The surgeon began to turn down his shirt-sleeves and button his cuffs,
saying, "You're lucky to have a pain in your legs." Turning to the
Turco, he added, "Lift him!" And the giant rifleman picked me up and
laid me in a long chair by the window.
"Your case is one of those amusing cases," continued the surgeon,
buckling on his sword and revolver; "very amusing, I assure you. As
for the bullet, I could have turned it out with a straw, only it
rested there _exactly_ where it stopped the use of those long legs of
yours!--a fine example of temporary reflex paralysis, and no
hemorrhage to speak of--nothing to swear about, young man. By-the-way,
you ought to go to bed for a few days."
He clasped his short baldric over his smartly buttoned tunic. The room
was shaking with the discharges of cannon.
"A millimetre farther and that bullet would have cracked your spine.
Remember that and keep off your feet. Ouf! The cannon are tuning up!"
as a terrible discharge shattered the glass in the window-panes beside
me.
"Where am I, doctor?" I asked.
"Parbleu, in Morsbronn! Can't you hear the orchestra, zim-bam-zim!
The Prussians are playing their Wagner music for us. Here, swallow
this. How do you feel now?"
"Sleepy. Did you say a day or two, doctor?"
"I said a week or two--perhaps longer. I'll look in this evening if
I'm not up to my chin in amputations. Take these every hour if in
pain. Go to sleep, my son."
With a paternal tap on my head, he drew on his scarlet, gold-banded
cap, tightened the check strap, and walked out of the room.
Down-stairs I heard him cursing because his horse had been shot. I
never saw him again.
Dozing feverishly, hearing the cannon through troubled slumber, I
awoke toward noon quite free from any considerable pain, but thirsty
and restless, and numbed to the hips. Alarmed, I strove to move my
feet, and succeeded. Then, freed from the haunting terror of
paralysis, I fell to pinching my legs with satisfaction, my eyes
roving about in search of water.
The room where I lay was in disorder; it appeared to be completely
furnished with well-made old pieces, long out of date, but not old
enough to be desirable. Chairs, sofas, tables were all fashioned in
that poor design which marked the early period of the Consulate; the
mirror was a fine sheet of glass imbedded in Pompeian and Egyptian
designs; the clock, which had stopped, was a meaningless lump of gilt
and marble, supported on gilt sphinxes. Over the bed hung a tarnished
canopy broidered with a coronet, which, from the strawberry leaves and
the pearls raised above them, I took to be the coronet of a count of
English origin.
The room appeared to be very old, and I knew the house must have stood
for centuries somewhere along the single street of Morsbronn, though I
could not remember seeing any building in the village which, judging
from the exterior, seemed likely to contain such a room as this.
The nearer and heavier cannon-shots had ceased, but the window-sashes
hummed with the steady thunder of a battle going on somewhere among
the mountains. Knowing the Alsatian frontier fairly well, I understood
that a battle among the mountains must mean that our First Corps had
been attacked, and that we were on the defensive on French soil.
The booming of the guns was unbroken, as steady and sustained as the
eternal roar of a cataract. At moments I believed that I could
distinguish the staccato crashes of platoon firing, but could not be
certain in the swelling din.
As I lay there on my long, cushioned chair, burning with that
insatiable thirst which, to thoroughly appreciate, one must be
wounded, the door opened and a Turco soldier came into the room and
advanced toward me on tip-toe.
He wore full uniform, was fully equipped, crimson chechia, snowy
gaiters, and terrible sabre-bayonet.
I beckoned him, and the tall, bronzed fellow came up, smiling, showing
his snowy, pointed teeth under a crisp beard.
"Water, Mustapha," I motioned with stiffened lips, and the good
fellow unslung his blue water-bottle and set it to my burning mouth.
"Merci, mon brave!" I said. "May you dwell in Paradise with Ali, the
fourth Caliph, the Lion of God!"
The Turco stared, muttered the Tekbir in a low voice, bent and kissed
my hands.
"Were you once an officer of our African battalions?" he asked, in
the Arab tongue.
"Sous-officier of spahi cavalry," I said, smiling. "And you are a
Kabyle mountaineer from Constantine, I see."
"It is true as I recite the fatha," cried the great fellow, beaming
on me. "We Kabyles love our officers and bear witness to the unity of
God, too. I am a marabout, my inspector, Third Turcos, and I am
anxious to have a Prussian ask me who were my seven ancestors."
The music of his long-forgotten tongue refreshed me; old scenes and
memories of the camp at Oran, the never-to-be-forgotten cavalry with
the scarlet cloaks, rushed on me thick and fast; incidents, trivial
matters of the bazaars, faces of comrades dead, came to me in
flashes. My eyes grew moist, my throat swelled, I whimpered:
"It is all very well, mon enfant, but I'm here with a hole in me
stuffed full of lint, and you have your two good arms and as many legs
with which to explain to the Prussians who your seven ancestors may
be. Give me a drink, in God's name!"
Again he held up the blue water-bottle, saying, gravely: "We both
worship the same God, my inspector, call Him what we will."
After a moment I said: "Is it a battle or a bousculade? But I need
not ask; the cannon tell me enough. Are they storming the heights,
Mustapha?"
"Macache comprendir," said the soldier, dropping into patois. "There
is much noise, but we Turcos are here in Morsbronn, and we have seen
nothing but sparrows."
I listened for a moment; the sound of the cannonade appeared to be
steadily receding westward.
"It seems to me like retreat!" I said, sharply.
"Ritrite? Quis qui ci, ritrite?"