Tomasos Fortune and Other Stories | Page 3

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 seemed singularly happy,
with that happiness which only comes when daily existence has a

background to it. He spoke habitually of women, as if he loved them all
for the sake of one; and this not being precisely my own position, I was
glad when he fell asleep.
The fort was astir next morning at four. The bugler kindly blew a blast
into our glassless window which left no doubt about it.
"That means all hands on deck, I take it," said Sam, who was one of the
few men capable of good humour before tiffin time.
By six o'clock he was ready to go. It was easy to see what sort of
officer this cheery sailor was by the way his men worked.
While they were getting the machine-gun limbered up, Sam came back
to my quarters, and took a hasty breakfast.
"Feel a bit down this morning," he said, with a gay smile. "Cheap--
very cheap. I hope I am not going to funk it. It is all very well for some
of you long-faced fellows, who don't seem to have much to live for, to
fight for the love of fighting. I don't want to fight any man; I am too
fond of 'em all for that."
I went out after breakfast, and I gave him a leg up on to his very sorry
horse, which he sat like a tailor or a sailor. He held the reins like
tiller-lines, and indulged in a pleased smile at the effect of the yellow
boots.
"No great hand at this sort of thing," he said, with a nod of farewell.
"When the beast does anything out of the common, or begins to make
heavy weather of it, I AM NOT."
He ranged up alongside his beloved gun, and gave the word of
command with more dignity than he knew what to do with.
All that day I was employed in arranging quarters for the nurses. To do
this I was forced to turn some of our most precious stores out into the
open, covering them with a tarpaulin, and in consequence felt all the
more assured that my chief was making a great mistake.
At nine o'clock in the evening they arrived, one of the juniors having
ridden out in the moonlight to meet them. He reported them completely
exhausted; informed me that he had recommended them to go straight
to bed; and was altogether more enthusiastic about the matter than I
personally or officially cared to see.
He handed me a pencil note from my chief at headquarters, explaining
that he had not written me a despatch because he had nothing but a "J"
pen, with which instrument he could not make himself legible. It struck

me that he was suffering from a plethora of assistance, and was anxious
to reduce his staff.
I sent my enthusiastic assistant to the nurses' quarters, with a message
that they were not to report themselves to me until they had had a
night's rest. Then I turned in.
At midnight I was awakened by the orderly, and summoned to the tent
of the officer in command. This youth's face was considerably whiter
than his linen. He was consulting with his second in command, a boy of
twenty-two or thereabouts.
A man covered with sand and blood was sitting in a hammock-chair,
rubbing his eyes, and drinking something out of a tumbler.
"News from the front?" I inquired without ceremony, which hindrance
we had long since dispensed with.
"Yes, and bad news."
It certainly was not pleasant hearing. Some one mentioned the word
"disaster," and we looked at each other with hard, anxious eyes. I
thought of the women, and almost decided to send them back before
daylight.
In a few moments a fresh man was roused out of his bed, and sent full
gallop through the moonlight across the desert to headquarters, and the
officer in command began to regain confidence. I think he extracted it
from the despatch-bearer's tumbler. After all, he was not responsible for
much. He was merely a connecting-link, a point of touch between two
greater men.
It was necessary to get my men to work at once, but I gave particular
orders to leave the nurses undisturbed. Disaster at the front meant hard
work at the rear. We all knew that, and endeavoured to make ready for
a sudden rush of wounded.
The rush began before daylight. As they came in we saw to them,
dressing their wounds