"Dresser, the chloroform," said Terence O'Brien, sharply; for there was a quiver in the man's eyelids. But ere the deadening drug did its work, the _shâhbâsh wallah's_ brain, set free to work along familiar lines by the raising of that splintered bone, had sent its old message to his lips-- "_Shâhbâsh, bhaiyan, shâhbâsh!_" In telling the story Dr. Pringle says no more; generally because he cannot. But after a time, if you are a brother craftsman, he will give you all details of the biggest and most successful operation he ever did. And though he is slow to allow the corollary, he never denies that the _shâhbâsh wallah's_ verdict put courage into him. THE MOST NAILING BAD SHOT IN CREATION This again is one of poor Craddock's stories which he told me when we were stretching a steel-edged ribbon of rail across shifting sandhills; that ribbon uniting West to East on which, a few years later, he met his death in trying to rid the permanent-way of something which Fate had decreed should be permanently in the way. It happened in mutiny time; shortly after his appearance down the King's Well, which is told elsewhere. He was serving as a volunteer in one of the breastworks which, as the long hot-weather months dragged by, began to seam and sear the face of the red rocks on the Ridge at Delhi; creeping nearer and nearer to the red face of the city wall. And with him, as the catch phrase runs, "lay" Joe Banks, the Yorkshireman; tall, stolid, silent. Good-looking also, with a thick close crop of curly brown hair and hard, honest blue eyes. He was not stupid by any means; only phenomenally silent, except when the talk turned on women, and then, as Craddock put it tersely, he "damned free"; perhaps because, as the latter worthy used to add with a suspicion of sympathy in his drink-blurred face, he had "cared a sight deal too much for one woman to 'ave much likin' left for the lot." To one side of the breastwork lay a dry ravine where every day the vipers used to sun themselves on the hot red rocks. Just across it, within range, rose a small Mahomedan shrine amid sparse brushwood, which thickened a bit till it was barred by the ruined wall of a garden where the slow oxen circled round the well, sending runnels of slippery-looking water to the scented shade of citrons, roses, and mangoes, heedless of the great cannon-balls which sometimes came trundling, like playthings, down the wide walks. Not often, though, for the stress of strife lay at the other angle of the breastwork which faced the city wall.