The great, high, sombre hall, lighted only by four or five candles,
where the surgeons moved about examining the wounded, was literally
crammed with people. Stretcher-bearers continually brought new wounded
and placed them side by side in rows on the ground. The crowd was so
great that the wretches pushed against one another and bathed in their
neighbors’ blood. Pools of stagnant gore stood in the empty places; from
the feverish breath of several hundred men, the perspiration of the
bearers, rose a heavy, thick, fetid atmosphere in which candles burned
dimly in different parts of the hall. A confused murmur of groans,
sighs, death-rattles, was interrupted by piercing cries. Sisters of
Charity, whose calm faces did not express woman’s futile and tearful
compassion, but an active and lively interest, glided here and there in
the midst of bloody coats and shirts, sometimes striding over the
wounded, carrying medicines, water, bandages, lint. Surgeons with their
sleeves turned up, on their knees before the wounded, examined and
probed the wounds by the flare of torches held by their assistants, in
spite of the terrible cries and supplications of the patients. Seated at
a little table beside the door a major wrote the number 532.
“Ivan Bogoïef, private in the third company of the regiment from C----,
_fractura femuris complicata_!” shouted the surgeon, who was dressing a
broken limb at the other end of the hall. “Turn him over.”
“Oh, oh, good fathers!” gasped the soldier, begging them to leave him in
peace.
“_Perforatio capites._ Simon Neferdof, lieutenant-colonel of the
infantry regiment from N----. Have a little patience, colonel. There is
no way of--I shall be obliged to leave you there,” said a third, who was
fumbling with a sort of hook in the head of the unfortunate officer.
“In Heaven’s name, get done quickly!”
“_Perforatio pectoris._ Sebastian Sereda, private--what regiment? But it
is no use, don’t write it down. _Moritur._ Carry him off,” added the
surgeon, leaving the dying man, who with upturned eyes was already
gasping.
Forty or fifty stretcher-bearers awaited their burdens at the door. The
living were sent to the hospital, the dead to the chapel. They waited in
silence, and sometimes a sigh escaped them as they contemplated this
picture.