It was broad daylight again, and the Artillery activity was steadily increasing. They wandered down the dusty bottom of the ravine, Mac directing the way as best he could. At the bottom of the ravine, near a battery in furious action, they had to halt for some time owing to a congestion in the traffic through the big communication saps. Mac wanted to go along the top, but the other fellow refused flatly as there were too many bullets flying, and so they had to progress when opportunity offered through the hot dusty crowded saps. They were close to the sea by No. 2 Outpost, but the hospital boats had ceased taking wounded off from there, owing to the heavy rifle fire. Mac decided to go on to Anzac without delay as, with weakness growing, he wished to keep going until he reached a hospital-ship. Dragging one foot after another, he plodded on through the interminable trenches, though swiftly his strength was going and he had to rest every twenty yards.
His companion, taking the wrong turning, led him over an unnecessary hill, which nearly exhausted his walking powers, but about nine o'clock they at length reached the Cove and the clearing station. Mac's head was again dressed, he swallowed with the deepest joy many cups of tea, bid farewell to his escort, and lay down on some bales of hay to await the arrival of a hospital-ship, of which there were none at present off the landing.
CHAPTER XXIV
THE END OF MAC'S CAMPAIGNING DAYS
About midday a hospital-ship anchored off the shore, and some one led him along the pier to a barge, from which he was transferred to a mine-sweeper, and at last was swung upwards by a crane on to the deck of the ship. He was almost the first on board. Kind hands and affectionate voices welcomed him, and tender hands led him along the deck to a surgery. The fresh cooling sea air had revived him, and here at last, with skilled hands and cool lotions easing his aching head, he felt supremely happy.
The blood and grime removed from his face, and a neat white bandage round his head, a sister took him in charge and guided him far down to a ward low in the ship. She gave him a comfortable bunk, and swiftly set about spring-cleaning him. She speedily unclothed him by running a pair of scissors along the sleeves and legs of his blood-clotted garments, giving him his precious bandages and identification disc wrapped up in a handkerchief; then sponged him all over in deliciously cool water, decked him in a shirt, and spread a sheet over him. Next came a large bowl of hot soup, which Mac lost no time in putting within his hungry frame, and finally a glass of port. The fine sister chatted away the while with pleasant little laughs and entertaining remembrances, as if she had not been working in those steamy holds for days and nights with scarce a rest.
Many others were brought into the ward, and it was soon full of seriously wounded men, Imperial, Australian and New Zealand. M.O.'s and sisters worked incessantly at the heavy dressings.
The hours drifted slowly by, for though he had had no sleep for four days and nights, and little for several nights before that, he did not sleep, and the passage of time was marked only by the arrival of meals and the pleasant relief of fresh dressings. He was always hungry from long under-feeding, and relished everything which came his way. For him there was no difference between night and day, and he often lost count of time. There was only one sister in the ward, a splendid Queensland girl, who toiled for almost all of the twenty-four hours in the hot, steaming atmosphere, going steadily the round of the heavy dressings, starting again at the beginning as soon as she came to the last.
The ordinary routine work had to be left to the orderlies, and these men angered Mac so at times that he wished they might be lined up in a row and shot. Recruited, it seemed, from the lowest order of some community, they made use of this opportunity, when all senior ranks were too fully occupied with more immediate work of their own, to loaf, to rob the wounded sometimes, and to ignore many simple duties which for many men made all the difference between pain and comfort. Most of the wounded suffered from dysentery in a more or less acute form, and frequently seriously wounded men had to struggle out of bed to attend to the wants of those incapable of moving. Some exceptions there were, but the casual neglect in Mac's ward made him fume with anger.
But the sister and the padre were splendid people. The padre came to the ward to assist the sister with her dressings, and came to Mac to break gently the news that he would never see again. Mac had no illusions on this point, and laughed at the padre and his serious, funereal attitude till he resumed his normal cheery manner, when he and Mac soon discovered that they had many great friends in common in New Zealand, for the padre hailed from those parts too. The padre and sister became great friends of Mac, and in odd moments they sat on his bunk and yarned away with him, the padre about the Sounds' country which he and Mac knew so well, about what work Mac might do in future, and about all sorts of things, and with the sister he arranged some day to stay on the far back Queensland station.