the complaint had deprived the leg of all sensation, began to
pinch and hammer it in such a manner that I absolutely roared
with pain. Thinking that I was as capable of making an
application of thumps and pinches to the part as any one else, I
endeavoured to resist this species of medical treatment. But it
was not so easy a matter to get out of the clutches of the old
wizard; he fastened on the unfortunate limb as if it were
something for which he had been long seeking, and muttering some
kind of incantation continued his discipline, pounding it after a
fashion that set me well nigh crazy; while Mehevi, upon the same
principle which prompts an affectionate mother to hold a
struggling child in a dentist's chair, restrained me in his
powerful grasp, and actually encouraged the wretch in this
infliction of torture.

Almost frantic with rage and pain, I yelled like a bedlamite;
while Toby, throwing himself into all the attitudes of a
posture-master, vainly endeavoured to expostulate with the
natives by signs and gestures. To have looked at my companion,
as, sympathizing with my sufferings, he strove to put an end to
them, one would have thought that he was the deaf and dumb
alphabet incarnated. Whether my tormentor yielded to Toby's
entreaties, or paused from sheer exhaustion, I do not know; but
all at once he ceased his operations, and at the same time the
chief relinquishing his hold upon me, I fell back, faint and
breathless with the agony I had endured.

My unfortunate limb was now left much in the same condition as a
rump-steak after undergoing the castigating process which
precedes cooking. My physician, having recovered from the