“I supposed it was all over; what can they mean by keeping it up?” exclaimed Delaherche, who was nervously listening, expecting each shot would be the last.

Returning to Bouroche to remind him of his promise and conduct him to the captain, he was astonished to find him seated on a bundle of straw before two pails of iced water, into which he had plunged both his arms, bared to the shoulder.  The major, weary and disheartened, overwhelmed by a sensation of deepest melancholy and dejection, had reached one of those terrible moments when the practitioner becomes conscious of his own impotency; he had exhausted his strength, physical and moral, and taken this means to restore it.  And yet he was not a weakling; he was steady of hand and firm of heart; but the inexorable question had presented itself to him:  “What is the use?” The feeling that he could accomplish so little, that so much must be left undone, had suddenly paralyzed him.  What was the use? since Death, in spite of his utmost effort, would always be victorious.  Two attendants came in, bearing Captain Beaudoin on a stretcher.

“Major,” Delaherche ventured to say, “here is the captain.”

Bouroche opened his eyes, withdrew his arms from their cold bath, shook and dried them on the straw.  Then, rising to his feet: 

“Ah, yes; the next one—­ Well, well, the day’s work is not yet done.”  And he shook the tawny locks upon his lion’s head, rejuvenated and refreshed, restored to himself once more by the invincible habit of duty and the stern discipline of his profession.

“Good! just above the right ankle,” said Bouroche, with unusual garrulity, intended to quiet the nerves of the patient.  “You displayed wisdom in selecting the location of your wound; one is not much the worse for a hurt in that quarter.  Now we’ll just take a little look at it.”

But Beaudoin’s persistently lethargic condition evidently alarmed him.  He inspected the contrivance that had been applied by the field attendant to check the flow of blood, which was simply a cord passed around the leg outside the trousers and twisted tight with the assistance of a bayonet sheath, with a growling request to be informed what infernal ignoramus had done that.  Then suddenly he saw how matters were and was silent; while they were bringing him in from the field in the overcrowded landau the improvised tourniquet had become loosened and slipped down, thus giving rise to an extensive hemorrhage.  He relieved his feelings by storming at the hospital steward who was assisting him.

“You confounded snail, cut!  Are you going to keep me here all day?”

The attendant cut away the trousers and drawers, then the shoe and sock, disclosing to view the leg and foot in their pale nudity, stained with blood.  Just over the ankle was a frightful laceration, into which the splinter of the bursting shell had driven a piece of the red cloth of the trousers.  The muscle protruded from the lips of the gaping orifice, a roll of whitish, mangled tissue.