“No, keep it on a little longer. How many sponges were there? Six? One, two, three, four, five, and the last. Now for the ligatures,” and he handled the threads with quivering fingers.
Inglis was feeling the man’s pulse.
“He won’t stand much more, Murchison.”
“All right, you can stop.”
Scarcely had the concentration of his mind force relaxed for him than Murchison felt dizzy in the head, and saw a luminous fog before his eyes. Sweat ran from him; the room seemed saturated with the reek of chloroform. The reaction rushed on him with a feeling of nausea and a great sense of faintness at the heart. Bandage in hand, he swayed back, collapsed into a chair, and bent his head down between his knees.
A decanter of brandy stood on the dressing-table. Inglis, not a little scared, darted for it, and poured out a heavy dose into a tumbler.
“What’s up, Murchison? Here, drink this down. Baxter’s all right for the moment.”
Murchison lifted a gray face from between his hands to the light.
“Thanks, Inglis, I feel done up. Don’t bother about me. I shall be right again in a moment.”
He put the brandy aside, and wiped his forehead with the sleeve of his shirt. Inglis was completing the bandaging of the wound that Murchison had left unfinished. The farmer was breathing heavily, a streak of foam blubbering at his blue and swollen lips.