CHAPTER XXVIII
A SITTING CASE
"Yes," murmured the doctor at the casualty clearing station, after he had listened to Phil's heartbeats and examined an opening in a bandage of gauze and cotton. "Yes, another one of the miracles. They say that the Boches in such cases——"
He wiped his brow, his sentence unfinished, as Phil gave another involuntary cough to keep the trickling thing out of his lungs. The appeal of nature, struggling for self-preservation, brought the doctor back to the definite.
"No chance if he is left lying down!" he exclaimed. "We'll make a sitting case of it. Hold him up all the way."
They lifted the limp figure into the ambulance, where two other sitting cases were waiting for further passengers.
"Now, you're off!"
The swift, kindly-springed ambulance sped on out of the zone of shell-fire along the hard roads between the avenues of poplars in the glorious sunshine.
Phil realised that some one was keeping him from slipping and that he would slip and keep on slipping to the very bottom of things if left to himself. Little hammers were beating on his brain. Their tat-tat kept him from any continuity of thought. As soon as he had an idea they crushed it while it was only fluttering in vagueness. Indeed, they moved about over his brain on the lookout to crush any conscious grasp of anything. He would outwit them; he would know what all this was about. Straining his eyelids open—they were as heavy as steel doors—there was only a black curtain in front of his eyes as the reward of the effort. This must mean—but the hammers would not let him find out what it meant. He tried to listen and there was a void beaten by noiseless hammers which were striking into pulp—his brain. He was afraid of something; something ghastly indefinable.