That night, I afterward learned, I passed in a state of high delirium, and for several days I had only a very vague idea of where I was and what was happening around me; my predominating sensations being that the top of my head was on fire and blazing furiously, while I was consumed by fever and a thirst that was almost as exquisite a torture as the pain of my head.  The only radical difference between the two was that when I was permitted to quench my thirst that particular form of torture was alleviated for a few brief seconds, while the other was continuous and distracting almost to the point of being unendurable.  It seemed to me that I lay for an age in that suffocating sick-bay, every moment of the time being heavy with indescribable torment; but as a matter of fact I was there little more than forty-eight hours, the skipper cracking on for Jamaica, in order that several bad cases--of which I was one of the worst--might have the advantage of the lofty, airy wards of the naval hospital at Port Royal, where we arrived on the morning but one after our attack upon the pirate brigantine.  I may as well complete the story of that adventure by saying--what I only learned afterward--that we captured the vessel, with a loss to ourselves of five killed, and eighteen wounded, of whom seven--including myself--were so badly hurt that Wilson gravely doubted whether we should ever pull round.  As for the pirates, out of a crew of one hundred and twenty-six men, twenty-three were found dead on her deck after we had taken her, and fifty-four were wounded, some of them so desperately that no less than eleven of them died before we anchored in Port Royal harbour.  The remainder were in due course brought to trial for piracy, and found guilty.  Five of them were hanged at Gallows Point, while the rest were condemned to work on the roads in chains for the remainder of their miserable lives.