"Verily, O Master, the color is not the color of blood; and indeed, with thine own lips thou didst command me to strike thee pink!"
"Lumme!" said Alf, light breaking in upon him at last. "Well, if that's your idea of a joke, it ain't mine, that's all. You can just blinkin' well think again, if you want to make me laugh. See?"
"Thy wish," said the Spirit, to whom Alf's idiomatic speech was just so much gibberish, "is my command. What wouldst thou have? I am ready to obey...."
"Stop it," said Alf in acute apprehension, his eye on the door. "Didn't you 'ear what I said? Put me right, for the Lord's sake, and then 'op it, quick. I can 'ear the doc. comin'."
Captain Browne entered. He was in a very despondent frame of mind. He was a keen and ambitious young man, and his failure to make any impression on Higgins' condition had been a great blow to his pride. Sorely against his will he was now about to own himself defeated.
He closed the door behind him.
There was an instant's pause. Then the officer, without a change of countenance, spoke quietly.
"Ah!" he said. "Then my last treatment has had the effect I hoped for. It's a cure. You needn't go to the Base, after all."
The cure of Higgins' malady brought to Captain Browne much honor and renown. He became the first and sole authority on what came to be known as "Browne's Disease"; several thoughtful essays from his pen appeared in the foremost medical journals, detailing the course of the disease, the method of its cure, and the mental processes which had led to the evolution of that cure. He was asked to contribute an article on the same subject to a medical encyclopædia. Finally, he was mentioned in dispatches.