“There will be wounded men,” she said, “and no one to attend to them in the excitement of the action.”
And she arose and opened her trunks and boxes, and took from them all the soft old linen she could find, and sat down to tear it into bandages, and having done that, she began to pick the shreds that were left into lint.
While Britomarte was engaged in this humane work, her panic-stricken companion lay in one of the berths, with her head under the cover, trying to deafen herself to the sound of the battle.
When the shrieks and groans of the wounded and dying began to mingle with the roar of cannon and the crash of timbers, then Britomarte gathered up her linen bandages and lint, and put them in a little basket with a pair of scissors, a flat knife, and needles and thread, and with the basket on her arm, she went up on deck.
Everybody was too busy there to see or stop her.
Through the black and sulphurous smoke, through pools of blood, between dead bodies, heedless of the cannon balls that tore crashing past her, she made her way to that part of the deck where the ship’s surgeon stood among the wounded, having them carefully carried below.
“Doctor, I have come to take care of these brave fellows,” she said, pausing at his side.
The surgeon looked at her in dismay.
“Young lady, for Heaven’s sake——” he began; but she took the word from his lips.
“Doctor, for Heaven’s sake forget that I am a ‘young lady,’ and look upon me only as a human being, able and willing to be useful!” she said.