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.
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