“Well, good-bye, in case!” said Phil shortly, and stepped out of the tent.
“Here, what’s this you’re doing, Phil?” gasped Tony hurriedly, following him, and looking searchingly at him as if to read his inmost thoughts.
“I’m going to help, Tony. The men are dying like flies, poor fellows! and the hospital staff is simply overwhelmed. Volunteers are asked for, and I’m one. At any other time I wouldn’t dream of it, but now it’s different. Besides, this inaction is too trying, and I feel that I must have something to occupy my thoughts.”
“Don’t say no more, mate, I’m with yer,” Tony blurted out, flushing red with shame and grasping his friend’s hand. “It’s just what a chap like you would do, and I’m blowed if I don’t come along too.”
It was a desperate undertaking for Tony, for, like all uneducated people, he had a far greater dread of cholera than others better informed. But his friend’s decision was enough for him, and, swallowing his fears with a gulp, he wiped the perspiration from his forehead and followed Phil to the hospital.
“There, it’s not half so bad as you imagined, and, for the matter of that, not nearly so serious an undertaking as I thought,” said Phil, some two weeks later, as he and Tony sat on the door-step of the hospital, taking a little fresh air after their unpleasant work.
“No, ’tain’t as bad, but it’s trying,” remarked Tony thoughtfully.
And he was right. It had been trying work. Gifted with considerable common sense and a fair education, Phil had rapidly picked up the duties of a nurse sufficiently well to be able to render real help to his comrades who were suffering from cholera, and was now in charge of a large ward, with Tony to help him. And together they had worked day and night, relieving one another, and earning the praise of doctors and patients alike.
“You shall never regret this sacrifice,” said the doctor gratefully. “I have already mentioned you to the colonel; and be sure, when honours are given at the end of the campaign, you will not be overlooked. I know what it means to you, and that you would far rather face the guns of the Russians than this disease.”
“It’s not so bad, now we’re used to it, sir,” said Phil; “but I own I’d far rather be in the fighting-line; not so much because I fear the disease, as because it is so distressing to see all these poor fellows die in agony.”