“But can you stick it? I’ll be gone an hour,” said the tommy doubtfully. Bob’s voice was scarcely more than a whisper, and there was a pause between his words when his thoughts failed him.
“I’ll stick it. Make it as quick as you can,” he answered.
The Britisher still lingered. Bob heard him murmur something which sounded like, “Well, looks like it’s got to be done.” The next moment Bob heard a garment of some sort flung down and spread out on the snow beside him, and felt himself lifted cautiously by the shoulders and dragged, before he could protest at the handling, on to something like a blanket. “Carry on now. I’ll keep my feet movin’,” said the tommy, and with the words he ran off into the darkness.
Bob felt with his hands of the fabric spread under him, touched a cloth sleeve and knew that he was lying on the soldier’s overcoat. A faint thrill at this generous act touched his dulled senses. But he no longer felt the cold and did not care whether he lay on snow or blankets. He had a feeling now that all was settled. At moments he even thought that he had got back to his station and was in bed. At any rate he knew that he had not to think or plan any more. He fell asleep.
CHAPTER IV
THE SILLY ASS
The hours Bob next lived through were a sort of waking dream. He had moments when he knew well enough that he was being lifted by careful hands into an ambulance which then began to glide on sledge runners over the frozen plain. He felt blankets wrapped about him and, with the first returning warmth, his leg began to stab him again with throbs of anguish. But these half-lucid minutes were followed by long intervals of dreaming that took him hundreds of miles away from the snowy plains, to days that came back to him vaguely now as part of another life.
At last, after a very long time—days or weeks, he could not tell which—he opened his eyes and looked around him with fairly untroubled brain. He was in a room in a Russian house, for a porcelain stove occupied a good part of it. Outside the low window he saw the everlasting snow, some trees, their bare branches swaying in the keen wind, and, in a moment, a soldier walking rapidly toward shelter.
Inside the room, at the foot of his cot, was a small hospital table, with gauze, bandages and bottles upon it. The walls were newly white-washed, two other cots lay beyond his, and a faint smell of chloroform lingered on the air. He turned his heavy head and saw an officer seated beside him.
“Well, Bob, how is it?” inquired the surgeon, taking the patient’s hand in his.