Presently, however, he sobered down, and began to prepare for his work. He placed a large caldron of water over a fire; he brought basins, towels and his case of surgical instruments, and placed them in the, tent, and with them the case which he had taught the African to believe contained his god. While thus busied he did not neglect the subject of his experiment. His watchful eye noted everything--the mass, of clots growing like a great crimson fungus under the wounded shoulder, the deadly pallor, the dark circles forming around the sunken eyes, the blanched lips, the transparent nostrils, the slow, deep respiration. From time to time he felt the wounded man's pulse and counted it carefully. _Ninety_--he went out again into the open air; _one hundred_--"The loss of blood tells," he muttered, and began to rearrange his appliances and busy himself uneasily with them; _one hundred and thirty beats to the minute _--"He is failing too fast: I must stop this bleeding" said the experimenter. Then he cleansed the wound, and tied the arteries, and bound it up. But the loss of blood had been so great that the heart fluttered wildly and feebly in its efforts to contract upon its diminished contents, and Fournier, anxious, and pale himself almost as his victim, trembled when his finger felt in vain for the bleeding artery and caught only a faint tremulous thrill, so feeble that he scarcely knew whether the heart was beating at all or not. In terror he threw the ends of the little tent and fanned him, and moistened his lips, and gave him brandy, and hastened to begin the experiment for which he had waited so long and for which both subjects were at last ready. He told his savage that the Yankee was dying, but that he had communed with his god, who would let him live if blood was given in return. Then he reminded him of the time when he lost blood, and that it had done him no harm. The African, trained for this duty with so much care, did not fail him, but bared his arm and gave the blood. The god was brought forth and caught it, and the sacrifice began. As the silver, bowl floated in a basin of water so warm that the thermometer in its side marked ninety-eight degrees of Fahrenheit, Fournier stirred the blood flowing into it quickly with the bundle of wires, to collect the fibrine and prevent the formation of clots; he then drew it into the syringe through the strainer, and forced it through the perforated needle, which he had previously thrust into a large vein in Shirley's arm, carefully avoiding the introduction of the slightest bubble of air. Time after time he filled his syringe and emptied it into the veins of the wounded man, until at length he saw signs of reaction. The color came, the breathing became more natural, the pulse became slower, fuller, regular. By and by he moved, sighed, opened his eyes and spoke. He asked a question: "What has happened?"