We followed our soft-voiced conductor through many other wards where he showed us strange and wondrous devices in splints; he halted us by hanging beds of weird shape and cots that swung on pulleys; he descanted on wounds to flesh and bone and brain, of lives snatched from the grip of Death by the marvels of up-to-date surgery, and as I listened to his pleasant voice I sensed much of the grim wonders he left untold. We visited X-ray rooms and operating theatre against whose walls were glass cases filled with a multitudinous array of instruments for the saving of life, and here it was I learned that in certain cases, a chisel, properly handled, was a far more delicate tool than the finest saw.
"A wonderful place," said I for the hundredth time as we stepped out upon a trim, green lawn. The Colonel-Surgeon smiled.
"It took some planning," he admitted, "a little while ago it was a sandy wilderness."
"Came to me of their own accord," he answered. "At least, the seed did, washed ashore from a wreck, so I had it planted and it has done rather well. Now, what else can I show you? It would take all the afternoon to visit every ward, and they are all much alike--but there is the mad ward if you'd care to see that? This way."
A strange place, this, divided into compartments or cubicles where were many patients in the familiar blue overalls, most of whom rose and stood at attention as we entered. Tall, soldierly figures they seemed, and yet with an indefinable something in their looks--a vagueness of gaze, a loose-lipped, too-ready smile, a vacancy of expression. Some there were who scowled sullenly enough, others who sat crouched apart, solitary souls, who, I learned, felt themselves outcast; others again crouched in corners haunted by the dread of a pursuing vengeance always at hand.
One such the Colonel accosted, asking what was wrong. The man looked up, looked down and muttered unintelligibly, whereupon the Sister spoke.
"He believes that every one thinks him a spy," she explained, and touched the man's bowed head with a hand as gentle as her voice.
"Shell-shock is a strange thing," said the Colonel-Surgeon, "and affects men in many extraordinary ways, but seldom permanently."