He was carried into the operating room, where a consultation took place, and the doctors in attendance did the best they could for him under the circumstance, and after this Murdock was placed in the infirmary.
Under the influence of morphia the smuggler was passive and peaceable enough, but the moment the effects of that drug passed away he began howling and screaming like a wild beast.
The bitter mortification he felt at the unsuccessful nature of his last attempt to escape was too much for him.
It drove him frantic, and during the night the manifestation of his rage was so terrible that the patients in the same ward with him could get very little sleep.
On the following day, when the doctor paid his accustomed visit, they one and all complained of the noise made by Murdock.
The wardsman and night nurses corroborated their statement, and the consequence of all this was that the wounded smuggler was transferred to a small room at another part of the prison.
Ill or well, Mat Murdock was a difficult customer to deal with, and not one of the few professional nurses who were in attendance on the prisoners seemed disposed to volunteer their services to wait on the smuggler.
But as we have indicated in a previous chapter, it is a common thing for the prisoners themselves to be appointed as nurses to the sick, and so, after some little discussion, a young man named Walter Knoulton volunteered his services as attendant on Murdock.
There was some reason for this. Knoulton and the smuggler had been on friendly terms ever since they made each other’s acquaintance in the gaol where they were both confined.
They had worked side by side in the same shop at mat making, and Murdock had spun many a yarn to the younger prisoner.