And still the minutes passed. Terence O'Brien's face was losing some of its eagerness in sympathy, Dr. Pringle's gaining it in anxiety; for clear, insistent, not-to-be-silenced doubt was making itself heard. Only the shâhbâsh wallah cared not at all as he lay like a corpse.
It had come to the last chance. The last; and Dr. Pringle, with a pulse of wild resentment at his own weakness, realised that his nerve was going, his hand shaking. Still, it had to be done. The splinter of bone raised--the whole process he had thought out as the last chance gone through. He steadied himself and began. Failure or success? Failure--failure--failure! The word beat in on his heart and brain, bringing unsteadiness to both.
"Dresser, the chloroform," said Terence O'Brien, sharply; for there was a quiver in the man's eyelids.
But ere the deadening drug did its work, the shâhbâsh wallah's brain, set free to work along familiar lines by the raising of that splintered bone, had sent its old message to his lips--
"Shâhbâsh, bhaiyan, shâhbâsh!"
In telling the story Dr. Pringle says no more; generally because he cannot.
But after a time, if you are a brother craftsman, he will give you all details of the biggest and most successful operation he ever did.
And though he is slow to allow the corollary, he never denies that the shâhbâsh wallah's verdict put courage into him.
[THE MOST NAILING BAD SHOT IN CREATION]
This again is one of poor Craddock's stories which he told me when we were stretching a steel-edged ribbon of rail across shifting sandhills; that ribbon uniting West to East on which, a few years later, he met his death in trying to rid the permanent-way of something which Fate had decreed should be permanently in the way.