in his uniform against the day
he or the stretcher-bearers may rip open the packet to use it. A few of
the men moved restlessly, but most lay very still. A few talked, and one
or two even laughed; and another moaned slowly and at even unbroken
intervals. Two or three lighted cigarettes pin-pricked the gloom in
specks of orange light that rose and fell, glowing and sparkling and
lighting a faint outline of nose and lip and cheeks, sinking again to
dull red. A voice called, feebly at first, and then, as no one answered,
more strongly and insistently, for water. When at last it was brought,
every other man there demanded or pleaded for a drink.

In the other room a clean-edged circle of light blazed in the centre from
an acetylene lamp, leaving the walls and corners in a shadow deep by
contrast to blackness. Half the length of a rough deal table jutted out
of the darkness into the circle of light, and beneath it its black shadow
lay solid half-way across the light ring on the floor.

And into this light passed a constant procession of wounded, some halting
for no more than the brief seconds necessary for a glance at the placing
of a bandage and an injection of an anti-tetanus serum, some waiting for
long pain-laden minutes while a bandage was stripped off, an examination
made, in certain cases a rapid play made with cruel-looking scissors and
knives. Sometimes a man would walk to the table and stoop a bandaged
head or thrust a bandaged hand or arm into the light. Or a stretcher
would appear from the darkness and be laid under the light, while the
doctors' hands busied themselves about the khaki form that lay there.
Some of the wounds were slight, some were awful and unpleasant beyond
telling. The doctors worked in a high pressure of haste, but the
procession never halted for an instant; one patient was hardly clear of
the light-circle before another appeared in it. There were two doctors
there--one a young man with a lieutenant's stars on his sleeve; the
other, apparently a man of about thirty, in bare arms with rolled-up
shirt-sleeves. His jacket, hooked on the back of a broken chair, bore
the badges of a captain's rank. The faces of both as they caught the
light were pale and glistening with sweat. The hands of both as they
flitted and darted about bandages or torn flesh were swift moving, but
steady and unshaking as steel pieces of machinery. Words that passed
between the two were brief to curtness, techni