"That's right, Mary," he murmured; "are the bars of the cattle kraal up? See that all the shutters are closed, we cannot be too careful, you know."
"I will see to it all, father," she said, cheerfully; "now try to go to sleep."
A few more words passed from the wounded man's lips, and then he lay quiet with closed eyes.
"That is excellent, Miss Armstrong," the surgeon said; "the consciousness that you are with him has, you see, soothed him at once. If he moves, get him to drink a little of this lemonade, and I will send you in some medicine for him shortly."
"How are the wounds, doctor?"
"Oh, I think the wounds will do," the surgeon replied; "so far as I can tell, the assegai has just missed the top of the lung by a hair's breadth. Two inches lower and it would have been fatal. As for the wounds in the legs, I don't anticipate much trouble with them. They have missed both bones and arteries and are really nothing but flesh wounds, and after the active, healthy life your father has been living, I do not think we need be uneasy about them."
In half an hour the surgeon looked in again.
"Sergeant Blunt has arrived," he said. "You can set your mind at ease about him; it is a nasty gash, but of no real importance whatever. I have drawn the edges together and sewn them up; he is quite in good spirits, and laughed and said that a wound in the back could scarcely be called an honourable scar. I can assure you that in ten days or so he will be about again."
"Would you mind telling him," Mary asked, "that I would come to see him at once, but my father is holding my hand so tight that I could not draw it away without rousing him?"
"I will tell him," the surgeon said. "Oh, here is the orderly with your medicine as well as your father's."