Tomaso's Fortune and Other Stories Part 25

"Wherever there is nursing to be done, we can hardly be out of place,"

she answered, with a determination which puzzled me.

"Theoretically," I answered; and, seeing that she had arrived, I made a shift to find her suitable quarters and get her to work.

"Have you any serious cases?" she asked, while unpacking and setting out for my inspection sundry stores she had brought.

"I have Boulson again," I answered. "The man you had in the spring."

She buried her head in the case, and did not answer for some seconds.

When at length she did speak, her voice was indifferent and careless.

"Badly hurt?" she asked.

"Yes."

She finished unpacking her stores rather hurriedly, and expressed her readiness to go round the cots with me.

"Are you not too tired after your journey?"

"No, I--I should like to begin at once. Please let me."

I took her round, and altogether I was pleased with her.

In a day or two I almost became resigned to her presence, though I hate having women anywhere near the action. It is always better to get the nasty cases cleaned up before the women see them.

Then suddenly came bad news. There was something wrong at the front. Our fellows were falling back upon us. A final stand was to be made at our position until reinforcements came up.

I sent for Nurse Fielding, and told her to get ready to leave for headquarters at once. I was extremely business-like and formal. She was neither. That is the worst of women.

"Please let me stay," she said. "Please."

I shook my head.

"I would rather stay and be killed than go away and be safe."

That aroused my suspicions. Perhaps they ought to have been aroused before; but, then, I am only a man. I saw how the Surgeon-Major had been managed.

"Please," she repeated softly.

She laid her hand on my arm, and did not withdraw it when she found that the sleeve was wet with something that was thicker than water.

"Please," she whispered.

"Oh, all right--stay!"

I was sorry for it the next day, when we had the old familiar music of the bullets overhead.

Later in the morning matters became more serious. The enemy had a gun with which they dropped six-pound shot into us. One of these fell on to the corner of our hospital where Boulson lay. It tore the canvas, and almost closed Boulson's career.

Nurse Fielding was at him like a terrier, and lifted him bodily from his cot. She was one of those largely framed fair women who have strength, both physical and mental.

She was carrying him across the tent when I heard the thud of a bullet.

Nurse Fielding stopped for a moment and seemed to hesitate. She laid Boulson tenderly down on the ground, and then fell across him, while the blood ran from her cotton bodice over his face and neck.

And that was what I meant when I asked the lady in the barouche at the Park gate whether she ever felt that shoulder now. And the man I dine with to-night is not called Boulson, but he has a charge of dust-shot--the result of a boyish experiment--in his right arm.

THE END OF THE "MOOROO"

"How long can you give us?"

The man who asked this question turned his head and looked up through a maze of bright machinery. But he did not rise from his rec.u.mbent position. He was, in fact, lying on his face on a steel-bar grating--in his shirt-sleeves--his hands black with oil and steel filings.

The captain of the Mooroo--far up above on the upper platform--leant his elbow on the steel banister and reflected for exactly two seconds. He was in the habit of sleeping and thinking very quickly.

"I reckon that we will be on the rocks in about twenty minutes to half an hour--unless you can get her going."

The chief engineer muttered something which was not audible above the roar of the wind through the rigging and the wash of the green seas that leapt over the bulwarks of the well-deck.

"What?" yelled the captain, leaning over the bal.u.s.trade.

"D--n it," reiterated the chief, with his head hidden.

They were all down there--the whole engineer's staff of the Mooroo--in their shirt-sleeves, lying among the bright steel rods--busy at their craft--working against time for their lives.

It was unfortunate that the engines should have held good right across the Arabian Sea, through the Red Sea, through the trying "fast" and "slow" and "stand by" and "go ahead" of the Ca.n.a.l--right through to the Pointe de Raz light, which was blinking down upon them now.

The ship had been got round with difficulty. Her sails, all black with coal-dust and the smoke of many voyages, had been shaken out. They served to keep the vessel's bluff prow pushing into the gale, but that was all. The Mooroo was drifting--drifting.

While the pa.s.sengers were at dinner the engines had suddenly stopped, and almost before the fact had been realized, the captain, having exchanged glances with his officers, was out of the saloon.

"Something in the engine-room," said the doctor and the fifth officer--left at table. The engineer had probably stopped to replace a worn washer or something similarly simple.

The stewards hurried to and fro with the dishes. And the pa.s.sengers went on eating their last dinner on earth in that sublime ignorance which is the prerogative of pa.s.sengers.

Mrs. Judge Barrowby, who, in view of the captain's vacant chair on her left hand, took, as it were, moral command of the ship, was heard to state in a loud voice that she had every confidence in the officers and the crew.

Young Skeen, of the Indian Intelligence, who sat within hearing of Mrs.

Judge Barrowby, for his own evil ends and purposes, thereafter said that he could now proceed with his dinner--that his appet.i.te was beginning to return.

"Of course," he went on to say, "if Mrs. Judge Barrowby says that it is all right--"

But he got no farther than this. For a young lady with demure eyes and twitching lips, who was sitting next to him, whispered that Mrs. Judge Barrowby was looking, and that he must behave himself.

"I have every confidence in Mrs. Judge Barrowby," he, nevertheless, managed to a.s.sure a grave-looking man across the table.