Part 28 (1/2)
”Then you are something of a doctor?”
”All Frenchmen are something of doctors.”
And on this affirmation Alcide, tearing his handkerchief, made lint of one piece, bandages of the other, took some water from a well dug in the middle of the enclosure, bathed the wound, and skillfully placed the wet rag on Harry Blount's shoulder.
”I treat you with water,” he said. ”This liquid is the most efficacious sedative known for the treatment of wounds, and is the most employed now. Doctors have taken six thousand years to discover that! Yes, six thousand years in round numbers!”
”I thank you, M. Jolivet,” answered Harry, stretching himself on a bed of dry leaves, which his companion had arranged for him in the shade of a birch tree.
”Bah! it's nothing! You would do as much for me.”
”I am not quite so sure,” said Blount candidly.
”Nonsense, stupid! All English are generous.”
”Doubtless; but the French?”
”Well, the French--they are brutes, if you like! But what redeems them is that they are French. Say nothing more about that, or rather, say nothing more at all. Rest is absolutely necessary for you.”
But Harry Blount had no wish to be silent. If the wound, in prudence, required rest, the correspondent of the Daily Telegraph was not a man to indulge himself.
”M. Jolivet,” he asked, ”do you think that our last dispatches have been able to pa.s.s the Russian frontier?”
”Why not?” answered Alcide. ”By this time you may be sure that my beloved cousin knows all about the affair at Kolyvan.”
”How many copies does your cousin work off of her dispatches?” asked Blount, for the first time putting his question direct to his companion.
”Well,” answered Alcide, laughing, ”my cousin is a very discreet person, who does not like to be talked about, and who would be in despair if she troubled the sleep of which you are in need.”
”I don't wish to sleep,” replied the Englishman. ”What will your cousin think of the affairs of Russia?”
”That they seem for the time in a bad way. But, bah! the Muscovite government is powerful; it cannot be really uneasy at an invasion of barbarians.”
”Too much ambition has lost the greatest empires,” answered Blount, who was not exempt from a certain English jealousy with regard to Russian pretensions in Central Asia.
”Oh, do not let us talk politics,” cried Jolivet. ”It is forbidden by the faculty. Nothing can be worse for wounds in the shoulder--unless it was to put you to sleep.”
”Let us, then, talk of what we ought to do,” replied Blount. ”M.
Jolivet, I have no intention at all of remaining a prisoner to these Tartars for an indefinite time.”
”Nor I, either, by Jove!”
”We will escape on the first opportunity?”
”Yes, if there is no other way of regaining our liberty.”
”Do you know of any other?” asked Blount, looking at his companion.
”Certainly. We are not belligerents; we are neutral, and we will claim our freedom.”
”From that brute of a Feofar-Khan?”