It was rather an abrupt transition of thought, and Jim Douglas, who was feeling rather queer from something, he scarcely knew what, looked up at the speaker doubtfully.
"Oh, it is you, Major Erlton," he said slowly. "I thought--I mean I hoped she was here--if she isn't--why, I suppose I'd better go back."
He took his arm off the gun and half-stumbled forward, when Major Erlton flung himself from his horse and laid hold of him.
"You're hit, man--the blood's pouring from your sleeve. Here, off with your coat, sharp!"
"I can't think why it bleeds so?" said Jim Douglas feebly, looking down at a clean cut at the inside of the elbow from which the blood was literally spouting. "It is nothing--nothing at all."
The Major gave a short laugh. "Take the go out of you a bit, though. I'll get a tourniquet on sharp, and send you up in a dhooli."
"What an unlucky devil I am!" muttered Jim Douglas to himself, and the Major did not deny it: he was in a hurry to be off again with the party told to clear the Koodsia Gardens. Which they did successfully before sunrise, when the expedition returned to camp cheering like demons and dragging in the captured guns, on which some of the wounded men sat triumphantly. It was their first real success since Budli-ke-serai, two months before; and they were in wild spirits.
Even the Doctor, fresh from shaking his head over many a form lifted helplessly from the dhoolis, was jubilant as he sorted Jim Douglas' arm.
"Keep you here ten days or so I should say. There's always a chance of its breaking out again till the wound is quite healed. Never mind! You can go into Delhi with the rest of us, before then."
"Yoicks forward!" cried a wounded lad in the cot close by. The Doctor turned sharply.