But even these had ceased. Death itself seemed to have been frightened
away from this terror-haunted desert.
Looking down, she could see thin wreaths of smoke, rising from the
ground. From underneath her feet there came a low, faint, ceaseless
murmur.
"Quick," said the doctor. He pushed her in front of him, and she almost
fell down a flight of mud-covered steps that led into the earth. She
found herself in a long, low gallery, lighted by a dim oil lamp,
suspended from the blackened roof. A shelf ran along one side of it,
covered with straw. Three men lay there. The straw was soaked with
their blood. They had been brought in the night before by the stretcher-
bearers. A young surgeon was rearranging their splints and bandages, and
redressing their wounds. They would lie there for another hour or so,
and then start for their twenty kilometre drive over shell-ridden roads
to one or another of the great hospitals at the base. While she was
there, two more cases were brought in. The doctor gave but a glance at
the first one and then made a sign; and the bearers passed on with him to
the further end of the gallery.
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