I've got on
that side, I can't help being concerned."

"Now, you just forget it and take deep breaths, and say, Charlie, did
you see that case over in Ward 62? That was a wonderful case. The bullet
hit the man in the head and they took the lead out of his stomach. He's
got the bullet on the table beside him now. Talk about bullet
eaters--believe me, those Marines sure are."

I hurled myself back into the conversation.

"I'll take deep breaths if you'll loosen the straps over my chest," I
said, getting madder each minute. "How can I take a full breath when
you've got my lungs strapped down?"

"Well, how's that?" responded the conversational anesthetist, as he
loosened one of the straps. "Now, take one breath of fresh air--one
deep, long breath, now."

I turned my head to one side to escape the fumes from the stifling towel
over my face and made a frenzied gulp for fresh air. As I did so, one
large drop of ether fell on the table right in front of my nose and the
deep long breath I got had very little air in it. I felt I had been
tricked.

"You're pretty cute, old timer, aren't you?" I remarked to the
anesthetist for the purpose of letting him know that I was on to his
game, but either he didn't hear me, or he was too interested in telling
Charlie about his hopes and ambitions to be sent to the front with a
medical unit that worked under range of the guns. He returned to a
consideration of me with the following remark:

"All right, he's under now; where's the next one?"

"The hell I am," I responded hastily, as visions of knives and saws and
gimlets and brain chisels went through my mind. I had no intention or
desire of being conscious when the carpenters and plumbers started to
work on me.

I was completely ignored and the table started moving. We rolled across
the floor and there commenced a clicking under the back of my head, not
unlike the sound made when the barber lowers or elevates the head-rest
on his chair. The table rolled seemingly a long distance down a long
corridor and then came to the top of a slanting runway.

As I started riding the table down the runway I began to see that I was
descending an inclined tube which seemed to be filled with yellow
vapour. Some distance down, the table slowed up and we came to a stop in
front of a circular bulkhead in the tunnel.

There was a door in the centre of the bulkhead and in the centre of the
door there was a small wicket window which opened and two gro