In Tom Lute's cottage beyond Come-Along Point of Amen Island they were ready for the operation. There was a thick, round billet of birch, upended in the middle of the kitchen floor, to serve as a block for the amputation; and the axe was sharp, at last—at hand, too, but concealed, for the moment, behind the pantry door—and a pot of tar was warming on the kitchen stove.
Sandy Lands had reported for duty, whom nothing but a sense of duty had drawn to a hand in the surgical assistance—a bit perturbed, as he contemplated the task of restraining the struggles of a violent little subject, whose temper he knew, but sturdy and resolved, his resolution substantiated by a sort of religious austerity.
Black Walt Anderson, a gigantic, phlegmatic fellow, who would have subdivided into half a dozen little Terry Lutes, also awaited the signal to pounce upon the Little Fiddler of Amen Island, imprison his arms, confine his legs, subdue all his little struggles, in short, bear him to the block and flatten his hand and spread his fingers for the severing blow.
It was to be a simple operation—a swift descent of the axe and a quick application of hot tar and bandages to stifle the wound. And that was to be the end of the finger and the trouble.
There had been a good deal of trouble. Terry Lute's sore finger was a source of brutal agony. There had been many days of this pain—a throbbing torture in the finger and hand and arm. And Terry had practiced deception in an heroic degree.
No pain (said he); but, ah, well, a twinge, now an' again—but nothin' at all t' make a man complain. An' sure (said he), 'twas better all the while—improvin' every blessed minute, sir. A day more (said he) would see the boil yield t' mother's poultice; an' a fortnight would see un all healed up an' the finger able for labour again.
It was in the night that Terry could conceal the agony no longer—deep in the night, when his mother sat beside the cot; and then he would crawl out of bed, stow his slender little body away in his mother's arms, put his head down and cry and moan without shame until he had exhausted himself and fallen into a fitful sleep.
No; it was no trifling agony for Terry Lute to withstand. And he knew all the while, moreover, that the cut of an axe—no more, it might be, than a flash—would eventually relieve him. Terry Lute was not afraid of the pain of the thing they wanted to do. That was not the inspiration of his infuriated rebellion.
There was nothing mistaken in the intention of the axe. It was neither cruel nor blundering.
Amen Island lies remote: the folk do for themselves—they are nearly sufficient to themselves, indeed, in all the affairs of life; and when they fail (they say) and sorrow comes of it—well, there is failure everywhere, too, and life leaves every man when the spirit is finished with its habitation. "I done the best I could!" It is epitaph honourable enough. There was no horror on Amen Island—no furious complaint of the wrongs of a social arrangement—when catastrophe came through lack of uncommon means to stave it off.