"Your cap'en," said I, trying to repress `Gyp's' frantic joy at seeing me again; the faithful animal, who had stuck to the Arab chief with a tenacious grip, only releasing him when he was assured of his not being likely to trouble any of us any more, now coming up to me and springing up, trying to lick my face as he yelped and whined with delight. "Who is your cap'en?" "Why, Tom, I thought you knowed," he replied, looking from me down at `Gyp,' whose stumpy tail, and every hair on his white coat as well, seemed on the wag, his excited affections only finding outlet in this way. "Faith, he's Cap'en Sackville, to be sure, be all the powers!" "What--" "Yis," said Mick Donovan before I could get any further, answering my unasked question; "the same ez we lied aboord with us in the owld _Saint Vincent_." I was dumbfounded. "What an ass I am!" I jerked out, shaking off poor `Gyp,' and proceeding to where the officer lay on the ground a little way from us, stretched out face downwards. "I ought to have known it was him from seeing the dog!" "Aye, sure, it is him thrue enuff," said Mick, stooping down and raising up the prostrate figure in his arms. "Them murdering thayves hev kilt the poor cap'en entoirely!" Mick's dead man, however, did a most extraordinary thing for one who was supposed to have departed this life. He first sneezed, and then opened his eyes. Next he spoke. "Where am I? Ah, yes, I recollect," he faltered out slowly, his wits beginning to work, and his memory coming back to him; when, all of a sudden, catching sight of my face as I loosened his collar and sprinkled some water from my bottle over his head to bring him to, he uttered a quick cry. "Ah, it's you, Tom Bowling--I remember you quite well. I thought it was, my lad, before I lost my consciousness. It is you, then, whom I have to thank for saving my life just now?" "How--why," I stammered, not knowing well what to say--"what, sir?" "Oh yes, Bowling; you can't get out of it," he said in a firmer voice, and the old pleasant smile I recollect when he gave me that half-crown in his cabin on board the old training-ship that I spoke of at the beginning of my yarn. "I saw you quite plainly, my lad, as you rushed up to my succour when those Arabs nearly settled me. There were two of them attacking me at the same time, one before and one behind, and if you had not come up I think they'd have settled me." "I hope, sir," said I, as Mick and I raised him up between us into a sitting posture--`Gyp' watching the operation with a most intense interest and pleasure, his little black muzzle working, and his short tail wagging all the time--"I do hope you are not seriously hurt, sir?" Captain Sackville drew a deep breath and shook himself. "No," he said--"no bones broken, I think; but, I have got a bullet through one shoulder, I believe, for I can't lift my right hand--that's how I came to drop my sword, which I see you have, Bowling."