Just before it was light, Stephens waked to hear a low cry from his friend. He sat up and struck a light. Catherwood was lying with his knees drawn up, hands clenched, and eyes staring, and, in reply to the other's questionings, answered only in an incoherent babble. Stephens crossed over to him and saw that his teeth were chattering and his face almost scarlet; there was no doubt as to his condition; he was in a burning fever. Nothing could have been more unlucky. He had brought the young fellow with him purely on his own account, and unauthorised by his department. He was not in Government service, but merely a personal friend whom Stephens' private means enabled him to keep in constant employment as amanuensis; therefore, to lose several days, or weeks, nursing him, at such a time, would be to bring himself into serious disgrace with the ministry. Yet how could he leave him in an Indian camp, to the tender mercies of some mad witch-doctor, who would charm and physic him to death with the most generous intentions? He paced up and down for a while, and, at daylight, went out into the open, forced by his own ignorance of medicine, and his anxiety for his friend's safety, to stoop to ask advice of a people whom his American upbringing had taught him to despise. And it was just possible that the Spanish padre might have returned by now, and he would be sure to possess some knowledge of drugs and minor surgery. In the village street he met the chief, one of the few natives who spoke Spanish. "I will call the physician of the tribe," he said, when Stephens, learning to his dismay that the priest was not expected till night-time, had communicated his difficulty. The native doctor was a little old man who had no small opinion of his own importance, and was as contemptuously ignorant of Spanish as the Yankee was of Huaxtecan and Cariban. He passed his hand over the patient's brow, breathed on him, muttered incantations, and then walked round the hut about a dozen times, solemnly talking to himself, till Stephens could scarcely resist the temptation to give him a lift into the street with his foot. After a time the _piache_, doctor, conjurer, or whatever he called himself, took out two powders from his girdle, poured water on them, sipped the drink, breathed and mumbled over it, opened the sufferer's mouth, and poured it down his throat before the spectator could make up his mind whether to interfere or no. Then the old image strutted out of the hut, as proud as Punch. This was all very well, but Stephens' mind was ill at ease. He followed the man of medicine into the street, and found the chief waiting modestly but expectantly outside. "Ask him what he has given my friend," he said, curtly. The chief bowed, but shook his head. "These are mysteries into which I may not inquire. The physician's secrets are sacred. You may rest assured that the young white man will soon be well."