they live.

Next day we proceeded to unpack our stores, and to try to
make a hospital out of these empty rooms, and then only did
we discover that an overwhelming misfortune had overtaken
us. By some extraordinary circumstance which has never been
explained, we had lost practically the whole of the surgical
instruments which we had brought out of Antwerp with such
trouble and risk. They were tied up in sheets, and my own
impression is that they were stolen. However that may be, here
we were in as ludicrous a position as it is possible for even a
hospital to occupy, for not only had we none of the ordinary
instruments, but, as if Fate meant to have a good laugh at us,
we had a whole series of rare and expensive tools. We had no
knives, and no artery forceps, and not a stitch of catgut; but we
had an oesophagoscope, and the very latest possible pattern of
cystoscope, and a marvellous set of tools for plating fractures. It
reminded one of the costume of an African savage--a silk hat,
and nothing else. Some Belgian doctors who had been working
there lent us a little case of elementary instruments, and that
was absolutely all we had.

Scarcely had we made this terrible discovery, when an
ambulance arrived with two wounded officers, and asked if we
were ready to admit patients. We said, "No," and I almost think
that we were justified. The men in charge of the ambulance
seemed very disappointed, and said that in that case there was
nothing for it but to leave the wounded men on their stretchers
till an ambulance train should come to take them to Calais,
which they might ultimately reach in two or three days' time.
They were badly wounded, and we thought that at least we
could do better than that; so we made up a couple of beds in
one of the empty rooms, and took them in. Little did we dream
of what we were in for. An hour later another ambulance
arrived, and as we had started, we thought that we might as
well fill up the ward we had begun. That did it. The sluice-gates
were opened, and the wounded poured in. In four days we
admitted three hundred and fifty patients, all of them with
injuries of the most terrible nature. The cases we had seen at
Antwerp were nothing to these. Arms and legs were torn right
off or hanging by the merest shreds, ghastly wounds of the
head left the brain exposed. Many of the poor fellows were
taken from the ambulances dead, and of the others at least half
must have died.

For four days and f