CHAPTER IX
FRANK SACOBIE OBJECTS
WITHIN ten days of the battle of Courcelette, Lieut. Richard Starkley was able to see; and twenty days after that he was able to walk. His walking at first was an extraordinary thing, and extraordinary was the amount of pleasure that he derived from it. With a crutch under one shoulder and Sister Gilbert under the other, bandaged and padded from hip to neck, and with his battered but entire legs wavering beneath him, he crossed the ward that first day without exceeding the speed limit. Brother officers in various stages of repair did not refrain from expressing their opinions of his performance.
"Try to be back for tea, old son," said a New Zealand major.
"Are those your legs or mine you're fox-trotting with?" asked an English subaltern; and an elderly colonel called, "I'll hop out and show you how to walk in a minute, if you don't do better than that!"
The colonel laughed, and the inmates of the other beds laughed, and Dick and Sister Gilbert laughed, for that, you must know, was a very good joke. The humor of the remark lay in the fact that the elderly colonel had not a leg to his name.
Day by day Dick improved in pace and gait, and his activities inspired a number of his companions to shake an uncertain leg or two. The elderly colonel organized contests; and the great free-for-all race twice round the ward was one of the notable sporting events of the war.
At last Dick was shipped to Blighty and admitted to a hospital for convalescent Canadian officers. There Capt. J. A. Starkley-Davenport soon found him. No change that the eye could detect had taken place in Jack Davenport. His face was as thin and colorless as when Dick had first seen it; his eyes were just as bright, and their glances as kindly and intent; his body was as frail and as immaculately garbed. Dick wondered how one so frail could exist a week without either breaking utterly or gaining in strength.
"You're a wonder, Dick!" exclaimed Davenport.