As soon as the wounded had left--and it was no light matter getting them away--it was thought desirable that the women should be at once got out of danger, and so they were bundled down to Frere with little ceremony in a mule wagon. As they had no hospital to go to (for "No. 4" did not arrive until the small hours of the following morning) they took refuge in the hotel at Frere. They had some food with them, albeit it was not of a kind to attract the fastidious, and the four of them slept on the floor of a looted and empty room, which even the kindly heart of Mrs. Wilson could not render other than a dreary resting place. This was their only "night in" in three days.
I had, I am bound to confess, the advantage of them in the matter of ventilation, for I slept in a wagon.
As I have already said, the wounded took their turn of "hard luck" like men. A few were sullen, a few relieved their feelings by fluent but meaningless profanity, in which the Boers were cursed with as much thoroughness as was the Jackdaw of Rheims. The majority were silent or said little. The tendency of most of the men was to make the least of their wounds, and some of those who were the worst hit were the most cheery. They were, with scarcely an exception, unselfish, and were singularly patient, considering that the exercise of patience is not a marked quality in men.
They ministered to one another’s wants with a tender solicitude which was not marred by the occasional uncouthness of its method. There was a wide-spread belief that tobacco was a panacea for all ills, and any man who had the wherewithal to smoke shared the small luxury with his mates. If there was only one pipe in a tent it was kept circulating. One would see a man on one stretcher trying to arrange a pillow for a comrade on the next: the pillow in question being commonly made out of a squashed helmet with a boot inside it. The man in any tent who was the least disabled was never so well pleased as when he was given something to do for those who were under the same canvas with him. With a pannikin and a spoon he would feed those who could not feed themselves, until they were glad to be rid of the attention; or he would readjust a dressing, or cut off a boot, or get the dried blood from an exposed surface with a never-wearying anxiety.