Part 18 (2/2)

As his rescuer came nearer, he could hear the boy screaming, a harsh, inhuman scream of rage and fear and madness combined. Jerky words amid the screams told of his terrors,

”They're eating me! Their claws are all around! Their eyes! Their eyes!”

But still the strokes were directed wildly at the air, and never a blow fell on the little red horrors at his feet.

”Ol' Doc, he say debbil-tree make um act that way,” muttered the negro, as he ran, ”pickney he think um crabs big as a mule!”

Stuart, fighting for his life with what his tortured imagination conceived to be gigantic monsters, saw, coming along the beach, the semblance of an ogre. The pupils of his eyes, contracted by the poison to mere pin-p.r.i.c.ks, magnified enormously, and the negro took on the proportions of a giant.

But Stuart was a fighter. He would not run. He turned upon his new foe.

The negro, reckoning nothing of one smart blow from the stick, threw his muscular arms about the boy, held him as in a vice, and picking him up, carried him off as if he were a baby. The boy struggled and screamed but it availed him nothing.

”Pickney, he mad um sartain,” announced the negro, as he strode by his own hut, ”get him Ol' Doc good'n quick!”

Half walking and half running, but carrying his burden with ease, the negro hurried to a well-built house, on a height of land half a mile back from the coast. The house was surrounded by a well-kept garden, but the negro kicked the gate open without ceremony, and, still running, rushed into the house, calling,

”Mister Ol' Doc! Mister Ol' Doc!”

At his cries, one of the doors into the hall opened, and a keen-eyed man, much withered, and with a scraggly gray beard, came out. The negro did not wait for him to speak.

”Mister Ol' Doc,” he said, ”this pickney down by de debbil-trees, they got um sartain. You potion um quick!”

The doctor stepped aside from the door.

”Put him in there, Mark!” he directed. ”Hold him, I'll be back in a minute!”

The negro threw Stuart on a cot and held him down, an easy task, now, for the boy's strength was ebbing fast.

The doctor was back in a moment, with a small phial. He dropped a few drops into the boy's mouth, then, stripping him, put an open box of ointment between himself and the negro.

”Now, Mark,” he said, ”rub that stuff into his body. Don't be afraid of it. Go after him as if you were grooming a horse. Put some elbow-grease into it. The ointment has got to soak in, and the skin has got to be kept warm. See, he's getting cold, now!”

The negro suited the action to the word. He rubbed with all his strength, and the ointment, concocted from some pungent herb, reddened the skin where it went in. But, a moment or two after, the redness disappeared and the bluish look of cold returned.

”Faster and harder!” cried the old doctor.

Sweat poured down from the negro's face. He ripped off jacket and s.h.i.+rt, and, bare to the waist, scrubbed at the boy's skin. And, if ever he stopped a moment to wipe the sweat from his forehead, the doctor cried,

”Faster and harder!”

Little by little, the reddening of the skin lasted longer, little by little the bluish tints began to go, little by little the stiffening which had begun, relaxed.

”He's coming round,” cried the doctor. ”Harder, now! Put your back into it, Mark!”

Nearly an hour had pa.s.sed when the negro, exhausted and trembling from his exertions, sank into a chair. The doctor eyed him keenly, gave him a stiff dose from a medicine gla.s.s, and returned to his patient.

”He'll do now,” he said. ”In half an hour he'll feel as well as ever, and by tomorrow he'll be terribly ill.”

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