It was easy to understand why he ran away, because the master at this moment sprang out of his chair and began to stamp up and down the verandah, roaring and cursing. He was clad in a white linen dressing-gown and linen nightcap. On a small table beside him stood a bottle of beer, newly opened, and a silver tankard.
When he saw me he began to swear at me for my delay in coming, though I had not lost a moment.
'Sir,' I said, 'if you will cease railing and blaspheming I will examine into your malady. Otherwise I will do nothing for you.'
'What?' he cried. 'You dare to make conditions with me, you dog, you!'
'Fair words,' I said. 'Fair words. I am your servant to work on your plantation as you may command. I am not your physician; and I promise you, Sir, upon the honour of a gentleman, and without using the sacred name which is so often on your lips, that if you continue to rail at me I will suffer you to die rather than stir a little finger in your help.'
'Suffer the physician to examine the place,' said a woman's voice. 'What good is it to curse and to swear?'
The voice came from a hammock swinging at the end of the verandah. It was made, I observed, of a land of coarse grass loosely woven.
The man sat down and sulkily bade me find a remedy for the pain which he was enduring. So I consented and examined his upper jaw, where I soon found out the cause of his pain in a good-sized tumour formed over the fangs of a grinder. Such a thing causes agony even to a person of cool blood, but to a man whose veins are inflamed with strong drink the pain of it is maddening.
'You have got a tumour,' I told him. 'It has been forming for some days. It has now nearly, or quite, reached its head. It began about the time when you were cursing and insulting certain unfortunate gentlemen, who are for a time under your power. Take it, therefore, as a Divine judgment upon you for your cruelty and insolence.'
He glared at me, but said nothing, the hope of relief causing him to receive this admonition with patience, if not in good part. Besides, my finger was still upon the spot, and if I so much as pressed gently I could cause him agony unspeakable. Truly, the power of the physician is great.