At this moment two guards presented themselves at the door of my hut and, saluting, one of them curtly remarked:
“The king is ill, and commands the presence of the white man at the palace at once!”
“The king—my father—ill!” ejaculated Ama, in a tone of greater consternation than seemed quite called for. “Let us go at once, Dick. And—oh, you must cure him—you must, for your own sake, Dick!”
Chapter Eighteen.
Doomed to the torture.
“You must cure him—you must, for your own sake, Dick!” Exactly. In uttering those words Ama unconsciously disclosed how slight was her confidence in the influence over her father, of which she had been boasting only a moment or two before the arrival of the summons for me to attend that father on his bed of sickness. It was all very well for her to tell me that I must cure him; but suppose that I could not, suppose that the sickness—whatever it might be—should run its course and fail to yield to my treatment, what then? The reason, so urgently expressed by her, why I must effect a cure—“for your own sake, Dick,”—was significant enough of the direction in which her apprehensions pointed; there was no necessity for me to inquire what she meant. I must cure the king, or it would be so much the worse for me! And how was I to cure him? My knowledge of disease was of the slightest and most amateurish kind, and, for aught that I could tell to the contrary, might not even be sufficient to enable me to diagnose the case correctly, much less to treat it successfully! However, there was no use in meeting trouble half-way; the only possible course was to obey the summons forthwith, and do my best, leaving the result in the hands of Providence. I accordingly rose to my feet and, motioning the guards to lead the way, followed them to the palace, with Ama walking by my side and holding my hand in a protective sort of way.
The distance from my hut to the palace was but a few yards; and we quickly arrived at our destination, being at once conducted into the presence of the king, who, stretched upon a couch, and evidently suffering severe pain in his internal organs, was surrounded by the somewhat numerous members of his family.
As I approached the side of his couch he gazed at me with lack-lustre eyes and groaningly said: