Rob helped to raise the wanderer, Shaddy swung him on his back lightly and easily, and stepping quickly toward the fire, soon had the poor fellow lying with his feet exposed to the blaze, while water was given to him a little at a time, and soon after a few morsels of the tender fish, which he swallowed with difficulty.
They had no rest that night, but, with the strange cries and noises of the forest around them, mingled with the splashings and danger-threatening sounds of the river, they tended and cared for the insensible man, giving him food and water from time to time, but in quantities suggestive of homoeopathic treatment. Still they felt no fatigue for the great joy in both their hearts, for neither of them had the faintest hope of ever seeing their leader again.
Once or twice during the night Mr Brazier had seemed so cold and rigid that Rob had glanced wildly at the guide, who replied by feeling the insensible man’s feet.
“Only sleep, my lad!” he said softly. “I daresay he will not come to for a couple of days. A man can’t pass through the horror of being lost without going off his head more or less.”
“Do you think he’ll be delirious, then?”
“Off his head, my lad? Yes. It will be almost like a fever, I should say, and we shall have to nurse him a long time till he comes round.”
The guide was quite right. The strong man was utterly brought down by the terrible struggle of the past three days, and as they looked at his hollow eyes and sunken cheeks it was plain to see what he had suffered bodily from hunger, while his wanderings told of how great the shock must have been to his brain.
The mystery of the blood was explained simply enough by his roughly bandaged left arm, on which as they examined it, while he lay perfectly weak and insensible, they found a severe wound cleanly cut by a knife.
“He must have been attacked, then,” cried Rob as he looked at the wound in horror, while in a quiet, methodical way Shaddy proceeded to sew it together by the simple process of thrusting a couple of pins through the skin and then winding a thread of silk round them in turn from head to point, after which he firmly bandaged the wound before making a reply to Rob’s words.
“Yes, my lad,” he said; “right arm attacked his left. He must have been making a chop at some of the plants on a branch, and the tool slipped. You take out his knife and open it, and see if it ain’t marked.”