So the minutes passed. Was it to be failure or success? The Surgeon-Major's fingers were deft--none defter.
The minutes passed to hours. That which had to be done had to be done with one touch light as a feather, steady as a rock, perfect in its performance, or not at all.
And still the minutes passed. Terence O'Brien's face was losing some of its eagerness in sympathy, Dr. Pringle's gaining it in anxiety; for clear, insistent, not-to-be-silenced doubt was making itself heard. Only the _shâhbâsh wallah_ cared not at all as he lay like a corpse.
It had come to the last chance. The last; and Dr. Pringle, with a pulse of wild resentment at his own weakness, realised that his nerve was going, his hand shaking. Still, it had to be done. The splinter of bone raised--the whole process he had thought out as the last chance gone through. He steadied himself and began. Failure or success? Failure--failure--failure! The word beat in on his heart and brain, bringing unsteadiness to both.
"Dresser, the chloroform," said Terence O'Brien, sharply; for there was a quiver in the man's eyelids.
But ere the deadening drug did its work, the _shâhbâsh wallah's_ brain, set free to work along familiar lines by the raising of that splintered bone, had sent its old message to his lips--
In telling the story Dr. Pringle says no more; generally because he cannot.
But after a time, if you are a brother craftsman, he will give you all details of the biggest and most successful operation he ever did.
And though he is slow to allow the corollary, he never denies that the _shâhbâsh wallah's_ verdict put courage into him.
This again is one of poor Craddock's stories which he told me when we were stretching a steel-edged ribbon of rail across shifting sandhills; that ribbon uniting West to East on which, a few years later, he met his death in trying to rid the permanent-way of something which Fate had decreed should be permanently in the way.
It happened in mutiny time; shortly after his appearance down the King's Well, which is told elsewhere. He was serving as a volunteer in one of the breastworks which, as the long hot-weather months dragged by, began to seam and sear the face of the red rocks on the Ridge at Delhi; creeping nearer and nearer to the red face of the city wall.