"Why!" he snapped back. "Don't you know that there are still hundreds of boys coming down the line wounded and broken?"
"Yes," I answered. "But why should that stop you?"
Then I got it. "Jim," he said, "there might be one of those boys that would require the bed that I occupied, and my being there might necessitate that lad having to go to one of the hospitals perhaps right in the north of England. No, Jim, I will wait till all of them have been set on their feet again before I make application for a bed in one of the London hospitals."
And so Captain McMahon heroically continued to bear his suffering rather than keep one of the derelicts from France out of a bed. Next to Sir Arthur Pearson, he was dearest to the men in the Bungalow. They loved him, and there was not one of the two hundred and fifty men there who would not gladly have allowed him to walk over his body if it would be for his good. The "Skipper" was a Man, a man's man, a father to all of us, whom it was good to know. When the boys were worried they took their troubles to him. He made all their worries his own, and it was surprising what a big load of care he could carry.
Mrs. Craven, "Sister Pat," and Captain McMahon were leaders in the life at St. Dunstan's. But the whole place was animated with the same spirit that inspired them; the spirit that manifested itself in its fulness in Sir Arthur Pearson, and in a lesser degree in every student. It made all the boys workers, and created in them the desire to help others, to make the world a little better for their being in it, even if they had to work under a handicap.
CHAPTER VI
AIR RAIDS
When I left the shores of France I thought I was permanently out of danger from the death-dealing missiles of the enemy; not that I cared much then; I had received such a blow that I should not greatly have regretted a stroke that would have ended my earthly career. But the arm of Germany was long, the ingenuity of the War Lords great; by means of their magnificent submarines they had carried the war to the shores of England, so by their superb air force they were to bring it to the heart of London; indeed, by their Zeppelins, those crowning failures of their efficiency, they had already done that.
I had been in London but a short time when, on Saturday, July 21st, 1917, I had my first experience of an air raid in a crowded city. At the time I was in St. Mark's Hospital, undergoing my preliminary training for St. Dunstan's, at the moment in the ward receiving instruction in Braille. Shortly before noon some one entered the room and exclaimed jubilantly that a vast flock of aeroplanes, estimated at from thirty to sixty, were manœuvring at a great height in battle formation over the city, and we were congratulating ourselves that the War Office had at length aroused itself and was demonstrating its ability to cope with any attack by heavier-than-air machines that the enemy might send over. As we listened to the news and longed for our eyes that we might have a sight of this spectacle, the thunderous report of a bursting bomb undeceived us. These planes were not marked with the friendly tricoloured circles, but with the ominous cross. There were cries of terror, a hurrying of feet, a near panic as bomb succeeded bomb. Many of us had been disciplined to war conditions, had dodged bombs at the Somme and Vimy Ridge, dodged them when shrapnel was spraying about us and machine-gun and rifle bullets made the air hiss on every side; but this attack in the heart of a great city was not without its terrifying aspect. After having escaped death on the battle-field, it would be horrible to have to meet it in the tumbling ruins of a crushed building. But we faced the situation stoically. London and its suburbs had over 7,000,000 people, and, by the theory of chances, we concluded that we were not likely to be hit.