made the statement somewhat doubtfully, fearing, perhaps, that his audience would “pull his leg” over that once well-known book: “Eric, or Little by Little.” He had had quite enough of that already. Fortunately his fears in that respect were ill-founded, for the work in question had mercifully not been brought to the notice of the Aberstour Sea Scouts. Eric’s parents were dead. He had been “brought up” by his grandparents who lived on the outskirts of Dartmouth. Apparently they had weird and misguided notions as to how their grandchild should be brought up. They had a strange antipathy to schoolmasters. They absolutely declined to let Eric go to school or to associate with other children. His education, if such it could be called, was imparted by a half-baked governess of uncertain age and of a frigid and ultra-prim manner. The natural result was that Eric, invariably in the company of grown-ups, had developed the pedantic manner of speech that had so greatly astonished Brandon and his companions. He was well versed in several serious subjects, but his knowledge of the ways of boys of his own age was lamentably weak. In spite of himself, he was fast developing into a little prig, and if compelled to run in the same rut he would be an object of derision and scorn when the time came for him to go out into the world.