The Kopje Garrison Part 55

"Cur yourself, you lying scoundrel!" cried d.i.c.kenson.-"Here, orderly, I'll hold him. Where's that gag?"

"Oh! Ow!" wailed the corporal. "Here, if you touch me I'll cry for help."

"You won't be able to," said the orderly, making a pretended rush at the doctor's chest of hospital requirements.

"Bah! Quiet, orderly. Let the scoundrel alone. He's off his head and doesn't know what he's saying, poor wretch."

"Begging your pardon, sir," said the attendant, "the captain don't; but this chap does. I haven't seen what I have amongst the sick and wounded without picking up a little, and I say Master Corporal here's doing a bit o' sham Abram to keep himself safe."

"Oh, nonsense," said d.i.c.kenson shortly. "You're getting as bad as the poor fellow himself. The doctor would have seen in a minute."

"I don't know, sir," whispered the attendant, glancing at the corporal, who lay with his eyes half-closed and his ears twitching. "He's pretty cunning. Had a crack or two with a rifle-stock, I think, but only just so much as would make another man savage. You'll see; he'll be sent back into the ranks in a couple of days or so."

"No, no, orderly," said d.i.c.kenson. "I prefer to believe he's a bit delirious."

"Well, sir, I hope he is," said the man, "for everybody's sake, including his own. I don't know, though," he continued, following the lieutenant outside after the latter had laid his hand upon Roby's burning forehead, and been called a coward and a cur for his pains; "I've got my knife into Master Corporal May for old grudges, and I should rather like Mr Lennox to hear him say what he does about him. Corporal May would get it rather hot."

"That will do," said d.i.c.kenson; "the man's in such a state of mental excitement that his captain's ravings impress him and he thinks it is all true. There, you, as a hospital attendant, must learn to be patient with the poor fellows under your charge."

"I am, sir," said the man st.u.r.dily. "Ask the doctor, sir. I'm doing my best, for it's sore work sometimes with the poor chaps who are regularly bad and feel that they are going home-I mean the long home, sir. I've got six or seven little things-bits of hair, and a silver ring, and a lucky s.h.i.+lling, and such-like, along with messages to take back with me for the poor fellows' mothers and sisters and gals; and please goodness I ever get back to the old country from this blessed bean-feast we're having, I'm going to take those messages and things to them they're for, even if I have to walk."

"Ha!" said the young officer, laying his hand on the man's shoulder and gripping him firmly, for there was a huskiness in his words now, and he sniffed and pa.s.sed his hand across his nose.

"Can't help it, sir. I'm hard enough over the jobs, but it touches a man when it comes to sewing 'em up in their blankets ready for you know what. Makes you think of them at home."

"Yes," said d.i.c.kenson, in quite an altered tone. "There, you know me. When we get back and you're going to deliver your messages, if you let me know, orderly, I'll see that you don't have to walk." d.i.c.kenson turned sharply to walk away, but came back. "Try and keep the captain from making those outrageous charges, my lad."

"I do, sir; but he will keep on."

"Well, go on cooling his bandages, and he'll go off to sleep."

"I hope so, sir," replied the man. "But what about Corporal May?"

"Serve him the same, of course," said d.i.c.kenson, and he hurried away, with Roby's words ringing in his ears.

"Chap wants to be a sort of angel for this work," said the orderly as he fumbled about his slight garments. "Hankychy, hankychy, where are yer? Washed you out clean in the little river this morning and dried you on a hot stone."

"What are you looking for, mate?" said the third patient in the hut feebly-a man who, with a shattered arm-bone, was lying very still.

"Hankychy," said the orderly gruffly. "Lost it."

"Here it is. You lent it to me to wipe my face and keep off the flies."

"Did I? So I did. All right, mate; keep it. Mind you don't hurt the flies. Like a drink o' water?"

"Ah-h!" sighed the injured man. That was all, but it meant so much.

There was a pleasant, trickling, tinkling sound in the heated hut as the orderly took a tin and dipped it in an iron bucket. The next minute he was down on one knee with an arm under the sufferer's shoulders, raising him as gently as if the task was being done by a woman. Then the tin was held to the poor fellow's lips, and the orderly smiled as he saw the avidity with which it was emptied.

"Good as a drop of beer-eh?" he said.

"Beer?" replied the patient, returning the smile. "Ha! Not bad in its way; but I never tasted a pint so good as that."

"Oh! Ah!" said the orderly grimly. "Wait till you get all right again, and you'll alter your tune."

"Get right again?" whispered the man, so that the corporal should not hear. "Think I shall?"

"What! with nothing else the matter but a broken bone? Why, of course."

"Ah!" sighed the poor fellow, with a look of relief. "I'm a bit down, mate, with having so little to eat, and it makes me think. Thankye; that's done me a lot o' good."

He settled down upon the sack which formed his couch, and the orderly rose to take back the tin, not seeing that Corporal May's eyes were fixed upon the vessel, which he watched eagerly, as if expecting to see it refilled and brought to him. But the orderly merely set it down, and made a vicious blow at a buzzing fly.

"Well, what have I done?" whined the corporal.

"Done? Heverythink you shouldn't have done," said the orderly. "Look here, corp'ral; next time the barber cuts your hair, you ask him to take a bit off the end of your tongue. It's too long, mate."

"Do you want me to report you to the doctor for refusing to bring me a drink?"

"Not I," said the orderly coolly. "The chief's got quite enough to do without listening to the men's complaints."

"Then bring me a drink of water directly."

"All right," said the man good-humouredly; "but you'd better not."

"Better not? Why?"

"Because it only makes you cry. Runs out of your eyes again in big drops, just as it does out of another fellow's skin in perspiration. Strikes me, corp'ral, that you were meant for a gal."

"You won't be happy till you've been reported, my man," said the patient.

"And I sha'n't be happy then, mate. Want a drink o' water?"

"Yes; but things are managed here so that the patients have to beg and pray for it."

"And then they gets it," said the orderly good-humouredly as he dipped the tin again; "and that's more than you can say about what most chaps begs and prays for. There you are."

"Well, help me up," said the corporal.

"Yah! Sit up. You can."

"Oh!" groaned the man in a peculiar way which sounded as if he were not satisfied with its effectiveness, and so turned it into a whine.

"Won't do with me, corp'ral," said the man. "You gammoned the doctor, but you haven't took me in a bit."

"Only wait!" said the patient in a miserable whining tone this time. "How cowardly! What a shame for such as you to be put in charge of wounded men!"

"Wounded!" said the orderly, laughing. "Why, your skin is as whole as mine is. You've frightened yourself into the belief that you're very bad."