Only one man groaned dismally, and that was Corporal May.
“I say, mate; got it as bad as that?” said one of the bearers.
“Oh! worse—worse than that,” moaned the corporal. “I’m a dead man.”
“Are you, now?” said one of his fellows in the company. “I say, speak the truth, old chap; speak the truth.”
“Oh!” groaned the corporal. “Why am I here—why am I here?”
“I dunno,” said the bearer he looked at with piteous eyes. “I never was good at riddles, mate. Can’t guess. Ask me another.—There you are, lifted as gently as a babby. You’re only a slightly; I do know that.”
The corporal was borne away, still groaning, and the man who had spoken last handed him some water.
“Cheer up, corporal,” he said; “you’ll be back in the ranks in a week.”
Meanwhile the bearers were busy in the shelter where Captain Roby lay, flushed, fevered, and evidently in great pain, while his brother officers stood round him, eager to do anything to assuage his pangs and see him carefully borne to the wagon in which he was to travel.
“How are you, Roby?” said Dickenson, softly laying a powder-blackened hand upon the injured man’s arm, while the bearers stood waiting to raise him.