Tomasos Fortune and Other Stories | Page 2

assistants and the appliances of a field-hospital.
Out of this little nucleus sprang the largest depot for sick and wounded that was formed during the campaign. We were within easy reach of headquarters, and I was fortunately allowed a free hand. Thus our establishment in the desert grew daily more important, and finally superseded the hospital at headquarters.
We had a busy time, for the main column had now closed up with the first expeditionary force, and our troops were in touch with the enemy not forty miles away from me.
In the course of time--when the authorities learnt to cease despising the foe, which is a little failing in British military high places--it was deemed expedient to fortify us, and then, in addition to two medical assistants, I was allowed three Government nurses. This last piece of news was not hailed with so much enthusiasm as might have been expected. I am not in favour of bringing women anywhere near the front. They are, for their own sakes and for the peace of mind of others, much better left behind. If they are beyond a certain age they break down and have to be sent back at considerable trouble--that is to say, an escort and an ambulance cart, of which latter there are never enough. If they are below the climacteric--ever so little below it--they cause mischief of another description, and the wounded are neglected; for there is no passion of the human heart so cruel and selfish as love.
"I am sorry to hear it," I said to light-hearted little Sammy Fitz- Warrener of the Naval Brigade, who brought me the news.
"Sorry to hear it? Gad! I shouldn't be. The place has got a different look about it when there are women-folk around. They are so jolly clever in their ways--worth ten of your red-cross ruffians."
"That is as may be," I answered, breaking open the case of whisky which Sammy had brought up on the carriage of his machine-gun for my private consumption.
He was taking this machine-gun up to the front, and mighty proud he was of it.
"A clever gun," he called it; "an almighty clever gun."
He had ridden alongside of it--sitting on the top of his horse as sailors do--through seventy miles of desert without a halt; watching over it and tending it as he might have watched and tended his mother, or perhaps some other woman.
"Gad! doctor," he exclaimed, kicking out his sturdy legs, and contemplating with some satisfaction the yellow hide top-boots which he had bought at the Army and Navy Stores. (I know the boots well, and--avoid them.) "Gad! doctor, you should see that gun on the war- path. Travels as light as a tricycle. And when she begins to talk- -my stars! Click-click-click-click! For all the world like a steam-launch's engine--mowing 'em down all the time. No work for you there. It will be no use you and your satellites progging about with skewers for the bullet. Look at the other side, my boy, and you'll find the beauty has just walked through them."
"Soda or plain?" I asked, in parenthesis.
"Soda. I don't like the flavour of dead camel. A big drink, please. I feel as if I were lined with sand-paper."
He slept that night in the little shanty built of mud and roofed chiefly with old palm-mats, which was gracefully called the head surgeon's quarters. That is to say, he partook of such hospitality as I had to offer him.
Sammy and I had met before he had touched a rope or I a scalpel. We hailed from the same part of the country--down Devonshire way; and, to a limited extent, we knew each other's people--which little phrase has a vast meaning in places where men do congregate.
We turned in pretty early--I on a hospital mattress, he in my bed; but Sam would not go to sleep. He would lie with his arms above his head (which is not an attitude of sleep) and talk about that everlasting gun.
I dozed off to the murmur of his voice expatiating on the extreme cunning of the ejector, and awoke to hear details of the rifling.
We did not talk of home, as do men in books when lying by a camp- fire. Perhaps it was owing to the absence of that picturesque adjunct to a soldier's life. We talked chiefly of the clever gun; and once, just before he fell asleep, Sammy returned to the question of the nurses.
"Yes," he said, "the head saw-bones down there told me to tell you that he had got permission to send you three nurses. Treat 'em kindly, Jack, for my sake. Bless their hearts! They mean well."
Then he fell asleep, and left me thinking of his words, and of the spirit which had prompted them.
I knew really nothing of this man's life, but he