When my senses returned to me the day was apparently some three or four hours old, for the shadows of certain objects upon which my eyes happened to fall as I first opened them were, if anything, a trifle shorter than the objects themselves, which was a sure indication that the sun stood high in the heavens.  I was lying, with a number of other people, in the large tent-like structure which the ward-room officers had used on the preceding evening; and Hutchinson, the ship's surgeon, was busily engaged in attending to the hurts of a seaman who lay not far from me.