Crittenden

"Thank you, but I'm afraid I'll have to rest a little while now. I'm all

right now--don't bother--don't--bother. I'm all right. I feel kind o'

sleepy--somehow--very kind--thank--" and he closed his eyes. A surgeon

was passing and Grafton called him.

"He's all right," said the surgeon, with a swift look, adding shortly,

"but he must take his turn."

Grafton passed on--sick. On along the muddy road--through more

pack-trains, wagons, shouts, creakings, cursings. On through the

beautiful moonlight night and through the beautiful tropical forest,

under tall cocoanut and taller palm; on past the one long grave of the

Rough Riders--along the battle-line of the first little fight--through

the ghastly, many-coloured masses of hideous land-crabs shuffling

sidewise into the cactus and shuffling on with an unearthly rustling of

dead twig and fallen leaf: along the crest of the foothills and down to

the little town of Siboney, lighted, bustling with preparation for the

wounded in the tents; bustling at the beach with the unloading of

rations, the transports moving here and there far out on the moonlighted

sea. Down there were straggler, wounded soldier, teamster, mule-packer,

refugee Cuban, correspondent, nurse, doctor, surgeon--the flotsam and

jetsam of the battle of the day.

* * * * *

The moon rose.

"Water! water! water!"

Crittenden could not move. He could see the lights in the tents; the

half-naked figures stretched on tables; and doctors with bloody arms

about them--cutting and bandaging--one with his hands inside a man's

stomach, working and kneading the bowels as though they were dough. Now

and then four negro troopers would appear with something in a blanket,

would walk around the tent where there was a long trench, and, standing

at the head of this, two would lift up their ends of the blanket and the

other two would let go, and a shapeless shape would drop into the

trench. Up and down near by strolled two young Lieutenants, smoking

cigarettes--calmly, carelessly. He could see all this, but that was all

right; that was all right! Everything was all right except that long,

black shape in the shadow near him gasping: "Water! water! water!"

He could not stand that hoarse, rasping whisper much longer. His canteen

he had clung to--the regular had taught him that--and he tried again to

move. A thousand needles shot through him--every one, it seemed, passing

through a nerve-centre and back the same path again. He heard his own

teeth crunch as he had often heard the teeth of a drunken man crunch,

and then he became unconscious. When he came to, the man was still

muttering; but this time it was a woman's name, and Crittenden lay

still. Good God!