"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!