“Well, that’s near enough for me, sir,” said the captain tartly. “I should say that the difference between the symptoms of a wound from a poisoned arrow and one caused by a poisoned tooth wouldn’t be very great.”
“Perhaps not,” said Briscoe thoughtfully. “Well, I don’t quite like this drowsiness that has come over our patient; it’s ’most as if he had been given a dose of opium to soothe the pain. It is the only bad symptom I see.”
“Don’t say you’re no doctor, sir,” said Captain Banes, with a low chuckle, “because it seems to me that you are.”
“Why do you think so?” said Briscoe, looking at him wonderingly.
“Because you’ve put your finger down on the exact spot directly.”
“I do not understand you.”
“Why, I mean this. What did I do, squire, when you and I were alone in the cabin when we first brought your brother aboard?”
“You gave him a part of a glass of water with some laudanum in it.”
“To be sure I did, to calm down the pain; and that was what I call laudanum and Mr Briscoe here calls opium.”
“Then I agree with you, Captain Banes, that there are no bad symptoms at present,” said Briscoe quickly. “Let us leave him to sleep off the effect of what you have given him, and see how he looks when he wakes up.”