Their journey was not long, but it was difficult, for the little army was advancing, and the old Doctor and his pupil were hardly settled in their new canvas and waggon quarters before the attack was in full progress and the bearers were coming in with the wounded, the dying, and, those whom the doctors pronounced already dead.
It was a terrible time—hours of horror, during which, heedless of the roar of cannon and the crash of musketry, the busy surgeons toiled on, till the lines of bandaged sufferers lay increasing fast in the one calm, comparatively silent spot at the back of the fortifications that were being attacked.
There was a tent or two as well where the surgeons worked at their terrible task, and it happened towards the height of the terrible conflict, when the British soldiers were struggling and gaining their way step by step, every foot being desperately contested by the brave army of the French General Montcalm, that Phil was busy in a wide sheltered spot beneath the enemy’s lines, tin cup in one hand, holding on to the iron handle of a bucket with the other, the bucket pretty full of water, and swinging between him and a drummer boy.
Those two went steadily on, to stop whenever a beseeching face was turned to them. Then the pail was set down, Phil dipped the cup and went down on one knee to hold it to some poor sufferer’s lips, always receiving for his thanks the reverently uttered words, “God bless you, boy.”
The blessings called down upon the little fellow’s head came in hundreds that day, in English and in French, and somehow in the excitement Phil, after the first few minutes, never saw the horrors by which he was surrounded; but the boy noted only that hands were raised to him for water, and he and the drummer filled and emptied that swinging bucket again and again.
It was during the height of the attack upon the fortifications that the bearers carried one who seemed to be an officer inside the surgeon’s tent, and he was not carried out again, but laid up on a roughly-folded waggon-cloth, suffering and patient, for the surgeons could do no more. And from time to time an officer rushed up, to enter the tent, say a few words, receive a reply, and rush out again to hurry away into the smoke where the soldiers were still fighting on.
It happened, too, that with the bucket freshly filled from the water-cart, Phil and his comrade had just reached the end of a line of wounded men when one of the doctors came to the door of the tent, saw them and shouted:
“Here, boys! Water!”
They trotted up together, entered the tent, and the next minute Phil was down on one knee holding the cup to the wounded officer’s lips, while he drank with avidity, draining the cup, and sighing deeply as he noted how young was the face of his attendant waiting to give him more.