e ambulances would carry all they could and the
others would be left. This was astounding information. My first impulse
was, of course, to return to my regiment, but the doctor negatived that
emphatically by saying, "You are under my orders here, and my
instructions are to send you all directly back to the ford and across
the river; and then the army is already on the march, and you might as
well attempt to find a needle in a haystack as undertake to find your
regiment in these woods in this darkness." If his first reason had not
been sufficient, the latter one was quite convincing. I realized at once
the utter madness of any attempt to reach the regiment, at the same time
that in this night tramp back over the river, some eight miles, I had a
job that would tax my strength to the utmost. The doctor had found one
of the men of our regiment who was sick, and bidding us help each other
started us back over the old plank-road.

How shall I describe the experiences of that night's tramp? The night
was intensely dark and it was raining hard. The plank-road was such
only in name. What few remnants remained of the old planks were rotten
and were a constant menace to our footing. I must have had more than a
dozen falls during that march from those broken planks, until face,
arms, and legs were a mass of bruises. We were told to push forward as
rapidly as we could to keep ahead of the great rabble of sick and
wounded which was to follow immediately. This we tried to do, though the
road was now crowded with the occupants of the other hospitals already
on their way. These men were all either sick or wounded, and were making
their way with the greatest difficulty, most of them in silence, but
there was an occasional one whose tongue gave expression to every
possible mishap in outbursts of the most shocking profanity. There were
enough of these to make the night hideous.

Our road was a track just wide enough to admit a single wagon through
the densest jungle of timber and undergrowth I ever saw. I cannot
imagine the famed jungles of Africa more dense or impenetrable, and it
seemed to be without end as we wearily plodded on hour after hour, now
stepping into a hole and sprawling in the mud, again stumbling against a
stolid neighbor and being in turn jostled by him, with an oath for being
in his way. Many a poor fellow fell, too exhausted to rise, and we were
too nearly dead to do more than mechanically note the fact.

Towards morn