The sight of this blood gave him fresh hope, and he commenced operations at once, and with confident determination, while those around, who had never witnessed such a scene, or heard of such an attempt before, beheld him with wonder, and obeyed all his orders with alacrity.
With his love for Rose, and his medical enthusiasm, there mingled something of religious fervour and much of human kindness, and selecting carefully a lancet, he almost uttered a prayer of hope, as he opened the temporal artery, and then the external jugular—a vein which runs along the neck, just beneath the skin, and returns the blood from the head to the heart; but he sighed with doubt on finding the circulation stopped in both, and that a little coagulated blood only appeared at each orifice.
With the assistance of Morley and Tom Bartelot, he stripped the body in haste, and proceeded to rub the back, mouth, and neck vigorously, with volatile salts and fine oil.
When they grew weary, Captain Phillips and Mr. Foster relieved them, and the arms and legs were well lubricated in the same fashion, to restore and promote circulation.
Puffs of strong tobacco were blown up the nostrils and into the mouth, when these were compressed; but an hour and more elapsed without any sign of returning animation, and even Heriot was beginning to despair (as his companions had done long before) when, after making a small incision in the skin of the windpipe, through which, with his own breath, he sought to inflate the lungs, by breathing strongly through a cannula, a cry of joy escaped him.
The blood from the temporal artery was now trickling down the pale, discoloured face!
Heriot snatched up Mr. Basset's right hand, and applied his fingers to the wrist.
"The pulse—the pulse begins to beat!" he exclaimed; "quick, Morley!—place that bottle of sal-ammoniac under his nostrils."
Morley did so, and soon an exclamation escaped from all, on beholding Mr. Basset open and close each eye alternately.
He was then raised up in the kind and sturdy arms of Noah Gawthrop, while Heriot poured some warm brandy-and-water down his throat; after which a sound like a groan left his lips.