“No, sir; but I suppose he wanted to try his new bag o’ tools, and got hold of me. ‘Hold still,’ he says, ‘or I shall give you chloroform.’ ‘Can’t you make it a drop o’ whisky, sir?’ I says. ‘Yes, if you behave yourself,’ he says. ‘Look here, I can’t plaster up a place like this. Your finger’s in rags, and the bone’s in splinters.’ ‘Oh, it’ll soon grow together, sir,’ I says. ‘Nothing of the kind, sir,’ he says; ‘it’ll go bad if I don’t make a clean job of it. Now then, shut your eyes, and sit still in that chair. I won’t hurt you much.’”
“Did he?” said Denham.
“Pretty tidy, sir; just about as much as he could. He takes out a tool or two, and before I knew where I was he’d made a clean cut or two and taken off some more of my finger, right down to the middle joint. ‘There,’ he says, as soon as he’d put some cotton-wool soaked with nasty stuff on the place, after sewing and plastering it up—‘there, that’ll heal up quickly and well now!’”
“Of course,” said Denham. “Made a clean job of it.”
“Clean job, sir?” said the Sergeant. “Well, yes, he did it clean enough, and so was the lint and stuff; but it’s made my finger so ugly. It looks horrid. I say, sir, do you think the finger’ll grow again?”
“No, Briggs, I don’t; so you must make the best of it.”
“But crabs’ and lobsters’ claws grow again, sir; for I’ve seen ’em do it at home, down in Cornwall.”
“Yes; but we’re not crabs and lobsters, Sergeant. There, never mind about such a bit of a wound as that.”
“I don’t, sir—not me; but it do look ugly, and feels as awkward as if I’d lost an arm. There, I must be off, sir. I’ve got to see to our poor fellows who are to go off in a wagon back to the town.”
“How many were hurt?” said Denham eagerly.