I stood now, gazing stupidly at the figure beneath me. He lay so still that I thought him dead. Then his fingers tightened on the water-flask and his arm trembled as he tried to draw it to him.
This was no time to stand idly by, wondering how and why he had come to this useless sacrifice. It was enough that he was here and living. I knelt at his side, and though my surgery was rough, it stopped the flow in which his life was draining away; his parched lips drank the proffered water, and when his head was on my knees he turned his face from the light and clasped his hands almost with contentment. He seemed to know that a friend was with him. The friend who had bound his wound and given him drink would find him a better bed than these rough stones and a kinder shelter than this bit of shadow, swept by the dust of endless pack-trains.
In such a place a friend could avail little. We carried him back from the turmoil of the road into the trampled wheat and there made him a rude tent of my blanket and a pillow of my saddle. Then I looked about me for help. The pack-trains clattered along the road and through them wounded men were threading their way, painfully hobbling to the field-hospital, miles away. Of ambulances there were none. I knew that when night came they would stagger back from the fighting front with their loads of wounded, and that so few were they in numbers the chance of finding a place in them was of the smallest. The Turk does not trouble much with the wounded. When a man is hit and he can hobble miles to the hospital, then Allah be praised! If not, he lies where he falls till night comes and his comrades find him and tie him like a bag of grain on a pony's back and send him on a journey that would be death to any Christian. If a surgeon finds him he is lucky. Remembering this, I looked back over the road by which I had come, measuring the miles we must cross before we reached help, and then at the Professor lying at my feet hardly breathing. I knew that we stayed where we were. Then I looked to the front. There was help there. There were surgeons working in that wide-spread wreath of smoke. I pointed over the plain and called to Asaf to hurry and bring me a surgeon. He demurred, for he was always chary about entering the zone of fire. I promised him a hundred pounds, a farm, a horse, a flock of sheep, if only he would go and bring me a surgeon. Malcolm Bey was mad, he said; no surgeon would come at such a time, miles for a single wounded man. I knew that he was right, but I could not sit idly watching my friend's life ebb away. I doubled the prize, and with a shrug of the shoulders Asaf mounted and galloped off.
I sat by the wounded man and waited. It was for hours. To me it seemed days. Thousands passed by—the men of the trains, stragglers, wounded, troops of the reserve. There were among them hands willing enough to help, were there any help to be given, but between them and me there was the inseparable gulf of language. One officer, a tall Albanian, rode over, and in French asked if he could be of any assistance; the man was a Greek; it made no difference, if he was a friend of Malcolm Bey; he could spare a pony and men to take him back to Larissa. I pleaded for a surgeon and an ambulance, pointing over the plain as though there they could be had for the asking. He bowed gravely—my request was a simple one; he would send them at once. And he rode forward toward the smoke and the clamor.
I sat watching. My hand held the Professor's. My eyes were turned down the road to catch the first sign of Asaf and help.
"Davy!"
He was looking up at me from beneath half-raised lids. How long he had been watching me I did not know. His voice was very low, but in it there was no note of surprise. To him it was quite right that I should be there. That was enough. His sickened mind could not trouble itself with wherefores.
"I am here, Professor," I said. The old nickname of the valley sounded strangely, but I could not call him Mr. Blight when he lay this way, looking up at me with eyes that seemed to smile with contentment despite his pain.
"You will be all right, Professor, but you must lie here quietly till the surgeon comes."
"I will be all right," he repeated slowly, and closed his eyes.