'Fair words,' I said. 'Fair words. I am your servant to work on your plantation as you may command. I am not your physician; and I promise you, Sir, upon the honour of a gentleman, and without using the sacred name which is so often on your lips, that if you continue to rail at me I will suffer you to die rather than stir a little finger in your help.' 'Suffer the physician to examine the place,' said a woman's voice. 'What good is it to curse and to swear?' The voice came from a hammock swinging at the end of the verandah. It was made, I observed, of a land of coarse grass loosely woven. The man sat down and sulkily bade me find a remedy for the pain which he was enduring. So I consented and examined his upper jaw, where I soon found out the cause of his pain in a good-sized tumour formed over the fangs of a grinder. Such a thing causes agony even to a person of cool blood, but to a man whose veins are inflamed with strong drink the pain of it is maddening. 'You have got a tumour,' I told him. 'It has been forming for some days. It has now nearly, or quite, reached its head. It began about the time when you were cursing and insulting certain unfortunate gentlemen, who are for a time under your power. Take it, therefore, as a Divine judgment upon you for your cruelty and insolence.' He glared at me, but said nothing, the hope of relief causing him to receive this admonition with patience, if not in good part. Besides, my finger was still upon the spot, and if I so much as pressed gently I could cause him agony unspeakable. Truly, the power of the physician is great. 'The pain,' I told him, 'is already grown almost intolerable. But it will be much greater in a few hours unless something is done. It is now like unto a little ball of red-hot fire in your jaw; in an hour or two it will seem as if the whole of your face was a burning fiery furnace; your cheek will swell out until your left eye is closed; your tortures, which now make you bawl, will then make you scream; you now walk about and stamp; you will then lie down on your back and kick. No negro slave ever suffered half so much under your accursed lash as you will suffer under this tumour--unless something is done.' 'Doctor,' it was again the woman's voice from the hammock, 'you have frightened him enough.' 'Strong drink,' I went on, pointing to the tankard, 'will only make you worse. It inflames your blood and adds fuel to the raging fire. Unless something is done the pain will be followed by delirium; that by fever, and the fever by death. Sir, are you prepared for death?' He turned horribly pale and gasped. 'Do something for me!' he said. 'Do something for me, and that without more words!'