Luckily Dunmore Had A
Pocket-Knife With Him, For The Sheath-Knives We Carried Were But Rude
Instruments For Surgery, And With The Small Blade He Slashed The Bitten
Part Freely, While Lizzie, Applying Her Lips To The Wound, Did Her Best To
Draw Out The Subtle Venom.
Some of us carried flasks, containing various
spirits, and the contents of these were at once mixed - brandy, rum,
hollands, all indiscriminately - in a quart pot, and tossed off by the
sufferer, without the slightest visible effect.
Had the spirit taken the
smallest hold upon him, we should have felt hope, for if a man suffering
from snake-bite can be made intoxicated, he is safe. But the poison
neutralised the potent draught, and poor Cato showed no indication of
having swallowed anything stronger than water. With the superstition
inherent in the blacks, he had made up his mind to die, and his broken
English, as he moaned out, "Plenty soon this fellow go bong," was painful
in the extreme.
"It's no use," said Dunmore. "I know these fellows better than any of you,
and Cato will never recover. I had a boy down on the Mary River, who was
knocked down with low fever. Half a pennyweight of quinine would have put
him to rights, but he had made up his mind to die, and when once they have
done that, all the drugs in a doctor's shop won't do them any good."
Everything we could think of was proposed, but speedily rejected as useless.
"Pour a charge of powder on the wound," said Jack Clarke, "and then fire
it, that will take the part out clean enough;" but we agreed that it would
be putting the boy to unnecessary pain, for the poison must be already in
the system and beyond the reach of local remedy; and the patient had become
drowsy, and repeatedly begged to be left alone and allowed to go to sleep.
"We must walk him about," said Dunmore, "it is the only chance, and painful
as it is, I must have it done. Remember, I'm responsible for the boy, and
no means must be left untried."
I had withdrawn a little from the group, and as I stood some distance off,
outside the circle of light thrown by the fire, I could not help thinking
what a scene for the painter's brush was here presented. The dark outline
of the lofty gums looked black and forbidding as funeral plumes, against
the leaden sky. The rugged range starting up in the rear, cast a
threatening gloom over the little valley in which we were encamped, and the
distant thunder of a falling torrent could, with little effort, be
interpreted as a dull voice of warning from the mountain. The fitful glare
of the fire, now sinking, now rising as a fresh brand was added, threw a
ruddy glare over the actors in this strange scene; showing the hopeless
face of the poor patient, the undemonstrative countenances of his sable
companions, and the anxious air apparent in the white men, more
particularly in Dunmore, as he knelt over his follower, and tried to
inspirit a little hope by dwelling on the chances of recovery.
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