He was hard at work on the invention of a strong collapsible operating-table (that could readily be brought into use in the field and also be used in aerial transport) and a case for the concentration of equipment—operation instruments, rubber gloves, surgical gauntlets, saline infusion apparatus, sterilizer, aseptic towels, chloroform, bandages, gauze, wool, sponges, drainage-tubing, inhaler, silk skeins, syringes, field tourniquets, waterproof cloth, stethoscope—everything, and the whole outfit, table and all, weighing forty pounds. This would be an improvement on the system of having to open half a dozen medical and surgical cases when operating on the line of march, cases requiring the most expert repacking after use …
Perhaps it was a sign of advancing years and weakening mind that this fine specimen of a fine service felt that, when flying some thousands of feet above the earth, he was nearer to Lenore in Heaven. All his science and sad experience had failed to deprive him of a sub-conscious belief in an actual place “above,” a material Hereafter beyond the sky, and, when clouds cut him off from sight of the earth, he had a quaint, half-realized feeling of being in the ante-room of the Great House of many mansions, wherein dwelt Lenore.
Yes, when flying, Colonel John Decies felt that he was nearer to the woman he had lost nearly a quarter of a century before. In one sense he may have been so, for he was a very reckless airman, and never in greater danger than when engaged in what he called “ground-scouring” among the air-current haunted, mist-haunted mountains of the Border. He anticipated an early Border-war and realized that here would be a great opportunity for a keen-sighted and iron-nerved medical airman to locate, if not to pick up, overlooked wounded. Here, too, would be a double need of such service in a country where “the women come out to cut up what remains”! Imagine, too, cavalry reconnaissances and bad casualties a score of miles from medical help …
Whether it brought him nearer in any sense to Lenore de Warrenne, it brought him nearer to her son, on one of those hundred-mile circular “scours” which he practised when opportunity offered, generally accompanied by a like-minded officer of the R.A.M.C., to which Corps he had become a kind of unofficial and honorary instructor in “First- Aid Flying” at the Kot Ghazi flying-school, situate in the plains at the foot of the “Roof of the World”.
