"Andrew!" exclaimed Marrion, with a sort of sob. "Is he killed, too?"
"Killed or missing," called Dr. Forsyth, as he turned away to rejoin his party.
The scene which met Marrion's eyes when soon after daybreak she went over to the hospital tents beggars description. The wounded, many of them as yet untended, lay almost in heaps, stretcher-bearers were hurrying along, slipping on the clotted blood from many wounds, carrying those who had been seen to and could be moved to the boats for removal to Scutari. There was a low inarticulate wail of moaning in the air, broken by sudden screams of pain. Two or three women were busy giving water, trying to soothe pain, and now and again a doctor with bare arms incarnadined with blood passed hurriedly to more work.
"It is worse than I expected," said Dr. Forsyth over his shoulder to Marrion. "Do what you can, will you?"
And she did, wondering vaguely that she had not noticed that curious face when she had first seen it; the eyes alone were so unlike any she had ever seen before--greeny gold, with a dark rim round the iris. A hawk's eye, surely!
"Mrs. Marsden, I want you," came an imperative voice half an hour later, "follow me."
He was there again, and she followed him blindly into a small tent.
"The ambulance and stores have been left behind somewhere," he said bitterly. "God damn them! We have no chloroform left--they only served us out a thimbleful, though Simpson demonstrated its absolute necessity seven years ago--curse the lot--and now a case has just come in. It's life or death and the others won't touch it, but I will. See here, I was with Esdaile in India and I know it can be done. If only I haven't the seats of the scornful by me--I think you'll believe--you haven't your face for nothing, and I must have help. Give it me?"
He held out his thin nervous hands, so strangely full of grip, as he spoke; his eyes found hers and held them.
"I will give you what I can," she said at once.
"That's right!" he replied, his buoyancy back in an instant. "But you will need all your nerve, I tell you. Now help me to get the poor fellow into position."
"Let me die, doctor," moaned the patient, who lay on the doctor's truckle bed. "It is agony to move."