“Oh, yes, they know a great deal,” said the doctor, shortly, as he busied himself pressing the sides of a little speck of a wound which pierced the boy’s skin, now with one nail, now with both at the same time, and making Mark wince.
“You are hurting him a good deal,” said Sir James.
“Do him good,” said the doctor, shortly, “and take off the faintness. Now, Buck, I want to make sure,” continued the doctor, who from the smattering of knowledge he had obtained from reading was looked up to by everyone present as being master of the situation in the emergency. “What sort of a head had the snake?”
“Nasty-looking head, sir! and it kept sticking out its sting with two pyntes to it.”
“Pooh!” ejaculated the doctor, as he busied himself over the tiny puncture. “But was it a broad spade-shaped head?”
“Spade-shaped, sir? What, square? Oh, no, it warn’t that.”
“Bah!” ejaculated the doctor. “I meant spade-shaped—the spade that you see on a pack of cards.”
“I couldn’t be sure, sir. It was so quick, you see. But I should say it was more like a diamond.”
“Beg pardon, sir,” cried Dan; “I think that the place ought to be sucked. I’ll do it.”
“Thanks. Good lad,” said the doctor. “You are quite right;” and he gave the little sailor a quick nod as he took the advice himself, held Mark’s index finger to his lips, and drew hard at the tiny puncture, trying to draw out any noxious matter that might have been left in the wound, and removing the finger from his lips from time to time to rid his mouth of any poison.