"Take This," She Said, Handing The Latter To The Boy, "And Strike Hard On
The Back Of It When I Tell You."
Thus speaking, she placed her foot on a log of wood, adjusted the keen edge
of the tomahawk so that
When struck it would sever the toe and the portion
of the foot containing the bite, and, holding the handle of the tomahawk
steady as a rock, with firm determination gave the words -
"Now, Jim, strike!"
It needed three blows from the back of the axe to complete the operation,
for the poor lad grew frightened at the sight of the blood; but the
undaunted woman encouraged him, nerved him to a fresh trial, and guided the
tomahawk as coolly as if she were cutting up a piece of beef, until the
shocking task was completed. With Jim's assistance, she then bound up the
foot to arrest the bleeding, and, accompanied by him, rode ten miles into
the township, and, need I say, in due course recovered.
In these instances the reader will see that the measures taken were both
prompt, and such as would require more nerve than is possessed by the
ordinary run of mortals. In the above cases, also, the bitten part was
capable of being removed; but for a bite on the wrist, had such an extreme
measure as immediate dismemberment been performed, the cure would have been
as fatal as the disease.
Poor Dunmore was terribly cut up at the premature death of his follower;
Lizzie, having smothered her head with fluffy feathers from some cockatoos
that had been roasted for supper, employed herself in chanting a most weird
kind of dirge over the body, to which she beat a species of accompaniment
on the bottom of a pint pot; while Ferdinand, by Dunmore's directions, had
set to work to strip a sheet of bark off a tea-tree, to act as a rude
coffin.
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