"How can I make the man live?" said the Hakim sternly, and frowning at the chief as he spoke to the interpreter. "Has not all his life-blood been spilled upon the sand as they brought him here? Tell him at once that I am not a prophet, only a simple surgeon; that I have done all that is possible, and that the rest is with God." The Sheikh reverently translated the Hakim's words to the Baggara chief, and those who heard him fully expected to hear some angry outburst; but the chief bent humbly before the Hakim and touched his hand. In a short time, under the Baggara chief's supervision, a tent was set up over the wounded man, and by then two large groups of patients were waiting patiently for the Hakim's ministrations--those whom he had tended on the previous day, and about a dozen wounded men who had come in during the night. It was a new class of practice for the London practitioner, however familiar it might have been to the surgeon of a regiment on active service; but wounds are wounds, whether received in the everyday life of a mechanic who has injured himself with his tools or been crushed by machinery, or caused by shot, sword, and spear. So the Hakim toiled away hour after hour till his last patient had left the space in front of his tent and he had leisure to re-examine the chief's son, the father looking anxiously on in spite of an assumed sternness, and waiting till the keen-eyed surgeon rose from one knee. "Tell him," said the Hakim gravely, "that it will be days before the young chief can be moved." The words were interpreted, and the chief seemed to forget his own injury as he said in an angry tone that the little force must start at daybreak the next morning. "Then the young man will die," said the Hakim coldly. Ibrahim again interpreted, and the chief suggested that a camel litter should be prepared. But the Hakim shook his head. "Can't you give way?" said the professor softly. "A fairly easy couch could be made." "The man will certainly die if he is moved to-morrow," replied Morris sternly, "and if I lose a patient now a great deal of my prestige goes with him." "Yes, I know," said the professor; "but we are making an enemy instead of a friend; this man is not in the habit of having his will crossed." "We shall lose his friendship all the same," said the doctor, "if his son dies in my hands. I can save his life if he is left to me." "Dare you say that for certain?" The doctor was silent for a few minutes, during which he bent over his patient again, took his temperature, and examined the pupils of his eyes, and at last rose up and stepped from beneath the shade of the rough little tent. "Yes," he said; "I can say, I think for certain, that I will save his life if he is left to me." "What does the wise Hakim say?" asked the Baggara of Ibrahim; and the question was interpreted to the doctor. "Tell him, No! That his son must not stir if he is to live. If he is left for say a week all may be well."