ke a disinfecting bath, the nurse said, as she
went about her minute preparations; and the Commanding Officer had gone
with the Staff, and now her poor dear must let himself be got ready.

They wrapped the gaunt skeleton in a white blanket-robe with a heavy
monkish cowl to it, and drew thick padded blanket-stockings over the
ligament-tied, skin-covered bones that served the wasted wretch for legs,
and wheeled in a high, narrow, rubber-wheeled, leather-cushioned
stretcher, and laid him on it, light to lift, a very handful of humanity,
and wheeled him, hooded and head-first, through the tile-floored passage
and out into the golden African sunshine, that baked him gloriously
through the coverings, and so into the main building and down a
tile-floored passage there.

He prayed silently as he was wheeled, with blinded, cowled eyes, through
double doors at the end....

XXVI

The operation was over, and the two Celts, self-appointed to the temporary
posts of assistant-surgeon and anaesthetist, expressed their emotions in
characteristic manner....

"Twelve minutes to a second between the first incision an' the last
stitch.... Och, Owen, the jewel you are! Give me the loan of your fist,
man, this minute."

"What price Sir Jedbury Fargoe the noo? The auld-farrant, scraichin',
obstinate grey gander. A hand I will tak' at him ower the head o' this, or
I'm no Taggart of Taggartshowe. Speaking wi' seriousness, Saxham, it was a
pretty operation, an' performed wi' extraordinary quickness. And I'm sorry
there are no' a baker's dozen o' patients for ye to deal wi'. It's a gran'
treat to see a borrn genius use the knife."

"You could have done it yourself, Major, in less time."

"Maybe I could, and maybe I couldna! I doubt but we Army billies are
better at puttin' men thegither than at takin' them to pieces in the long
run.... Gently now, porter, wi' liftin' the patient.... Ay, McFadyen,
that's richt, gie the man a hand. See to him, Saxham, is he no' fine to
luik at? A wheen blue an' puffy, but the pulse is better than I would have
expeckit. Wheel him awa', nurse; he'll no come round for another hour...."

They wheeled him away, back to the distant ward. The porter followed. The
three surgeons standing by that grim table in the rubber-floored central
space of the amphitheatre, fenced in by students' benches, vacant save for
half a dozen whispering dressers, looked at one another. Bloused and
aproned with sterilised mater