“If any harm was done, your apology has removed it,” he replied most politely.
I looked at him with interest. His voice was not the only weak thing about him. He seemed unable to sit up, but was in a half-reclining position, with his shoulder propped against a stone. He was young.
“What’s the matter?” I asked, sympathizing much.
“I’m in the most embarrassing position of my life,” he replied, with a faint attempt at a laugh. “One of your confounded rebel bullets has gone through both my thighs. I don’t think it has struck any bone, but I have lost so much blood that I can neither walk, nor can I cry out loud enough for my people to come and rescue me, nor for your people to come and capture me. I think the bleeding has stopped. The blood seems to have clogged itself up.”
I was bound to admit that he had truly described his position as embarrassing.
“What would you do if you were in my place?” he asked.
I didn’t know, and said so. Yet I had no mind to abandon him. The positions reversed, I would have a very cruel opinion of him were he to abandon me. He could not see my face, and he must have had some idea that I was going to desert him.
“You won’t leave me, will you?” he asked anxiously.
His tone appealed to me, and I assured him very warmly that I would either take him a prisoner into our camp or send him into his own. Then I sat my head to the task, for either way it was a problem. I doubted whether I could carry him to our camp, which was far off comparatively, as he looked like a heavy Briton. I certainly could carry him to his own camp, which was very near, but that would make it uncommonly embarrassing for me. I explained the difficulty to him.
“That’s so,” he said thoughtfully. “I don’t want you to get yourself into trouble in order to get me out of it.”