Esau gave a gulp here, and got up and began to walk up and down the room, pressing first one hand and then the other under his arms as if in pain from a cut at school with the cane; and for some moments the poor fellow was suffering so from emotion that he could not continue. At last he went on in obedience to an eager look from my eyes.
“I run up just as he caught you, and tore off your things. Oh, it was horrid. I felt when I saw what I’d done, and him bandaging you up, as if I’d killed you. But you don’t feel so bad now. You ain’t going to die, are you? Say you ain’t.”
I kept my eyes fixed on his, forgetting in my excitement what I ought to have done, when a cry brought me to myself, and I closed my eyes sharply.
“Ah, that’s better,” cried Esau, and kneeling down by my bed he went on telling me how, as soon as I was bandaged, Mr Raydon cut two light poles and bound short pieces across them. Then on these he laid pine-boughs, and I was lifted up, for them to convey me slowly down the ravine, and back to the Fort.
“I say,” whispered Esau, “I thought last night he meant to cheat us, and get all the gold for himself; but I don’t think so now. Wish he liked me as much as he likes you. What? Do I think he does like you? Yes; I’m sure of it. He was in a taking last night. And I say—ain’t he quite a doctor too? He could do anything, I believe. There, I mustn’t talk to you any more, because you were to be kept quiet.”
It must not be imagined that Esau had kept on saying all the above to me rapidly, for one of these sentences was whispered very slowly now and then as I lay back feeling not much pain, but hot and feverish, and this change was noticed soon after by Mr Raydon when he came into the room.
“You have been letting him talk,” he said, angrily, as soon as he had taken my hand.
“That I ain’t, sir,” cried Esau, indignantly. “Never let him speak a word.”
“That’s right. He must be kept very still,” said our friend, and he hurriedly left the room.
“Rather hard on a chap when he has been so particular,” grumbled Esau. “Well, it was my doing, so I mustn’t mind.”