Jack uttered a piteous groan, and still knelt by the couch, holding the poor fellow's hand, watching every painful breath he drew, and noting the strange change in his countenance, and the peculiar spasms which convulsed him from time to time, but without his being conscious of the pain. As Jack knelt there it seemed to him that it was in a kind of confused dream that he heard his father's questions and the doctor's replies, as, after some ministration or another, they walked to the end of the cabin. Then the captain came down softly. "The enemy's coming out to sea," he said, "and making north; they'll be in a fix if the wind rises, for they are clustering in their canoes like bees. How's the patient?" "Bad," said Sir John. "Tut--tut--tut!" ejaculated the captain. "I am sorry. But you'll pull him through, doctor?" "If I can," said Doctor Instow coldly. "That's right. I have been so full up with my work that I seem to have taken hardly any notice of him. Wound through his arm. You have well cleansed it, of course?" "Of course, and injected things to neutralise the poison." "Ah!" cried the captain, angrily, "it takes all one's sympathy with the miserable savages away when one finds that they fight in so cowardly, so fiendish a fashion. I was ready to be sorry for them when I was crushing their boat. But this makes me feel as if one ought to lose no opportunity for sweeping the venomous wretches off the face of the earth. They have no excuse, you see. It is our lives or theirs. We are inoffensive enough surely; and they would have gained by our presence if they had been friendly. But they're nearly all alike." "Have you seen cases like this before?" asked the doctor. "Oh yes, several." "And after a few hours' struggle the strength of the poison dies out, and the sufferer recovers?" The captain glanced in the direction of Jack, and seeing that his attention was apparently entirely taken up by the sufferer, he said in a low tone--"Yes, sir, the strength of the poison died out, but the wounded man died too;" and every word went through Jack like some keen blade, and for the moment he drew his breath with as much difficulty as the man before him. "In the cases I saw there was no doctor near at hand, and we who attended the poor fellows could do no more than try to draw the poison from the wounds and burn them out. But it seemed to me that the poison acted like the bite, of a snake, and altered the blood, while at last the symptoms were like those I have heard of when the patient has lock-jaw." "Tetanus," said the doctor gravely. "But it can't be so hopeless here. You were with him and attended him from the first." "Yes; I have done all I can for him, poor fellow, and with his fine physique he may fight through it." "Would amputation have saved him?" asked Sir John.