"My assistant is below, and hath my instruments. Send him up!"
He turned to us.
"I will bleed him," he said. "For what saith the learned Hippocrates?" Whereupon he mouthed out a rigmarole of Latin phrases, wherein I could detect neither cohesion nor significance.
"Leave him to me, gentlemen!" he continued with a third flourish of his wrist. "Leave him to me and Hippocrates!"
"Which we do," I replied, "with the more confidence in that Hippocrates had so much foreknowledge of the Latin tongue."
And so we got us back to the parlour. How the minutes dragged! Through the door I could still hear the noise of the man's breathing; and now and again the light clink of instruments and a trickling sound as of blood dripping into a bason. I paced impatiently about the room, while Jack sat him down at the table and began loading his pistols.
"The twenty-first!" I exclaimed, "and this day is the fourteenth. Seven days, Jack! I have but seven days to win from here to Bristol."
I went to the window and leaned out. Swasfield's horse was standing quietly in the road, tethered by the bridle to a tree.
"'Canst do it, Morrice, if the wind holds fair," replied Jack. "Heaven send a wind!" and he rose from the table and joined me. Together we stretched out to catch the least hint of a breeze. But not a breath came to us; not a tree shimmered, not a shadow stirred. The world slumbered in a hot stupor. It seemed you might have felt the air vibrate with the passage of a single bird.
Of a sudden Larke cried out: