"Come on," he called back, "the water isn't more than three feet deep here. There's only a deep place near the rocks and you can get across that easily."
But he had to return to help them get Chris across the deep narrow channel, for the little negro's struggles in his spasms threatened to drown his helpers. At last, the dangerous stretch of water was safely crossed, and, leaving Walter and the Captain to half float and half carry Chris between them, the lad waded ahead, picking out the shoalest and smoothest path to the shore. They arrived there spent and panting and sank down for a moment to recover their breath. It was not an inviting-looking place where they had landed. A low rock-strewn marsh, covered with tall, rank grass stretched away before them for two or three miles before it met the higher, heavily-wooded mainland. Here and there the marsh was dotted with small, island-like clumps of dark green cedar trees, and, picking up the light, little negro in his strong, young arms, Charley headed for the nearest of these, followed by his exhausted companions. The passage was made with difficulty; low needle-pointed rocks strewed the way, and here and there lay pools of soft, boggy mud, tenanted by repulsive, swollen looking moccasins. It needed care to avoid the one without stepping on the other, but, at last, the patch of high ground was reached and, laying his burden beneath a wide-spreading cedar, Charley turned to his companions.
"We have got to work quick if we are to stand a chance even of saving him," he said, crisply. "Walter, get in to the mainland as quick as you can and bring me all the palmetto berries you can find,—hurry. Captain, let me take your flint and steel and then get me a lot of soft mud from the marsh."
Tired though they were, the two hastened away to execute his orders, while Charley worked swiftly to carry out the plan he had formed while coming ashore. It was a heroic one, but rough measures were the only ones it was in his power to apply. Hastily gathering together a pile of dead cedar limbs, he lit a fire with the flint and steel. While it was blazing up, he stripped off his belt and, tying it above Chris' knee, with a stick twisted it tight until it was embedded in the flesh, shutting off the flow of blood from below to the heart. He next heated a small stone in the now blazing fire and applied it while hot to the swollen wound. The smell of the crisping flesh sickened him, but he doggedly stuck to his task until he judged the wound was sufficiently cauterized. Chris lay mercifully lost to the pain in a deep stupor. The lad had just finished burning the wound when the Captain returned with his jacket full of soft mud, and, emptying it out, hastened back for another load. Charley heaped a lot of rocks upon the fire, and, as soon as they were hot, ranged them close on each side of the wounded limb, heaping the soft mud on top of them until he had formed an air-tight mound over the leg. He now had a great poultice of hot mud of great drawing power, the danger was that Chris might be attacked by other spasms and succeed in working his leg out from the hot covering. To prevent this, the lad tore his shirt up into strips and, binding the little negro tightly, piled stones around the encased leg so that it could not be easily moved.
CHAPTER XX.
HUNTING HELP.
Charley next cut off small branches of cedar and placed them under the unconscious little fellow's head and back so that he might rest as comfortably as possible. This done, he sat back breathless and exhausted and waited impatiently for Walter's return.
Captain Westfield surveyed the young physician's work with hopeful admiration. "If Chris lives, it will be you as has saved his life," he declared.
"He has saved mine more than once," Charley replied, "but I am afraid he is not going to live. I don't like this deep stupor he has fallen into. I wish Walter would hurry."