Part 12 (1/2)
”Speaking as a doctor,” said Clay cheerfully, ”I may tell you that your unprofessional opinion is rot. Now, if I'd a brother sawbones here to perform amputation, I might have a chance--say, one in a thousand.”
”Your leg ought to be cut off?”
”Just there, above the knee. That'll mortify in twenty hours from now.
Thank the Lord I never wasted much morphia on the n.i.g.g.e.rs. There's plenty in stock. So it won't worry me much.”
”Look here,” said Kettle, ”I will cut that leg off for you.”
”You! My good Skipper, you're a handy man, I know, but what the blazes do you know about amputation?”
”You've got to teach me. You can show me the tools to use, and draw diagrams of where the arteries come.”
”By the powers, I've a great mind to. There's something pretty rich in giving an amputation lecture with one's own femorals as a subject.”
”You'd better,” said Kettle grimly, ”or I shall cut it off without being taught. I like you a lot too well, my man, to let you die for want of a bit of help.”
And so, princ.i.p.ally because the grotesqueness of the situation appealed to his whimsical sense of humor, Clay forthwith proceeded to pose as an anatomy demonstrator addressing a cla.s.s, and expounded the whole art of amputation, handling the utensils of the surgeon's craft with the gusto of an expert, and never by shudder or sigh showing a trace of the white feather. He carried the whole thing through with a genial gayety, pointing his sentences now with a quip, now with some roguish sparkle of profanity, and finally he announced that the lecture was complete and over, and then he nodded familiarly at his wounded limb.
”By-bye, old hoof!” he said. ”You've helped carry the rest of me into some queer sc.r.a.pes, one time and another. But we've had good times together, as well as bad, you and I, and anyway, I'm sorry to lose you.
And now, skipper,” said he, ”get off your coat and wade in. I've put on the Esmarch's bandage for you. Don't be n.i.g.g.ardly with the chloroform--I've got a good heart. And remember to do what I told you about that femoral artery, and don't make a mistake there, or else there'll be a mess on the floor. Shake hands, old man, and good luck to your surgery; and anyway, thank you for your trouble.”
I fancy that I have made it clear before that Captain Kettle was a man possessed not only of an iron nerve, but also of all a sailor's handiness with his fingers; but here was a piece of work that required all his coolness and dexterity. At home, on an operating table, with everything at hand that antiseptic surgery could provide, with highly trained surgeons and highly trained nurses in goodly numbers, it would have been a formidable undertaking; but there, among those savage surroundings, in that awful loneliness which a white man feels so far away from all his kin, it was a very different matter.
It makes me s.h.i.+ver when I think how that little sailor must have realized his risks and his responsibility. It was a situation that would have fairly paralyzed most men. But from what can be gathered from the last letter that the patient ever wrote, it is clear that Kettle carried out the operation with indomitable firmness and decision; and if indeed some of his movements were crude, he had grasped all the main points of his hurried teaching, and he made no single mistake of any but pedantic importance.
Clay woke up from the anaesthetic, sick, shaken, but still courageous as ever. ”Well,” he gasped, ”you've made a fine dot-and-go-one of me, Skipper, and that's a fact. When you chuck the sea, and get back to England, and set up in a snug country practice as general pract.i.tioner, you'll be able to look back on your first operation with pride.”
Kettle, shaken and white, regarded him from a native stool in the middle of the hut. ”I can't think,” he said, ”how any men can be doctors whilst there's still a crossing to sweep.”
”Oh,” said Clay, ”you're new at it now, and a bit jolted up. But the trade has its points. I'll argue it out with you some day. But just at present I'm going to try and sleep. I'm a bit jolted up, too.”
Now, it is a melancholy fact to record that Dr. Clay did not pull round again after his accident and the subsequent operation. To any one who knows the climate, the reason will be easily understood. In that heated air of Central Equatorial Africa, tainted with all manner of harmful germs, a scratch will take a month to heal, and any considerable flesh wound may well prove a death warrant. Captain Kettle nursed his patient with a woman's tenderness, and Clay himself struggled gamely against his fate; but the ills of the place were too strong for him, and the inevitable had to be.
But the struggle was no quick thing of a day, or even of a week. The man lingered wirily on, and in the mean while Kettle saw the marvellous political structure, which with so much labor and daring he had built up, crumbling to pieces, as it were, before his very eyes. A company of Arab slave-traders had entered the district, and were recapturing his subject villages one by one.
At the first attack runners came to him imploring help. It was useless to send his half-baked soldiers without going himself. They knew no other leader; there was not a negro among them fit to take a command; and he himself was tied. He said nothing to Clay, but just sent a refusal, and remained at his post.
Again and again came clamorous appeals for help against these new invaders, and again and again he had to give the same stubborn refusal.
His vaunted New Republic was being split up again into its primitive elements; the creed of the South s.h.i.+elds chapel was being submerged under a wave of red-hot Mohammedanism; and the ivory, that hard-earned ivory, with all its delicious potentialities, was once more being lifted by alien raiders, and this time forever beyond his reach.
Clay got some inkling of what was going on, and repeatedly urged him to be off at once and put things straight in person. ”Don't you worry about me, Skipper,” he'd say. ”I'll get along here fine by myself. n.o.body'll come to worry me. And if they did, they'd let me alone. I'm far too unwholesome-looking to chop just now.”
But Kettle always stolidly refused to leave him. Indeed, with difficulty (for he was at all times a painfully truthful man) he used to lie to his patient and say that there was no need for him to go at all; that everything was going on quite as they could wish; and that he was vastly enjoying the relaxation of a holiday.
But in sober fact things were going very much awry. And every day they got worse. Even his original bevy of troops, those he had brought up with him into the country on the stern-wheel launch, seemed to grasp the fact that his star was in the descendant. There was no open mutiny, for they still feared him too much personally to dare that; but in the black unwatched nights they stole away from the village, and every day their numbers thinned, and the villagers followed their lead; and when the end came, the two lonely white men had the village to themselves.
Clay's last words were typical of him. Kettle, with devotional intent, had been singing some hymn to him, which he had composed as being suitable for the occasion. But the dying man's ears were dulled, and he mistook both air and words. ”You're a good fellow to sing me that,” he whispered. ”I know you don't like striking up that sort of music. By Jove! I heard that song last at the Pav. Good old Piccadilly Circus.”