“Wait a moment,” I replied, “till I go to the door and look out. I want to see how many there are.” My object was to get out into the hall, go and wake the Doctor, and inform him of this sad case.
“No, no, no, no, no, no!” he said, quickly, at the same time jumping about four feet high, and coming down on the floor like a thunderbolt; “don’t open the door! They would all rush in!”
“Only the hall-door,” I persisted, beginning to rise. “They’re not in the hall. Stay here, and I’ll get you a musket to defend yourself with.”
The muskets belonging to the guards off duty were kept on a kind of rack in the hall, immediately adjoining the room I was in. I did not wait to hear any further remonstrances on the part of Thomas, but leaving him standing there trembling, as only a man suffering from delirium tremens can tremble, I seized my two crutches—for I used two then—stalked to the door, went out into the hall, closed the door after me and hastened to the room in which the Doctor slept, which was on the same floor.
It was some little time before I succeeded in getting him awake, and when I did, he growled out in an ill humor, asked what in the deuce I wanted, imagined I was some one come to rob him, seized his revolver, cocked it, threatened to blow my unhappy brains out, called to me to “halt, or I was a dead man;” and, in fact, he was, altogether, quite playful.
“Don’t shoot! Don’t shoot!” I fairly yelled. “It is I, Doctor—I, John Smith!”
“What do you want—waking a fellow at this time of night?” he demanded. “Are you sick? Do you want medicine? Go to the cadet and tell him to give you:
℞ Sac., Satur. ʒi, Ext. Vr. Viride, ℈ii, Emetia, ʒi, Ol. Tiglii, gtt, xx. Acid. Tannicum, ℥iss, Fowler’s Sol. Ars., ℥ss, Aqua distillata, ℥iiiss. Coch. mag. every ten minutes, till relieved; and if——”
“Stop! stop, for suffering humanity’s sake!” I interrupted. “I am not sick, at all. On the contrary, am quite well—thank you. But——”
“I came to tell you that Mr. Thomas is raving mad. He imagines that a provost-guard is after him, and that he is to be shot as a deserter; and he is scampering about over the ward, like a rat in a hot stove. He talks strangely about cutting people’s hearts out; and he may hurt some of the boys.”