") "Just you laugh, it will do you no end of good,
don't you know."
But in spite of his heroic attempts at cheering up the sick man, Con
was undergoing a frightful experience. In the first place, there were
practically no medicines and no disinfectants in the shack. The boy
found a cake of tar soap, a bottle of salts, and a package of sulphur.
The latter he burnt daily, sprinkling it on a shovel of coals. The tar
soap was a blessing both to himself and the patient, and the salts they
both swallowed manfully and daily. There was rice, oatmeal, tapioca,
jam, tinned stuffs and prunes, and Con knew as little of cookery as he
knew of nursing, but he made shift with the little store in hand. Snooks
kept alive and the boy remained well. But the nights were long periods
of horror. Snooks would become delirious with fever, and the torture of
the foul disease would become unbearable.
Once they had an out-and-out fight. Snooks, fever crazed, struggled to
get out of bed, crying that he was going to sink his agonized body in
the creek, and Con gripped the poor abhorrent wrists, forcing the man
to his back.
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