“Never, sir!” cried the doctor fiercely, as he probed the wound; “an Englishman never runs. There, I can feel it—that’s the fellow.”
“Oh, doctor!” groaned poor Bigley.
“Hurt?” said Doctor Chowne. “Ah, well! I suppose it does. And so you, an Englishman, ran away—eh?”
“English boy,” said Bigley grinding his teeth with pain, while I felt the big drops gathering on my forehead, and was wroth with the doctor for being so cool and brutal.
“English boy!—eh?” he said. “Well, but boys are the stuff of which you make young men. Ha, ha, ha! What do you think of that?”
“You’re half-killing me, doctor!” groaned poor Bigley.
“Not I, my lad. I’ve got the rascal; come out, sir! There you are—see there! What do you think of that for a nasty piece of French lead to be sticking in your leg? If I hadn’t fished it out it would have been there making your leg swell and fester, and we should have had no end of a game.”
As he spoke he held out the bullet he had extracted at the end of a long narrow pair of forceps; and, as Bigley looked at it with failing eyes, he turned away with a shudder and whispered to me, as I supported his head upon my arm:
“I’m glad Bob Chowne isn’t here to see what a miserable coward I am, Sep. Don’t tell him—there’s a good chap!”
I was about to answer, but his eyes closed and he fainted dead away.