And saying these words, she followed the doctor down into the cockpit, where the wounded lay, some in hammocks, some on sail cloth, and some on the naked planks.
And there her courage, her humanity, and, above all, her divine purity, so impressed the ship’s surgeon, that he did utterly forget that she was a young lady, and he made her as useful as if she had been a medical student.
At the surgeon’s orders, with her sharp scissors and steady hand she ripped up the sleeves of the sailors’ wounded arms, or the trousers of their wounded legs, with equal promptness. She cut sticking plaster into long, slender slips, and watched the doctor to see how he brought the gaping lips of mere flesh wounds together, and closed them, by laying across them, at right angles, these delicate strips of plaster, and then bandaged them up with linen.
She watched him perform this simple operation once. And then she assured him that she could do that as well as he could. And after that, while the surgeon attended to the more serious cases—probing wounds, extracting balls, and even amputating limbs—Britomarte closed and bandaged all the simple flesh wounds with a skill equal to that of the surgeon himself, and with a tenderness that drew from her rough patients many thanks and blessings.
And all this time the roar of battle went on overhead and all around her. Occasionally a ball struck near.
At length, however, the cannonading ceased, and a noise and confusion of another sort was heard above—a mighty cheering and hurrahing and running to and fro.
“What does that mean?” exclaimed the doctor.
But nobody could answer him, and he was too busy with his wounded to go and see for himself.
Britomarte had dressed the last wound of her last patient, and was holding a glass of brandy and water to his lips, for he was faint from the loss of blood, when another injured man—a young midshipman—was brought down.
And he reported that the captain had resolved to carry the enemy by the board.