Charter worked on; he grew thin and his eyes sank back in his head, but he worked on. Then he found that the natives were sick, too, and in distress, and he rode out of camp at all hours to carry medicines and administer comfort under the nipa roofs, where the skull of the carabao on the gate-post had failed of its charm to keep away cholera. He did the work of five men and superintended the burying of the dead, but after six weeks of it he fell in his tracks. They carried him into the hospital-tent and laid him on a cot, then they tiptoed out, bareheaded, white with fear; and the boy from Maryland stood outside in his socks and wept. The colonel got out of bed and came down to consult with the surgeon, and together they went and looked at John, who lay unconscious, with a blue ring around his mouth. The surgeon swore, a sign of fear and emotion with him, while the colonel's eyes were wet; they were both fighting mad and they had been boys together.
"Going to die?" the colonel asked hoarsely.
"How do I know?" snapped the surgeon; "I'm not omniscient; it would be a damned sight better if I had been!"
"We can't afford to lose him," said the colonel, blowing his nose. "If you're not a damned fool, you'll pull him through."
"I am a damned fool. If I hadn't been, I'd have stopped his racket; he's worked like a mule."
"He ought to be promoted," growled the colonel, "and here he is on his back, sick as a dog. Simon, I'll hang you if you let him slip; he's got to be promoted."
"Think likely he'll be promoted to heaven," snapped the surgeon; "this damned cholera—"
"Simon," said the colonel, "profanity and chills and fever won't save this boy, and I—I love him like a son!"
The surgeon went to the door and looked out. In the distance he saw the peaks of the Caraballo Sur, blue and vivid; a mist floated over the valley, the rice fields were green, the nipa palms and the cocoanuts looked gray. In his heart he cursed the Philippine Islands collectively and the cholera individually, but the flag must not come down. He wiped his forehead and turned back, and he and the colonel eyed each other grimly.
"How d'ye think I feel?" he asked fiercely. "You love John like a son? By the Lord Harry, Colonel, I'd give my right hand for him now—and my right eye! So would the boy from Maryland, so would Private Davitt, so would Private McPhee, so would Michael Larry, whom he carried up the long hill when the Moros stabbed Mike in the back; so would the Filipino woman whose baby he saved when the hill village burned, so would every man jack in this regiment, but it's only God Almighty that can save him now. I'm fighting, but so is the cholera."