I had seen wounded men before.  I had been wounded myself.  But seeing men fall, torn and mangled in the heat of fight, with the red fury blazing in one’s own veins, and the smoke and smell of battle pricking in one’s nostrils, and death in the very air—­that is one thing.  But tending those broken remnants of men in cold blood—­handling them, and the pitiful parts of them, rent torn and out of the very semblance of humanity by the senseless shot—­ah!—­that was a very different thing.  May I never see it again!

If my face showed anything of what I felt I must have looked a very sick man.  But the surgeon’s face was as white as paper and as grim as death, and when he jerked out a word it was through his set teeth, as though he feared more might come if he opened his mouth.

We worked like giants down there, but could not keep pace with Giant Death above.  Before long all the passages were filled with shattered men; and with no distinct thought of it, because there was time to think of nothing but what was under one’s hand, it seemed to me that the fight must be going against us, for surely, if things went on so much longer, there would be none of our men left.

Then with a grinding crash, and a recoil that sent our broken men in tumbled heaps, the two ships grappled, and above our gasps and groans we heard the yells and cheers of the boarding parties and their repellers, and presently from among the broken men brought down to us, a rough voice, which still sounded homely to my ears, groaned—­

“Oh,—­you—­ ——­ Johnnies!  One more swig o’ rum an’ I’d go easy,” and he groaned dolorously.

I mixed a pannikin of rum and water and placed it to his lips.  He drank greedily, looked up at me with wide-staring eyes, gasped, “Well ——! my God!”—­and died.

Captain Duchatel, as I heard afterwards, and as we ourselves might then judge by the results that came down to us, made a gallant fight of it.  And that is no less than I would have looked for from him.  He was a brave man, and his treatment of myself might have been very much worse than it had been.  But he was overmatched, and suffered too, when the time of crisis came, from the lack of that severe discipline which made our English ships of war less comfortable to live in but more effective when the time for fighting came.  I had often wondered how all the miscellaneous gear which crowded our ’tween decks would be got rid of in case of a fight, or, if not got rid of, how they could possibly handle their guns properly.  I have since been told that what I saw on the Josephine was common elsewhere in the French ships of war, and often told sorely against them in a fight.

But in such matters Captain Duchatel only did as others did, and the fault lay with the system rather than with the man.  For myself I hold his name in highest gratitude and reverence, for he crowned his good treatment of me by one most kindly and thoughtful act at the supremest moment of his life.