They had run short of anaesthetics.
I don't know what I must have looked like, but the little rosy-faced
nurse grabbed me and said, "Come away. You'll faint if you see it."
And I went away. Somebody took me into the right ward, where I found
Fisher and Williams and the other man. Fisher was none the worse for
his journey, and Williams and the other man were very cheerful. Another
English nurse, who must have had the tact of a heavenly angel, brought
up a bowl of chicken broth and said I might feed Fisher if I liked. So I
sat a little while there, feeding Fisher, and regretting for the
hundredth time that I had not had the foresight to be trained as a nurse
when I was young. Unfortunately, though I foresaw this war ten years
ago, I had not foreseen it when I was young. I told the men I would come
and see them early in the morning, and bring them some money, as I had
promised Miss Ashley-Smith. I never saw them again.
Nothing happened quite as I had planned it.
To begin with, we had discovered as we lunched at Bruges that the funds
remaining in the leather purse-belt were hardly enough to keep the
Ambulance going for another week. And our hotel expenses at Ostend were
reducing its term to a problematic three days. So it was more or less
settled amongst us that somebody would have to go over to England the
next day and return with funds, and that the supernumerary Secretary
was, on the whole, the fittest person for the job.
I slept peaceably on this prospect of a usefulness that seemed to
justify my existence at a moment when it most needed vindication.
[_Tuesday, 13th._]
I got up at six. Last thing at night I had said to myself that I must
wake early and go round to the Hospital with the money.
With my first sleep the obsession of Ghent had slackened its hold. And
though it came back again after I had got up, dressed and had realized
my surroundings, its returns were at longer and longer intervals.
The first thing I did was to go round to the _Kursaal_. The Hospital was
being evacuated, the wounded were lying about everywhere on the terraces
and galleries, waiting for the ambulances. Williams and Fisher and the
other man were nowhere to be seen. I was told that their ward had been
cleared out first, and that the three were now safe on their way to
England.