"Right, sir."
"Are you ready, Beudant, Jussieu?"
"At the word, sir," replied the negroes.
"Good!" exclaimed Sir Charles. "I am too!" He withdrew one hand from the ghastly cavity and seized the syringe pump, which he began to compress. "I am now forcing into our subject's right ventricle the solution of my invention, which is destined to slay the tubercle bacilli. In two seconds the lungs will be suffused with the fluid, and in two minutes we shall have worked the miracle of absolutely destroying every bacillus contained therein. But we shall also have killed the patient's blood. See, it is already decomposing. Mark how white the lung grows. To work, Jussieu!" he cried. "To work!"
"Ready, sir!" cried back the negro. I could not see what he did, but I saw the tube connecting Sir Charles Venner's patient with the opposite table suddenly rigidify as though a rod had been slipped down its hollow interior.
"We are now correcting the solution's destructive action on our subject's blood by forcing into his heart a fresh supply of living arterial blood taken from the left auricle of the ape lying yonder," explained Sir Charles. "Vernet is meanwhile extracting our subject's own decomposed and now useless blood, which is really blood no longer, from the greater artery in his right leg. You see, Cavanagh, we have established a perfect system of drainage. We are supplying good blood and removing bad."
"My God!" cried Cavanagh. "It is white!"
His exclamation referred to Dr. Vernet's work. The French surgeon had made a deep incision in the patient's right thigh, from which gushed a steady fountain of yellow fluid.
"Shout when it colours, Vernet!" commanded Sir Charles.
I looked on, speechless with amazement, I had no longer the least inclination to faint. Indeed, my whole soul was so steeped in wonder, that I forgot I lived. I was merely a rapt acquisitive spirit being initiated into the fundamental mysteries of nature by a great, indeed, a giant intellect. Sir Charles Venner appeared to me then something like a god. His left hand was plunged into the patient's breast, perhaps grasping the heart, that seat of life. His right compressed and controlled the movements of the syringe. His face gleamed like marble in the brilliant white light of the reflectors. It was pale, composed, expressionless, yet full of watchful intelligence and power. He stood upon his feet as steady as a rock. Every moment he uttered some sharp, pregnant direction to one or other of his assistants, which was at once implicitly obeyed. "No greater man has ever lived!" thought I then, and I have not altered my opinion since.