“Then how did ye expect me to know what orders ye'd given?” Mr. Blood's tone was positively aggrieved. “All that I knew was that one of your slaves was being murthered by the sun and the flies. And I says to myself, this is one of the Colonel's slaves, and I'm the Colonel's doctor, and sure it's my duty to be looking after the Colonel's property. So I just gave the fellow a spoonful of water and covered his back from the sun. And wasn't I right now?”
“Right?” The Colonel was almost speechless.
“Be easy, now, be easy!” Mr. Blood implored him. “It's an apoplexy ye'll be contacting if ye give way to heat like this.”
The planter thrust him aside with an imprecation, and stepping forward tore the palmetto leaf from the prisoner's back.
“In the name of humanity, now....” Mr. Blood was beginning.
The Colonel swung upon him furiously. “Out of this!” he commanded. “And don't come near him again until I send for you, unless you want to be served in the same way.”
He was terrific in his menace, in his bulk, and in the power of him. But Mr. Blood never flinched. It came to the Colonel, as he found himself steadily regarded by those light-blue eyes that looked so arrestingly odd in that tawny face—like pale sapphires set in copper—that this rogue had for some time now been growing presumptuous. It was a matter that he must presently correct. Meanwhile Mr. Blood was speaking again, his tone quietly insistent.
“In the name of humanity,” he repeated, “ye'll allow me to do what I can to ease his sufferings, or I swear to you that I'll forsake at once the duties of a doctor, and that it's devil another patient will I attend in this unhealthy island at all.”
For an instant the Colonel was too amazed to speak. Then—
“By God!” he roared. “D'ye dare take that tone with me, you dog? D'ye dare to make terms with me?”