[#] Pronounced, Ee-see-ung li.
Without a word Sinclair threw off his coat, rolled up his sleeves, and went to work. Sergeant Gorman and one of MacKay's students went first, preparing each case for treatment. Sinclair followed, with MacKay to assist and interpret and another student to carry basins of water.
Sinclair threw off his coat, rolled up his sleeves, and went to work
The wounds were nearly all caused by shells or shrapnel. There were no clean wounds by rifle bullets. The range had been too great and the Chinese too well protected behind their fortifications. The mitrailleuses had accomplished little. They were noisy, terrifying, spectacular, but ineffective. Only once had a machine gun done much execution. A part of the fortifications on the east side of the harbour had been rendered untenable by the heavy shell-fire. A body of Chinese regulars were retreating to the new fort in too close formation. The marines working a mitrailleuse in the Villars' tops, found their range perfectly and poured a stream of bullets into their midst, killing many and threatening the whole detachment with extermination. But just at the critical moment the quick-firer jammed, and all the oaths and efforts of the squad could not get it into working order again until the Chinese were under cover.
The sights were all the more ghastly, the suffering the more intense, the prospects of recovery the fewer because the death-dealing had been done by shell and shrapnel. There was nothing clean-cut about their work. A fragment of shell had shorn away a man's left shoulder, taking with it the joint, but missing the axillary artery and part of the great breast muscle, by which the arm still hung.
Sinclair glanced at MacKay. The latter understood:
"Better not have an amputation first thing. They are ignorant and suspicious."
"I thought so. Anyway, I do not want to take time to amputate now. We'll dress it and amputate later."
A shrapnel shell had exploded close to another's side. The hip, part of the pelvis, and much of the flesh had been shredded away, exposing the working of the organs of the abdomen. It was not good to see. From that ghastly rent blood-poisoning had already set in. There was nothing to be done. They made him as easy as possible on the hard boards of his cot, administered an opiate, and left him to sleep till the last sleep should fall upon him.