A little after midnight the tramp of stretcher bearers punctuated a thin and wailing outcry, coming from that which they bore, and the temple floor awoke with weary curses. Those near the doorway learned that a Chinese coolie, caught in the act of stealing coal from the quartermaster's corral, had been tumbled off a wall by a sentry's shot. The lamentations of the victim rasped sick nerves beyond endurance, and the hospital held no sympathy in its smallest crevice. The coolie was an old man and badly hurt. Opium had made him impervious to customary doses of morphine, and after he had been drugged in quantities to kill four men, he was no nearer rest. From a far corner of the temple the wounded coolie wailed an unending
"Ay oh"—"Ay oh"—"Ay oh!"
Soldiers rose in their blankets and made uproar with cries of—
"Kill him!"
"Smother the brute!"
"Give him an overdose!"
"Now, ain't this an outrage!"
"Hi, there, One Lung, give us a rest, for God's sake!"
"Throw him out in the yard."
Daylight brought to Saunders infinitely grateful respite from a world through which he had fled from flaming dragons that shrieked, as if in torture: