Floyd had him carried up to the nearest tent and laid on a mat. Then, with the help of Isbel, who had suddenly appeared, he set to to dress the injured foot. The lower end of the fibula was fractured, all the skin over the lower part of the leg was lacerated and bruised, and there was a nasty cut on the instep. They laid wet cloths on the wounds, made a bandage over them of coconut sennit, and left him so far recovered that he was able to smoke a pipe.
CHAPTER XIX
THE MIRACLE
Timau made a good recovery. In a couple of days he was hobbling about with the aid of a stick, and in a week, but for the bandage on his foot and leg, he seemed a well man.
He was also a distinguished personage in a way; honored as a man returned from the grave, yet, at the same time, avoided as much as possible. In other words, he was feared, and he made the best of the situation by doing no work and drawing full allowances in food and tobacco.
He did not show the least outward gratitude toward Floyd for his rescue and restoration, and Floyd, in his turn, found himself somewhat in the same position as Timau.
Sru, while working just the same, showed considerable reserve in his dealings with his manager. A man who could bring a corpse back to life was not a person to be dealt with lightly, and the strange thing was, that Floyd's beneficent action did not seem to strike Sru in the light of beneficence. It was quite plainly evident that it was looked upon more as an act of evil than of good.
The other natives seemed of the same mind as Sru; they never laughed and tom-fooled now when Floyd was present—they worked better.
Isbel seemed quite unmoved. He saw her now nearly every day when he came to the fishing camp; she had quite settled down in her new home, and seemed always busy, yet somehow to Floyd's eyes she seemed changed. It was toward the first week of Schumer's absence that Floyd became fully alive to this change in her. She was no longer a child. Just as some tropical plants bloom in a night, so in the course of a few weeks she had changed, at least to his eyes. It was as though a new person had come upon the island.