At which he told me that some years before he left England he had attended what was called an ambulance class, where instructions were given about "first aid to the injured," and he had been striving to remember all he had learned about broken bones. He told me I must get a strip of wood, smooth and strong, about four feet long, and a number of shorter and thinner pieces for splints.
These I quickly procured. The next things were bandages. We had very little stuff that would answer for them, but our tent, which was of thin duck, would do; so I ripped some of that into strips.
To put the fracture into place was a most difficult task. I hardly dared to handle him, for every touch gave him exquisite pain; yet I had to twist and pull and push until I believed the bones were in the right position. He directed me as best he could, but only at intervals, on account of the torture my unskilled hands were giving him. When, as I hoped, all was as it should be, I placed the splints, each wrapped in the softest stuff I had, close together round the injury; then I wound long bandages over all, tightly and smoothly.
Lastly, outside, from his armpit to his foot, I placed the long strip of wood and bound it to him, round his chest, his middle, and his ankle, fastening it securely and firmly with plenty of bands above and below the fracture.
Meade thanked me when I had finished. He said, with a sad smile, that he believed I had done it as well as if I had been through the course of instructions which he had; then he closed his eyes, exhausted.
He had borne all this with the greatest fortitude, but now a kind of stupor appeared to creep over him. I hoped that it would end in healthy sleep; therefore I quietly made up the fire, lowered the light, and slipped out into the night.
It was absolutely still in the open air, and not so very cold. Not a breath of wind stirred the surrounding foliage; only the ripple of the creek was audible as it flowed tinkling over the stones a few yards from me, and the swish of the water swirling through the sluice.
Patch had come out with me. He was so quiet, so subdued, so sorrowful; it was just wonderful the almost human sagacity of that dog. I had said to him gently as we came out, "We must be very quiet, Patch; you must not bark; your poor master is very ill; we must let him sleep," and the way that dear old fellow looked at me was as if he quite understood what I had said. I believe he did, too, by his actions.
From the hot stuffy cavern, little more than a burrow, where I had been attending to my poor friend, to the clear air outside, the change was great and most refreshing. I stood beside the creek for some time breathing in the sweet pine-scented air, and thinking very deeply, very seriously.
The sky was cloudless, the stars were gleaming near the southern horizon in great brilliancy, but over the rest of the heavens they were hardly discernible—they were overpowered by the blaze of the Northern Lights. This was no unusual occurrence; rarely when the sky was clear were they absent at night, though on this particular time they were remarkably bright.