I neglected to say that the French, having come to the abatis, waited in line while the pioneers used their axes to clear it away. Meanwhile, thanks to too good discipline, they suffered severely. As we rushed the whole thing, we lost far less. “It was very fine and en regle,” said Hamilton, “but I like our way better.” And so, I think, do I.
The good doctor liked to come to my staff tent in those days, to talk to me or to others. He seemed to think it necessary to inform me of my cousin’s state, and I dare say thought me cool about him.
“And if, doctor, I had stuck him through the left side?” said Jack, lying at ease on a bearskin in my tent.
“In that case,” said our doctor, in a quite professional way, “the heart or the great arteries had like enough been pierced.”
“And what then!” asked Jack of the doctor, who was sitting on the camp-bed.
“Probably death would have occurred.”
On this Jack looked up with those innocent eyes, and, pushing back the blond locks, said: “It is a great thing to know anatomy. If only I had made a little study of that science, Dr. Rush, I might have had better success at this pig-sticking business we call war.” The sly humour of the fellow set Hamilton to laughing, but the doctor did not smile.
“It might have been better for Hugh’s cousin,” he said.
“Yes,” said Jack, sweetly; “perhaps.”
As they talked I was automatically putting into fine French a letter of his Excellency to Comte d’Estaing, and I took in readily what was passing. When Jack said, “Perhaps,” I cried out, “It would be a fine thing, doctor, to have all this saving knowledge on both sides, so as to know where not to hurt one another.”