The car was going at about twenty-five miles an hour, and how he ever maintained his hold Heaven only knows.  At last they pulled up, and there they found him, practically unconscious, his clothes torn to ribbons, his back a mass of bruises, but still holding on.  It was one of the most splendid examples of real British grit of which I have ever heard.  They brought him to the hospital, and we fixed him up as well as we could.  One would have thought that he might have been a little downhearted, but not a bit of it.  He arrived in the operating theatre smiling and smoking a cigar, and gave us a vivid account of his experiences.  We sent him over to England, and I heard that he was doing well.  There is one sporting paper in England which is edited by a real sportsman.  May he long live to inspire in others the courage of which he has given such a splendid example!

XVI.  Poperinghe

For a long week the roar of guns had echoed incessantly in our corridors and wards, and a continuous stream of motor-lorries, guns, and ammunition waggons had rumbled past our doors; whilst at night the flash of the guns lit up the horizon with an angry glare.  The flood of wounded had abated, and we were just beginning to get the hospital into some sort of shape when the order came to evacuate.

It had been no easy task transforming bare rooms into comfortable wards, arranging for supplies of food and stores, and fitting a large staff into a cubic space totally inadequate to hold them.  But wonderful things can be accomplished when everyone is anxious to do their share, and the most hopeless sybarite will welcome shelter however humble, and roll himself up in a blanket in any corner, when he is dead tired.  For the first few days the rush of wounded had been so tremendous that all we could do was to try to keep our heads above water and not be drowned by the flood.

But towards the end of the week the numbers diminished, not because there were not as many wounded, but because the situation was so critical that the Belgian authorities did not dare to leave any large number of wounded in Furnes.  Supplies were coming out from England in response to urgent telegrams, and, through the kind offices of the Queen of the Belgians, we had been able to obtain a number of beds from the town, in addition to twenty which she had generously given to us herself.  So that we were gradually beginning to take on the appearance of an ordinary hospital, and work was settling down into a regular routine.  The sleepy little town of Furnes had been for some weeks in a state of feverish activity.  After the evacuation of Antwerp and the retirement of the Belgian Army from Ostend, it had become the advanced base of the Belgian troops, and it was very gay with Staff officers, and of course packed with soldiers.  The immense Grand Place lined with buildings, in many cases bearing unmistakable signs of a birth in Spanish