"Charlie grins, and the stretcher-bearer begins to count. When he gets to ten he rolls up his sleeves; when he gets to twenty he takes a good grip of the sandbag; at thirty he rolls his eyes and sticks out his jaw; at forty, he lifts the bag over his shoulder and draws one foot back, Charlie watching him all the time. 'For-ty-six,' he says slowly, 'for-ty seven, for-ty-eight, for-ty-nine,' and then——"
"You're not going to tell me that he really——"
"No, he didn't," said Truthful James. "Charlie fainted."
"That was their intention, I presume?"
"Your presumption is correct, Sir. The doctor finished the job before Charlie come to again. Smart, wasn't it?"
"Very smart indeed."
"But that's nothing. Nothing at all to what he could do. He once cut a fellow open, took out his liver, extracted twenty-three shrapnel bullets from it, bounced it on the floor to see it was all right, and put it back, all inside of three minutes. And the fellow what owns the liver hasn't had a to-morrow morning head-ache once since."
"He must be a very clever doctor," suggested the other, to fill in a pause.
"Talking of doctors," James went on, "reminds me of a man I saw out there who wasn't a doctor, leastways not one of ours. We was in the fire-trenches one night when a voice hails us from the other side of the entanglements. After the usual questions we brings him over the parapet, and he explains to our Sub that he's been in front attending to some wounded men in a listening post what was blown up. All perfectly correct and proper; gives his name and rank, too, and is wearing an R.A.M.C. uniform—rank, Captain. As he passes me on his way to the Sub's dug-out I happens to catch sight of his face, and it give me quite a shock. I was took ill immediate. I manages to stagger to the dug-out, and I mutters hoarsely, 'Sir, I'm sick. I think I'm going to die.'
"'Sick?' says the Sub. 'You don't look sick.'