As we have already shown, our hero had an inquiring mind. While at college he had become intimately acquainted with, and interested in, one or two medical students, with whom he conversed so much and so frequently about their studies, that he became quite familiar with these, and with their medical and surgical phraseology, so that people frequently mistook him for a student of medicine. Being gifted with a mechanical turn of mind, he talked with special interest on surgery; discussed difficulties, propounded theories, and visited the hospitals, the dissecting-rooms, and the operating-theatres frequently. Thus he came, unintentionally, to possess a considerable amount of surgical knowledge, and when, at last, he was thrown providentially into a position where no trained man could be found, and urgent need for one existed, he came forward and did his best like a man.
Aileen Hazlit also, on being told that there was need of a woman’s tender hand in such work, at once overcame her natural repugnance to scenes of blood; she proceeded on deck, and, with a beating heart but steady hand, went to work like a trained disciple of Florence Nightingale.
To the credit of the timid, and for the encouragement of the weak, we have to add that Miss Pritty likewise became a true heroine!
No average individual, male or female, can by any effort of imagination attain to the faintest idea of poor Miss Pritty’s horror at the sight of “blood!”—“human gore!” particularly. Nevertheless Miss Pritty, encouraged by her friend’s example, rose to the occasion. With a face and lips so deadly pale that one might have been justified in believing that all the blood on the decks had flowed therefrom, she went about among the wounded, assisting Aileen in every possible way with her eyes shut. She did indeed open them when it was absolutely necessary to do so, but shut them again instantly on the necessity for vision passing away. She cut short bandages when directed so to do; she held threads or tapes; she tore up shirts, and slips, and other linen garments, with the most reckless disregard of propriety; she wiped away blood from wounds (under direction), and moistened many dry lips with a sponge, and brushed beads of perspiration from pale brows—like a heroine.
Meanwhile Edgar went about actively, rejoicing in his new-found capacity to alleviate human suffering. What the Faculty would have thought of him we know not. All on board the gun-boat venerated him as a most perfect surgeon. His natural neatness of hand stood him in good stead, for men were bleeding to death all round him, and in order to save some it was necessary that he should use despatch with others. Of course he attended to the most critical cases first, except in the case of those who were so hopelessly injured as to be obviously beyond the reach of benefit from man. From these he turned sadly away, after whispering to them an earnest word or two about the Saviour of mankind—to those of them at least who understood English. To waste time with these he felt would be to rob hopeful cases of a chance. All simple and easy cases of bandaging he left to the captain and his chief officer. Joe Baldwin, being a cool steady man, was appointed to act as his own assistant.
From one to another he passed unweariedly, cutting off portions of torn flesh, extracting bullets, setting broken bones, taking up and tying severed arteries, sewing together the edges of gaping wounds, and completing the amputation of limbs, in regard to which the operation had been begun—sometimes nearly finished—by cannon shot.
“How terribly some of the poor wretches have been starved!” muttered Edgar as he bent over one of the captives, attempting to draw together the edges of a sword-cut in his arm; “why, there is not enough of flesh on him to cover his wound.”
“There an’t much, sir,” assented Joe Baldwin, in a sympathetic tone, as he stood close by holding the needle and thread in readiness. “There’s one man for’ard, sir, that I saw in passing to the chest for this thread, that has scarcely as much flesh on him as would bait a rat-trap. But he seems quite contented, poor fellow, at bein’ freed from slavery, and don’t seem to mind much the want o’ flesh and blood. Perhaps he counts on gettin’ these back again.”
“Hm! These are not so easily regained when lost as you seem to imagine, my friend,” exclaimed a pompous but rather weak voice. Joe looked up. It was Mr Hazlit, whose bloodless countenance and shrunken condition had become more apparent than ever after he had been enabled to reclothe himself in the garments of civilisation.
“Why, sir,” said Joe, gently, “you seem to have bin badly shaken. Not bin wounded, I hope, sir?”