Doc ignored them and studied his Venesection Mannekin. “According to this,” he said thoughtfully, “you’re supposed to take the blood from behind the ear, being as how it’s his head as seems to be troubling him; but I ain’t never done it, and I don’t propose to start now. If a ship’s leaking, it don’t matter what part you pump water out of!”

He raised Nathaniel’s arm, tightened the skin, set the lancet against it and pulled the trigger. The blood oozed out in a slow dark stream which soon ran more swiftly. Doc solicitously watched Nathaniel’s face.

As for the Indians, all of those horrible, black-faced creatures clapped their hands tightly over their mouths and stood so, like children struggling to repress unseemly mirth—except that their gesture was one of amazement: not of merriment.

Nathaniel groaned, raising a hand uncertainly to his head.

“There,” Doc said comfortingly, “you’ll be all right now, just as soon as we get a little food into you! What is it these red pole-cats think they’re eating, anyway?”

He staggered back from the circle of onlookers, stumbled to the fire, and, as if to save himself from falling, put out his hand and lifted the pot from the forked stick on which it hung. “Why,” he said, “I believe it’s succotash!” He helped himself freely with a piece of bark; then nodded profoundly. “Yes: it’s succotash: not bad, either!”

He dipped out a little and fed it to Nathaniel. The very sight of a person eating made my stomach squeak like an ungreased boot.

“Here,” Doc said testily to the oldest Indian, “put him on the ground, where he can lean against the canoe!” He motioned impatiently, and the Indian did as he said.

Doc, hunkered beside Nathaniel, fed him slowly; and the seven red men, wilder and more malignant in appearance than any human beings I had ever before seen or imagined, stood there without a word and watched this high-handed disposition of their food.

Verrieul coughed apologetically. “When you’re finished,” he reminded Doc, “you might pay a little attention to us. It was I who told them what a great medicine man you are.”

Doc hung the kettle back over the fire and came to us. “By Job,” he said plaintively, “these red rattlesnakes certainly make me forget myself. I guess maybe it’s because they kind of startle me and get me all upset!”

He rounded furiously on the leader of our captors. “Look here, you old Sponge-belly! What you want to keep these boys tied up this way for? Ain’t you got no trace of decency?” He pulled and twitched, at our fastenings, and in a moment we were loose.