Read Ebook: The Trapper's Daughter: A Story of the Rocky Mountains by Aimard Gustave Wraxall Lascelles Sir Translator

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Ebook has 3137 lines and 102862 words, and 63 pages

'But I am exceedingly tired--wearied to death.'

'You will be better after it is over, my friend.'

'Give me a drink of water, doctor, for heaven's sake!'

'Take a little of this solution.'

'Do open the doors, and let in some air. I can hardly draw my breath.'

'Oh, never fear but you will breathe long enough.'

'I shall faint.'

'Faint away, and we shall soon have the bone in.'

'Wont you loosen these straps, only for a moment, so that I can rest my leg?'

'O, doctor, you will break my thigh! Doctor--doctor!'

'Don't be alarmed, my man; if I do I will set it again.'

'Let me have that rope!' he exclaimed, as he made violent efforts to spring up and catch the cord that was straining his sinews; efforts ten times more hopeless and unavailing than those of Milton's giant,

'Under the weight of mountains buried deep.'

'Oh, I shall die!' gasped the cruciated wretch.

'My good friend, you came here to have your thigh put back in its place, and you must be patient. You cannot expect it to be returned without pain.'

'I know; but wait till to-morrow; or let me rest myself for an hour or two, and then I shall feel refreshed, and be better able to bear it.'

'You may go to sleep, if you wish, my good fellow. I should be glad to have you.'

'But he could not well go in stays,' observed one of the walkers, in a low tone, to his neighbor.

'The cord-drawer there should unlace,' replied the other. 'But he resembles an ox triced up to be shod, more than a lady in corsets.'

'Do you chew tobacco, my friend?' said the chief operator to the almost exhausted patient.

'I haven't chewed any lately,' he groaned.

'So much the better then. Mr. Aster, let me have a little out of your box. There--ah!'

'Here, my good man, take that,' he continued, presenting the grateful boon to the patient. 'Eat it: if you have not been accustomed to chewing, I am in hopes it will make you sick.'

This weed, it is known, produces the most deadly nausea and exhaustion in those not addicted to its use. It is customary to employ it in cases of this nature, where habit does not intervene, to incapacitate the patient for making any voluntary exertion in opposition to the extension, which purpose it answers even better than bleeding.

'Come, be calm, and do not strain so.'

'I can't help it!' The surgeons knew it.

'Whisper to him, Parcels,' said Aster, one of the junior assistants, who made his brightness particularly apparent in perpetrating puns upon the Roman vernacular, 'whisper him, by way of consolation and encouragement,

'That is, I suppose, 'If you are ill now, it is no sign you will be sick by-and-by.''

'Yes; and nothing could be more inspiring.'

'Poor dog, it is true he is likely to be as much benefitted by that as any thing else; but I will not trifle with his sufferings, even in seeming.'

'Soothe him by mild language. No, let Nature speak out her agony in his cries, and let the surgeon utter his sympathy as best becomes him, and as the welfare of his patient demands.'

'In jests?'

'In imperturbable coolness and decision: or, as you say, in jests; for what is comfort, under these circumstances, but a jest?'

'I think his system will not endure much more,' said Parcels.

'It is possible,' replied the walker.

He was a brave man, and even in this painful situation, he took what was offered him to increase his prostration; he chewed up a cigar, and gulped it down; he drank swallow after swallow of tartar-emetic solution, a most nauseating and relaxing preparation. But still, though deadly sick, the sweat pouring out of his forehead in clear drops, and though seemingly stretched, on this Procrustean bed, at least three inches beyond his natural stature, his muscles showed no disposition to relinquish their grasp upon the bone. The surgeons again and again exerted all their strength upon the passive and suspended limb, but it was without effect. They spoke a few words to each other, and at length concluded to remit the extension for a few minutes, in order to rest themselves.

It was, indeed, not only necessary for them, but for the man also, whose frame, it was justly feared, would not bear such unremitted torture. He seemed reprieved, in truth, by even the trifling respite that they granted him, and looked at the Herculean tar, as, in obedience to orders, he walked up toward the slender and elegantly-wrought brass block, with steps that might have been impressed by an infant, which yielded only inch by inch the play that he had been so long and diligently accumulating upon the rope; he regarded him, I say, with a grim satisfaction, not unmixed with a tiger-like expression about the eyes and corners of the mouth, which bespoke any thing but pure and cordial affection.

But far from gaining the so much-coveted disenthralment, to the full of his desires, the cords were only partially slackened, and he was barely allowed to catch a glimpse of that freedom which would have been to him

I had seen many operations and exhibitions; but in none that I assisted at, was I ever so struck with the utter inefficiency of the measures resorted to, which yet seemed all of the most appropriate and potential kind. I knew that there was no fault in the operation, and that every expedient was strictly in accordance with the rules.

'He bears that stretching well,' said Parcels, one of the young ?l?ves. 'The dislocation must be into the ischiatic notch.'

'It is,' replied Berry. 'The thigh should be pulled up more. Rhodes, instead of sending you up there again, to straddle over this poor fellow, we'd better put you at the halyards, and let Featherbody mount the rostrum.'

'That bone is just at this time encased in an impenetrable mail of rigid muscles. If you broke that, you would break an iron bar of equal size,' replied Parcels.

'In truth,' said Berry, 'the relaxing medicines and bleeding seem to have had little effect in weakening them. How much blood did you take, Parcels, before he was brought in?'

'Two pounds.'

'He has lost two here, and I should think he might spare a couple more.'

'Yes, and two more added to them, before the bone would be in its place,' remarked Parcels.

'You have no faith in nauseating mixtures, and debilitating remedies?'

'You will certainly be expelled the church.'

'There is,' continued Parcels,'a kind of galvanism residing in the muscles, which emanates from the brain; and all bodily remedies, while they leave this organ in a state of intense action and excitement, can have no beneficial effect in subduing them.'

'Ego cycnus!' said Aster, in a kind of Latin, which must be taken literally to be understood, 'I swan! this is the most untractable member that ever came under my notice. We shall have to subscribe for a high-heeled boot for the other leg, if we carry this out much farther.'

'Another trial of doctoring, I think, will shortly break off the matter in debate,' observed Berry.

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