One had been struck just above the ear, and a chip of his skull three inches in diameter shot away, leaving his brain uncovered.
"He will die. We'll make him comfortable in the meantime."
A fragment had caught another on the cheek, and his lower jaw was gone.
"Better if he would die, too. It would be a mercy to let him out easy. But, no; if God gives him a chance, so must I. We'll patch him up."
More to himself than to any one else, he was speaking in a low tone. All the while the doctor's hands were busy dressing, soothing, trimming, mending, healing those poor, shattered bodies of ignorant Asiatic peasants, the weak atoms of humanity which a great European nation had sent her mighty engines of death to destroy—the pitiful trophies of glorious war. And not one of those brown or yellow men had the faintest glimmer of an idea what the war was about, or why his poor body had been maltreated so. The foreign devils had come to take his land and he had been set to defend it. That was all he knew.
Stranger still was what these other foreign devils were doing. They were trying to heal him. One set of foreign devils by their magic had knocked his fortifications to pieces, mangled his body, and brought him to the verge of death. And now another set of foreign devils, by some other magic, were patching his broken body together again and bringing it back to life. He could not understand.
But some way or another those last foreigners grew into his confidence. There was something in the words of that barbarian with the long black beard, who spoke their language more perfectly than they did themselves, which quieted him and gave him hope. There was something about the great, red-haired giant,[#] who did not seem to understand their language at all and yet seemed to understand at once what his sufferings were and how to heal them, which inspired him with confidence. It might be magic he was using, but it must be good magic. Before him men were writhing restlessly on their wooden beds, sometimes moaning, occasionally uttering an agonized "ai-yah," ever and anon asking plaintively for water or tea. Behind him they lay back peacefully and, with few exceptions, went to sleep.
[#] The Chinese do not distinguish between the different shades of fair hair. All that is not jet black, is called red.
So all down the rows of improvised cots heads were raised, yellow or brown faces were turned, and black eyes, some anxious, some curious, still more wistful, watched every movement of the foreign doctor. His size, the massive head with its crown of wavy, fair hair, his huge shoulders, his bare arms, powerful and white beside their skinny brown ones, all were noted. Why did he wash his hands so often? It was a part of his magic. What was he going to do with that knife? Was he going to cut the man's heart out? No, he used it on one farther down, and now the man was sitting up drinking tea. So they watched, and so confidence grew. And at every movement the doctor made from cot to cot, the word "I-seng lâi" (the life-healer is coming) was passed from one to another of the patients.
The sun had sunk behind the hills and night was coming on. Smoky Chinese lamps and one good lantern belonging to MacKay were lighted. Still Sinclair worked on.