"In the operating tent."
Swiftly, surely the work was done, and the man carried back to a cot of boards in the improvised hospital.
Sinclair was turning back to the wards to attend to other cases when an exclamation from MacKay arrested him:
"Lee Ban! Is it possible?"
A sampan had come down with the current and run its bow ashore at the hospital. A man was lifted out and deposited on the bank, up which he crawled painfully on hands and knees. His face was drawn and ghastly with suffering. His clothing, which had once been rich, was torn to ribbons.
It was Lee Ban, one of the wealthiest merchants of Keelung. He had sent his family away to safety earlier, but had to stay himself till the day of the bombardment. When escaping from the town a shell had exploded near his chair. A fragment had passed through the bottom of it, at the same time shearing away the entire calf from one of his legs. He had paid the chair-bearers generously. But they fled for their lives and left him where he lay. He had the name of being the most charitable citizen of Keelung, and he saw many a one that day whom he had helped with his means. But they rushed past him, utterly unheeding. War had kindled in them the primal instinct of self-preservation, and had subordinated every human feeling to brute fear.
He bound his leg as best he could and started to crawl towards safety. All day he crept on hands and knees, and through the night until he lay exhausted and unconscious. In the morning he bribed some soldiers who were searching for wounded to carry him to the camp. They took him to a native doctor, who plastered the great open wound with a mixture of mud and cow-dung. Then he heard that Kai Bok-su was here, and the foreign doctor. He had himself brought to them.
While he told his story in Chinese to MacKay, Sergeant Gorman and his helpers had carried him to a cot and were unbandaging the leg for the doctor's inspection.
"For the love of heaven!"
The great, gaping wound, extending from the knee to the ankle, was alive with maggots.