fancy that if there was any poison on the
arrow that went through your brother's arm, you pretty well sucked it
out and washed it away."

"Then you don't think there is any danger?" asked Brace.

"That's right, squire. I don't think there's any danger. Mind, I say
_think_, for I'm not a proper qualified man."

"But you can tell me your candid opinion about my brother's wound," said
Brace.

"Well," replied the captain, "I'll go so far as to say that if I'd got
that hole through my arm I should be very savage, I should make use of
some language, and I should say I'd shoot every Indian I saw with a bow
and arrows, and of course I shouldn't do it; but I don't think I should
make myself uncomfortable about it any more, but just leave it to Nature
to cure."

"You think that he will recover, then?" said Brace eagerly.

"I do," said the captain. "What have you got to say about it, mister?"

He turned to the American as he spoke, and Briscoe, who had been keenly
watching the half-insensible patient all the time Brace and the captain
had been speaking, rose up slowly.

"I'm not a doctor, skipper," he said, "and the only experience I have
had in this way has been with rattlesnake bites."

"Well, that's near enough for me, sir," said the captain tartly. "I
should say that the difference between the symptoms of a wound from a
poisoned arrow and one caused by a poisoned tooth wouldn't be very
great."

"Perhaps not," said Briscoe thoughtfully. "Well, I don't quite like
this drowsiness that has come over our patient; it's 'most as if he had
been given a dose of opium to soothe the pain. It is the only bad
symptom I see."

"Don't say you're no doctor, sir," said Captain Banes, with a low
chuckle, "because it seems to me that you are."

"Why do you think so?" said Briscoe, looking at him wonderingly.

"Because you've put your finger down on the exact spot directly."

"I do not understand you."

"Why, I mean this. What did I do, squire, when you and I were alone in
the cabin when we first brought your brother aboard?"

"You gave him a part of a glass of water with some laudanum in it."

"To be sure I did, to calm down the pain; and that was what I call
laudanum and Mr Briscoe here calls opium."

"Then I agree with you, Captain Banes, that there are no bad symptoms at
present," said Briscoe quickly. "Let us leave him to sleep off the
effect of what you have given him, and see how he looks when he wakes
up."