"This can't be wrong," he reflected. "At any rate, there's nothing else to do."
Looking at the old man he nodded.
"Jesus! Jesus! Jesus!" gurgled Michali, as though the words were being pulled from his throat with a hook. There was so much agony in them, they meant so much more than the screams of a weaker person would have meant, that the amateur surgeon felt sick at his stomach and it cost him a tremendous effort to see through a sort of blindness that settled like a cloud before his eyes. But the two ends of the bone came together and he resolutely pushed the splinter into place.
Still holding the leg tightly he looked at Michali. Great drops of sweat were standing on the Cretan's face and his underlip was bleeding, but he smiled bravely.
"All over," said Curtis. "Now for the sticks and the strips."
Fortunately for the success of the operation the boy who had led the mule was outside, giving an account of the progress of the battle. He proved a greater attraction even than the broken leg. Curtis, finding himself alone with his patient, shut and locked the door.
"Does it hurt you very much, old man?" he asked. "I suppose the proper thing now would be to give you something to put you to sleep. Don't you think you could sleep a little while anyway?"
"No, no, I cannot sleep. It hurts me some, but not much—not too much."
Curtis sat quietly for some time in the semi-darkness of the room, listening to the chatter of the boy outside, punctuated by the excited exclamations of the listeners. He glanced at the drawn face of Michali, which had a ghastly hue in the wan light. The wounded man's eyes were open, but he made no sound.
"He's a plucky beggar," thought Curtis. "I wonder if it would do him any harm to talk? I say, Michali," he asked aloud, "how is it going? What are they doing up there?"