Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 11, No. 22, January, 1873Various
Science
Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 11, No. 22, January, 1873
Various
Literature, Modern -- 19th century -- Periodicals; Science -- Periodicals
Fournier bade him look forward to the time when he would return and
rule. He always addressed him by his African name and title in his own
tongue. He took him into the wards of his hospital, and taught him to be
useful at surgical operations and to care for the instruments, that he
might become familiar with them and with the sight of blood, which at
first maddened him. Once he gave him a drug that made his head throb,
and then bled him, with almost instant relief. He affected an interest
in the amulets which hung at his neck, and besought him to give him one
to wear. He committed to his care, with expressions of the greatest
solicitude, a strong box, brass bound and carefully locked, which he
told him contained his god, a most potent and cruel deity, who would,
however, when it pleased him, give back the life of a dead man for
_blood_. This box contained a silver cup, with a thermometer fixed in
its side; a glass syringe holding about a third of a pint; a large
curved needle perforated in its length like a tube, sharp at one end, at
the other expanded to fit accurately the nozzle of the syringe; a
little strainer also fitting the syringe; and last, a small bundle of
wires with a handle like an egg-beater.
For the rest, this savage was crooked, ill-shapen and hideous. His skin
was as black as night; his head small, the face immensely
disproportionate to the cranium; his jaws massive and armed with
glittering white teeth filed to points; his cheeks full, his nose flat,
his eyes little, deep-set, restless, wicked. The usage he received from
his new master was so different from his former experience with white
men, and so in accord with his own undisciplined nature, that it called
forth all the sympathies of his character. He soon loved the Frenchman
with an intensity of affection almost incomprehensible. It is no
exaggeration to say that he would have willingly laid down his life to
gratify his master's slightest wish. The latter's knowledge was to him
so comprehensive, his power so boundless and his will so imperious and
inflexible, that he feared and worshiped him as a god.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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