The negro bowed again like a slave to a lamp, and noiselessly departed. Very soon I heard the dull tramp of slippered feet on the corridor without. The door opened, and the negroes re-entered the room bearing between them a long slab, on which rested the inert figure of a young man. He seemed about twenty-two years of age. His face was extremely pale. His eyes were closed and his mouth was propped wide open with a curious spring wedge. He was nude to the waist, but thence downwards wrapped in an eiderdown shawl. His chest was narrow and his body hideously emaciated. As his chest moved up and down under his deep laboured breathing the ribs projected horribly, leaving dark hollows between. He was strapped securely to the slab and in such a thorough fashion that he could scarcely have moved a muscle howsoever much he had been minded. But he was evidently unconscious, doubtless in an anaesthetised sleep. This curious procession was followed by Dr. Fulton and a tall elderly gentleman similarly apparelled to the surgeons. I had never set eyes on him before. He had an eager, enthusiastic face. His nose was very long; he had high cheek-bones and prominent grey eyes full of a strange fanatical light. I put him down at one glance as a devotee of science. Afterwards I discovered that his name was Vernet, that he was a Frenchman, and resident house-surgeon to the hospital, which in fact he owned.
He was the last to enter, and he closed and locked the door behind him. The negroes advanced to the bench, and having deposited the slab with its senseless burden, they moved over to the other operating table. Already the room had become oppressively hot, and I noticed beads of perspiration stand out on Sir Charles Venner's forehead as he bent to examine his patient with a stethoscope. Dr. Fulton beckoned Cavanagh and myself to approach, and by signs he directed us to stand at the feet of the young man upon whom Sir Charles was about to operate. We were thus quite out of the way of those who had work to do, but we could see everything, and I desired no better vantage post. Dr. Fulton stood behind the patient's head at the other end of the slab, holding in one hand a large rubber face mask, in the other a large stoppered phial, connected by a tube with the mask. Sir Charles Venner stood beside the patient between the two operating benches; and beside him was Dr. Vernet. Marion faced them from across the patient's body. She held in one hand a sponge, in the other a basin.
Sir Charles Venner lost no time in proceeding to business, nor did he give us the least warning of his intention. Casting his stethoscope aside, he seized a small thin-bladed knife and applied its edge with a free sweeping stroke, as an accomplished artist might draw a freehand with a pencil, diagonally across the patient's third and fourth ribs, within an inch of the breast bone. A thin streak of blood followed the cut as quickly as thunder follows lightning. Marion instantly applied her sponge to the wound, and the red line disappeared. The surgeon, without pausing, made another swift incision at right angles to the first along the third rib, and followed this with a third, parallel to the first, some six inches apart. Marion pursued his cuts with her sponge, dipping it each time into her basin, which doubtless contained some powerful astringent drug, for the wounds once touched ceased to bleed. Sir Charles Venner made some further rapid cuts, and with inimitable dexterity he presently raised the flap of flesh and muscle so detached by his knife from the patient's ribs, back across the chest, and secured it there with a dart attached by a string to a bandage passed about the subject's loins. With the speed of magic he applied half a dozen tiny silver spring clips to the dripping flesh, in order to secure the ruptured blood vessels. Dr. Vernet then handed him a tiny razor bladed saw, with which, to my horror, he immediately attacked the bared heaving ribs. The ghastly sight sickened me so much that I closed my eyes, and for some minutes I fought like a tiger with the weakness that threatened to undo me. The world was rocking, rocking, ay, and beginning to swing. I should in the end probably have fainted, but that my companion, Mr. Cavanagh, observing my condition of a sudden pressed his handkerchief to my nostrils. I inhaled an intoxicating, subtle, but most powerful reviving essence. Afterwards I learned that Marion had supplied him with several capsules of nitrate of amyl, of which he had himself already consumed more than one. I felt the blood rush to my head and swell out my cheeks and scalp and skin. The effect was magical. My weakness passed like a black dream, and with restored courage I opened my eyes. There was now a gaping cavity in the patient's breast, through which I could see at work the mysterious machinery of life. The inner flap of the exposed lung had been uplifted and secured aside with a ligature. Below panted and pulsed a crimson and purple-coloured shapeless thing. It fascinated and at the same time terrified me. With a frightful effort I tore my eyes away and looked at Sir Charles. He was screwing a sharp-edged, curved hollow tube to the end of a long and curiously fashioned syringe. This syringe was furnished here and there with golden taps and tubes and tiny force pumps. One tube stretched beyond the operator and ran to the other operating table. I followed it with my eyes and saw that it terminated in a long, thick, hollow needle which reposed in the hands of the negro Beudant. The other negro, Jussieu, knife in hand, bent over an object lying on the slab before him—the squat, bulky figure which had excited my curiosity upon my entering the chamber, and which then had been covered with a sheet. But the sheet had now vanished, and before and exposed to my view lay an enormous ape, a chimpanzee I fancy, which was strapped to the bench exactly in the same fashion and attitude as Sir Charles Venner's patient. The ape's huge hairy breast was disfigured with a square, bloody opening, but I saw that he was alive, for he breathed. The negro Jussieu had evidently performed an operation on all fours with that executed by Sir Charles Venner! The idea almost stunned me. Jussieu was then a great surgeon, although a negro. Next instant I considered the ape, and a panic horror almost overwhelmed me. George Cavanagh was again my saviour. There came a sound of rushing waters to my ears, and the room began to whirl and sway. On the very threshold of oblivion once again the thin and penetrating flavour of the nitrate of amyl restored to me my faculties. I buried my teeth in my lower lip and cursed myself for a pitiful poltroon. I looked up to meet Marion's eyes. She smiled at me so tender an encouragement that I turned cold with shame; that she, a delicate woman, could bear unmoved a sight that stole my manhood, fired my heart with more of rage than wonder, though I wondered too. I fiercely resolved not to be weak again.
Until that moment the silence had been absolute, but of a sudden Sir Charles spoke. "Wait for the systole, Vernet!"
I glanced down and saw Dr. Vernet insert his right hand into the hole in the patient's breast. He was armed with a large, cup-shaped clasp. He fumbled for a moment, and then, nodding his head, he withdrew his hand.
Sir Charles threw Cavanagh a quick scornful glance. "Attend, if you wish to understand," he commanded. "I'll try to be explicit!"
I looked for the first time at Cavanagh. He held a kerchief tightly to his face, but his eyes, which I alone could see, were simply lurid.
"Go on!" he muttered in a muffled voice.
Sir Charles inserted the edged tube attached to the syringe with both hands into the patient's breast.
"This is the right ventricle," he began, speaking in quick, disjointed sentences. "Its function is to force the venous blood through the pulmonary veins to the right auricle; thence to be distributed over the body. I am now—about to—insert—a needle into the right ventricle through the pericardium and walls. How is the pulse, Fulton?"