"
With this, the missionary, again yielding to exhaustion,
relapsed into his fainting-fit.
"He is dying!" said Kennedy.
"No," replied the doctor, bending over him, "but he
is very weak; so let us lay him under the awning."
And they did gently deposit on their blankets that
poor, wasted body, covered with scars and wounds, still
bleeding where fire and steel had, in twenty places, left
their agonizing marks. The doctor, taking an old handkerchief,
quickly prepared a little lint, which he spread
over the wounds, after having washed them. These rapid
attentions were bestowed with the celerity and skill of a
practised surgeon, and, when they were complete, the doctor,
taking a cordial from his medicine-chest, poured a few
drops upon his patient's lips.
The latter feebly pressed his kind hands, and scarcely
had the strength to say, "Thank you! thank you!"
The doctor comprehended that he must be left perfectly
quiet; so he closed the folds of the awning and resumed
the guidance of the balloon.
The latter, after taking into account the weight of the
new passenger, had been lightened of one hundred and
eighty pounds, and therefore kept aloft without the aid of
the cylinder. At the first dawn of day, a current drove it
gently toward the west-northwest.
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