“Spoken like a hero, and brother of the lancet: as little afraid at the sight of your own blood, as at that of your patients,” said Blister. “Hand over the pistols.”
It was an awfu’ business. Gude save us, such goings on in a Christian land! While Mr Bloatsheet, the young writer, was in the act of doing what he was bid, I again, but to no purpose, endeavoured to slip in a word edgeways. Magneezhy was in an awfu’ case; if he had been already shot, he could not have looked mair clay and corpse-like; so I took a kind of whispering, while the stramash was drawing to a bloody conclusion, with Maister Harry Molasses, the fourth in the spree, who was standing behind Bloatsheet, with a large mahogany box under his arm, something in shape like that of a licensed packman, ganging about from house to house through the country-side, selling toys and trinkets, or niffering plated ear-rings and sic like, wi’ young lasses, for auld silver coins or cracked tea-spoons.
“Oh!” answered he, very composedly, as if it had been a canister fu’ of black rappee, or blackguard, that he had just lifted down from his tap shelf, “it’s just Doctor Blister’s saws, whittles, and big knives, in case ony of their legs or arms be blawn away, that he may cut them off.” Little wad have prevented me sinking down through the ground, had I not remembered, at the preceese moment, that I myself was a soldier, and liable, when the hour of danger threatened, to be called out, in marching order, to the field of battle. But by this time the pistols were handed to the two infatuated young men—Mr Bloatsheet, as fierce as a hussar dragoon, and Magneezhy, as supple in the knees as if he was all on oiled hinges; so the next consideration was to get weel out of the way, the lookers-on running nearly as great a chance of being shot as the principals, they no being accustomed, like me, for instance, to the use of arms; on which account, I scougged mysel behind a big pear-tree; baith being to fire when Blister gied the word “Off!”
I had hardly jouked into my hidy-hole, when “crack, crack” played the pistols like lightning, and as soon as I got my cowl ta’en from my een, and looked about, wae’s me, I saw Magneezhy clap his hand to his brow, wheel round like a peerie, or a sheep seized wi’ the sturdie, and then play flap down on his braidside, breaking the necks of half a dozen cabbage-stocks, three of which were afterwards clean lost, as we couldna pit them all into the pat at ae time. The hale o’ us ran forrit, but foremost was Bloatsheet, who, seizing Magneezhy by the hand, said wi’ a mournful face, “I hope you forgive me?—Only say this as long as you have breath, for I am off to Leith harbour in half a minute.”
The blude was rinning ower puir Magneezhy’s een, and drib-dribbling frae the neb o’ his nose; so he was truly in a pitiful state; but he said with more strength than I thocht he could have mustered,—“Yes, yes, fly for your life, I am dying without much pain—fly for your life, for I am a gone man!”
Bloatsheet bounced through the bit kail-yard like a maukin, clamb ower the bit wa’, and aff like mad; while Blister was feeling Magneezhy’s pulse with ane hand, and looking at his doctor’s watch, which he had in the ither.
“Do ye think that the puir lad will live, doctor?” said I till him.
He gave his head a wise shake, and only observed, “I dare say, it will be a hanging business amang us. In what direction do you think, Mansie, we should all take flight?”
But I answered bravely, “Flee them that will, I’se flee nane. If am ta’en prisoner, the town-officers maun haul me frae my ain house; but nevertheless I trust the visibility of my innocence will be as plain as a pikestaff to the een of the fifteen.”
“What then, Mansie, will we do with poor Magneezhy? Give us your advice in need.”