“Oh, I’m all right,” he repeated, and then he stopped.  “Do you know where the hospital is?”

“God!” said Grafton softly, and he ran back and put his arm around the soldier—­Crittenden laughing weakly: 

“I missed it somehow.”

“Yes, it’s back here,” said Grafton gently, and he saw now that the soldier’s eyes were dazed and that he breathed heavily and leaned on him, laughing and apologizing now and then with a curious shame at his weakness.  As they turned from the road at the hospital entrance, Crittenden dropped to the ground.

“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!