“Well?” he said to me as I caught his hand, and questioned him with my eyes. “Do you mean can I save him? I don’t know; but I do know this—if it had been a white his case would have been hopeless. The poor fellow must have been in agony; but I have extracted the arrow-head, and these blacks have a constitution that is wonderful. He may recover.”
“Please God!” I said to myself, as I walked right away to try and get somewhere quite alone to sit down and think. For I was beginning to waken to the fact of how much I cared for the great kind-hearted, patient fellow, who had all along devoted his life to our service, and in the most utter self-denial offered that life in defence of ours.
Ever since the departure of the Spaniards I had slept soundly, but that night I passed on my knees by poor old Hannibal’s pillow.
It was a strange experience, for the poor fellow was delirious, and talked rapidly in a low tone. His thoughts had evidently gone back to his own land and other scenes, but I could not comprehend a word.
Pomp was there too, silent and watchful, and he whispered to me about how the doctor had cut his father’s side, and it took all my powers of persuasion and insistence, upon its being right, to make the boy believe that it was to do the wounded man good.
“If Mass’ George say um good,” he said at last, “Pomp b’leeve um. Oh, Pomp poor fader. Pomp die too,” he sobbed.
“He shan’t die,” I cried, passionately. “Don’t talk like that.”
There was silence for a time, and then the poor fellow began to mutter again.
“What does he say?” I whispered; but the boy broke down, buried his face in his hands, and sobbed. But after a time, in broken tones, he told me that his father was talking about dying down in the hold of the stifling ship, and about being brought ashore.
“Dat all Pomp hear,” whispered the boy. “Talk ’tuff. Done know what.”