nd.
"And cover me up. I'm perishing with cold." "Here's matches!" "And 'ere;
I've got a bit of candle." "Where?" "Oh, do straighten out my arm!"
"'Ere, 'old out your 'and." "Got it," and the light flickered up again
round the broken figure, and the arm was laid straight. As the touch
came on to the clammy fingers it met something wet and red, and the
prone body quivered all over. "What," said the weak voice--the smile
struggled to come out again, but dropped back even sooner than
before--"have they got my finger too?" Then they covered up the body
with a blanket, wringing wet, and left it to soak and shiver. And that
was one out of more than two hundred.

For hours--and by now it was a month of nights--every man with hands and
legs toiled up and down, up and down, that ladder of pain. By Heaven's
grace the Boers had filled their waggons with the loot of many stores;
there were blankets to carry men in and mattresses whereon to lay them.
They came down with sprawling bearers, with jolts and groans, with "Oh,
put me down; I can't stand it! I'm done anyhow; let me die quiet." And
always would come back the cheery voice from doctor or officer or
pal,--"Done, colour-sergeant! Nonsense, man! Why, you'll be back to duty
in a fortnight." And the answer was another choked groan.

Hour by hour--would day never break? Not yet; it was just twenty minutes
to ten--man by man they brought them down. The tent was carpeted now
with limp bodies. With breaking backs they heaved some shoulder-high
into waggons; others they laid on mattresses on the ground. In the
rain-blurred light of the lantern--could it not cease, that piercing
drizzle to-night of all nights at least? The doctor, the one doctor,
toiled buoyantly on. Cutting up their clothes with scissors, feeling
with light firm fingers over torn chest or thigh, cunningly slipping
round the bandage, tenderly covering up the crimson ruin of strong
men--hour by hour, man by man, he toiled on.

And mark--and remember for the rest of your lives--that Tommy Atkins
made no distinction between the wounded enemy and his dearest friend. To
the men who in the afternoon were lying down behind rocks with rifles
pointed to kill him, who had shot, may be, the comrade of his heart, he
gave the last drop of his water, the last drop of his melting strength,
the last drop of comfort he could wring out of his seared, gallant
soul. In war, they say,--and it is true,--men grow callous: an afternoon
of sh