Someone laughing? Carl opened his eyes. Of course they were laughing at him, lying at the feet of his camel, from whose back he had fallen in his sleep, with his arms tightly hugging the camel’s legs.
CHAPTER XI
UNDER THE KNIFE
CARL, endeavoring to get to his feet, was aware of a severe pain in his side. His left foot, too, pained him and was unable to support any weight. Struggling at last to an upright position, he staggered forward a few steps, only to lurch head first into the burning desert sand. Immediately the other tourists were off their camels and at his side. A hasty examination proved that his left ankle was badly broken and that, from all appearances, he had suffered internal injuries in his fall from the camel.
Everything possible was done to relieve his pain and make him as comfortable as possible. With great care he was literally hoisted aboard one of the camels, and strapped on its back, where he was held secure from a further fall by one of the guides who rode behind him.
The place of Carl’s accident was near the Wadi Draa River, flowing past the southern end of the Atlas Mountains, so they were still some two hundred and fifty miles, about four days’ ride from Mogador, the terminus of the caravan.
Accordingly the caravan headed for the nearest town, Glisscim, but here they found only a native doctor, to whose care none was willing to entrust the sick man. Securing an automobile, the only one to be had and a ramshackle bouncing affair at that, Carl was driven to Mogador. Here, too, disappointment was in store for him. Suffering although he was from the pain in his side and ankle, Carl would not consent to gamble his chances on the more or less speculative knowledge of the only doctor in that locality.
Another hundred miles of pain-tortured automobile ride and he reached Marrakesh, the beautiful southern capital of Morocco, lying at the foot of the Atlas Mountains, whose snow covered peaks provided a wondrous contrast to the great groves of palms that formed a background for the city. It was at Marrakesh that the celebrated feudal chieftain of the southern country, El Hadj Thami Glaouri, made his home, being attracted to the city by its great groves of cypress and olive trees and its wonderful gardens of tropical beauty.
At the hospital, Carl, much to his delighted surprise, was placed under the care of the prominent French physician Dr. Thuillier. After a thorough examination, which confirmed the belief of the tourists, Carl was placed in bed. The hospital was rather crowded with soldiers wounded in the war, but room was found for him in one of the wards.
That was on a Thursday night. The following morning X-ray pictures were taken to ascertain the true nature of the fracture in his leg, and Friday not being an operating day, but a “meatless one,” as was laughingly explained to him, Carl had to wait for “butcher day,” which was Saturday, for the operation.
Among the nurses at the hospital there were a few white women, one of whom, Carl soon learned, was an American, Grace Huntington. She came from New York, where she had been employed as a stenographer and secretary prior to the outbreak of the war. When the war came she went to France as a nurse, like so many of her American sisters. During her service with the armies she had met Dr. Thuillier, who had accompanied a regiment of semi-savage Moroccan soldiers to France. He, seeing that she made a wonderful nurse, made her an attractive offer, which, in her enthusiasm, she readily accepted, going to Marrakesh at the termination of her work in France.