'Oh, Gilbert!' she cried again, as now she bent over him, while stroking his hair, which, on the left side of his head, was all matted with thick coagulated blood, 'Oh, Gilbert! to think that we should meet thus! Sir!' she screamed to Fagg, who was about to descend again to the boat to fetch off the others still in the dhow, 'where is he wounded? Where? Have you had time to discover?' 'I have looked him over, Miss Waldron, and, to tell you the truth, I do not think there is much the matter with him.' 'Thank God! Oh, thank God!' 'That blood,' the second mate continued, 'comes from a heavy contusion at the side of his head, but the skull is uninjured. Also there is no concussion--observe the pupils of the eyes are not at all dilated.' Then he turned away and went swiftly down the ladder again, muttering that, if he was to save the Arabs and the negroes, there was no time to be wasted. The dhow was filling fast, he added. There was a big hole in her below the waterline, and a quarter of an hour would see the end of her. And now Gilbert was carried to the cabin corresponding with Bella's on the port side of the vessel, aft of the saloon, and Mrs. Pooley, with the steward, went in to undress him, telling Bella that, as soon as he was comfortably placed in the bunk, she should come and take her place by his side. Whereon the girl, distracted by both her hopes and fears--hopes that the second mate was right in his surmises as to her lover's wounds, and fears that he was wrong--sat herself down on the great locker that was in the gangway, and gave herself up to tearful meditations. 'Ah, if he should die!' she murmured; 'if he should die! Then my heart will break.' Though, as you shall see, and have undoubtedly divined, Gilbert was not to die then, at least. But, by this time, other things were taking place above which were almost as startling as the discovery of Lieutenant Bampfyld in that slave-dhow. Startling, not only because of the unexplained cause that had brought the Arab slaver into this portion of the Indian Ocean, but also because of the strange and mysterious behaviour of those others who were now being conveyed on board the _Emperor of the Moon_. Ere they came, however, Mr. Fagg had sent over information surprising enough in itself, and sufficient to prepare all on board the ship for what, a little later, they were to see. 'The owner--if he is the owner,' he cried, 'the man who fell down while steering, is dead. He is stiffening. I presume I had best leave him to go down with the dhow?' 'Ay,' called back Pooley. 'Ay. What about the others?' 'I cannot make them out. The negress seems well enough, but terribly frightened. As for the four men below, they all appear blind. We have taken their shackles off and they grope their way about as though in the dark. My men have to lead them up the ladders--yet their eyes look clear enough.' 'Have they been kept in the dark, think you, and is the sun dazzling them now?'