Again he was slipping. He would just let himself slip. That was best. When you slipped the hammer-blows became muffled. They did not hurt so much; only when you slipped you had to cough to keep back the trickling thing. The strong arm of the hospital corps man straightened him up. Apparently some one did not want him to slip. This must be the man who ran the hammers and wanted to keep them busy—those noiseless, merciless hammers in the black night.
"It's lucky just to get it in the leg," said one of the two sitting cases opposite, with a red spot on a white wrapping showing through his slit trousers' leg.
"Bang in the middle of the head's better than that," said the other, who had his arm in a sling.
"God, yes!"
Up and down hill the ambulance, its green curtains drawn on its secrets, ran smoothly on past the long trains of motor-trucks that fed the army, past well-muscled, comely, eager, whistling, and singing youth on the march, through villages and towns, through the orderly world of health and action to that quiet world where the nurses smiled, inside the long, low buildings connected by gravelled paths.
Phil knew that he had arrived because he had been lifted down from somewhere onto something, which was a signal for the hammers to do a snaredrum dance which made him unconscious for a moment. The hammers did not like him to be unconscious. Having beaten him out of consciousness, they beat him back to it with a different kind of tattoo. Then, he was being carried along in a sort of cradle.
"Keep his head up!" said the little ticket which came with all who were sent to the human repair shop.
"Very particular about that!" insisted the tired medical corps man, who had held Phil up for the whole journey.
Phil had only the sense of being laid on something soft, with his shoulders propped up against something still softer. Then they were taking off his clothes. These people were very kind, but they could not stop the hammers; nothing could. Perhaps they would let him slip down, down, down, on that downy pillow till the hammers stopped. He would tell them about the hammers; then they would understand why he wanted to slip. So he tried to speak, though he was uttering only a gurgle and he could not have heard his own voice if he had been articulate. The hammers were drowning his voice with their beat. They did not mean to let him slip. If he could not hear his own voice, how could he expect the kind people to hear it?
A young surgeon used his stethoscope; then waited on his superior, Dr. Smythe, to come before attempting any redressing.