“Now I must go to my work, and you to sleep: you need all the rest you can get before you have to knock about in the ambulances again,” she said, marking the feverish color in his face, and knowing well that excitement was his only strength.
“How can I sleep in such an Inferno as this?”
“Try, you are so weak, you’ll soon drop off;” and, laying the cool tips of her fingers on his eyelids, she kept them shut till he yielded with a long sigh of mingled weariness and pleasure, and was asleep before he knew it.
When he woke it was late at night; but little of night’s blessed rest was known on board that boat laden with a freight of suffering. Cries still came up from below, and moans of pain still sounded from the deck, where shadowy figures with lanterns went to and fro among the beds that in the darkness looked like graves.
Weak with pain and fever, the poor man gazed about him half bewildered, and, conscious only of one desire, feebly called “Christie!”
“Here I am;” and the dull light of a lantern showed him her face very worn arid tired, but full of friendliest compassion.
“What can I do for you?” she asked, as he clutched her gown, and peered up at her with mingled doubt and satisfaction in his haggard eyes.
“Just speak to me; let me touch you: I thought it was a dream; thank God it isn’t. How much longer will this last?” he added, falling back on the softest pillows she could find for him.
“We shall soon land now; I believe there is an officers’ hospital in the town, and you will be quite comfortable there.”
“I want to go to your hospital: where is it?”