He strode off like Sir Galahad in football shorts, and was passed through the gate by the sentry almost unchallenged.  But he was gone more than fifteen minutes, and came back at last with his ears crimson.  Nor would he answer our questions.

“Shall I go?” suggested Fred.

“Not unless you like insolence!  We passed the camping-ground, it seems, on our way in.  We’ve leave to pitch tents there.  We’d better be moving.”

So we trailed back the way we had come to a triangular sandy space enclosed by a cactus hedge at the junction of three roads.  There were several small grass-roofed shelters with open sides in there, and two tents already pitched, but we were not sufficiently interested just then to see who owned the other tents.  We pitched our own—­stowed the loads in one of the shelters—­gave our porters money for board and rations—­and sent them to find quarters in the town.  Another of the shelters we took over for a kitchen, and while our servants were cooking a meal we four gathered in Fred’s tent and began to question Will again.

“They’ve got a fine place in there,” he said.  “Neat as a new pin.  Officers’ mess.  Non-commissioned officers’ quarters.  Stores.  Vegetable garden.  Jail—­looks like a fine jail—­hold a couple of hundred.  Government offices.  Two-story buildings.  Everything fine.  The officers were all sitting smoking on a veranda.

“‘Is one of you the doctor?’ I asked in German, and a tall lean one with a mighty mean face turned his head to squint at me:  but he didn’t take his feet off the rail.  He looked inquisitive, that’s all.

“‘Are you the doctor?’ I asked him.

“‘I am staff surgeon,’ he answered.  ‘What do you want?’

“I told him about your wound, and how we’d marched about two hundred miles on purpose to get medical assistance.  He listened without asking a question, and when I’d done he said curtly that the hospital opens for out-patients at eight in the morning.

“Well, I piled it on then.  I told him your leg was so rotten that you might not be alive to-morrow morning.  He didn’t even look interested.  I piled it on thicker and told him about the poisoned spear.  He didn’t bat an eyelid or make a move.  So I started in to coax him.

“I did some coaxing.  Believe me, I swallowed more pride in five minutes than I guessed I owned!  A ward-heeler cadging votes for a Milwaukee alderman never wheedled more gingerly.  I called him ’Herr Staff Surgeon’ and mentioned the well-known skill of German medicos, and the keen sense of duty of the German army, and a whole lot of other stuff.

“‘Tomorrow morning at eight!’ was all the answer I got from him.