Pagina 439 de 657

"Not at all. Drink this." I dashed some brandy into the water,

and the colour began to come back to his bloodless cheeks.

"That's better!" said he. "And now, Doctor, perhaps you would

kindly attend to my thumb, or rather to the place where my thumb

used to be."

He unwound the handkerchief and held out his hand. It gave even

my hardened nerves a shudder to look at it. There were four

protruding fingers and a horrid red, spongy surface where the

thumb should have been. It had been hacked or torn right out from

the roots.

"Good heavens!" I cried, "this is a terrible injury. It must have

bled considerably."

"Yes, it did. I fainted when it was done, and I think that I must

have been senseless for a long time. When I came to I found that

it was still bleeding, so I tied one end of my handkerchief very

tightly round the wrist and braced it up with a twig."

"Excellent! You should have been a surgeon."

"It is a question of hydraulics, you see, and came within my own

province."