Barton stood still. Even a brave man likes (the old Irish duelling days being over) at least to know why he is to be shot at.
“What’s the matter with you?” he said. “What on earth are you doing? How can you talk about shooting? Have you a whole bone in your body?”
To this the only reply was another groan; then silence.
By this time there was a full measure of the light “which London takes the day to be,” and Barton had a fair view of his partner in this dialogue.
He could see the crumpled form of a man, weak and distorted like a victim of the rack—scattered, so to speak—in a posture inconceivably out of drawing, among the fragments of the engine. The man’s head was lowest, and rested on an old battered box; his middle was supported by a beam of the engine; one of his legs was elevated on one of the fans, the other hung disjointedly in the air. The man was strangely dressed in a close-fitting suit of cloth—something between the uniform of bicycle clubs and the tights affected by acrobats. Long, thin, gray locks fell back from a high yellow forehead: there was blood on his mouth and about his beard.
Barton drew near and touched him: the man only groaned.
“How am I to help you out of this?” said the surgeon, carefully examining his patient, as he might now be called. A little close observation showed that the man’s arms were strapped by buckles into the fans, while one of his legs was caught up in some elastic coils of the mechanism.
With infinite tenderness, Barton disengaged the victim, whose stifled groans proved at once the extent of his sufferings and of his courage.
Finally, the man was free from the machine, and Barton discovered that, as far as a rapid investigation could show, there were no fatal injuries done, though a leg, an arm, and several ribs were fractured, and there were many contusions.
“Now I must leave you here for a few minutes, while I go round to the police-office and get men and a stretcher,” said Barton.