foot of
the scale, the guarded at the top. The blood flowing out upon the
cypress bed was the best blood of America. It was blue blood and brave
blood. Generation after generation it had flowed in the veins of fair
women and noble men, and had never known dishonor. Yet Fournier let it
flow. More, he was delighted that it continued to flow.

Presently, however, he sobered down, and began to prepare for his work.
He placed a large caldron of water over a fire; he brought basins,
towels and his case of surgical instruments, and placed them in the,
tent, and with them the case which he had taught the African to believe
contained his god. While thus busied he did not neglect the subject of
his experiment. His watchful eye noted everything--the mass, of clots
growing like a great crimson fungus under the wounded shoulder, the
deadly pallor, the dark circles forming around the sunken eyes, the
blanched lips, the transparent nostrils, the slow, deep respiration.
From time to time he felt the wounded man's pulse and counted it
carefully. _Ninety_--he went out again into the open air; _one
hundred_--"The loss of blood tells," he muttered, and began to rearrange
his appliances and busy himself uneasily with them; _one hundred and
thirty beats to the minute _--"He is failing too fast: I must stop this
bleeding" said the experimenter. Then he cleansed the wound, and tied
the arteries, and bound it up. But the loss of blood had been so great
that the heart fluttered wildly and feebly in its efforts to contract
upon its diminished contents, and Fournier, anxious, and pale himself
almost as his victim, trembled when his finger felt in vain for the
bleeding artery and caught only a faint tremulous thrill, so feeble that
he scarcely knew whether the heart was beating at all or not. In terror
he threw the ends of the little tent and fanned him, and moistened his
lips, and gave him brandy, and hastened to begin the experiment for
which he had waited so long and for which both subjects were at last
ready.

He told his savage that the Yankee was dying, but that he had communed
with his god, who would let him live if blood was given in return. Then
he reminded him of the time when he lost blood, and that it had done him
no harm. The African, trained for this duty with so much care, did not
fail him, but bared his arm and gave the blood. The god was brought
forth and caught it, and the sacrifice began. As the silver, bowl
floated in a basin