One beardless youth who had been shot through the throat, and who told me in a husky whisper that he had had no water in thirty-six hours, tried to take a swallow when I lifted his head. He strangled, coughed up a little bloody froth, and then whispered: "It's no use; I can't. Never mind!" Our Dr. Egan afterward gave him water through a stomach-tube. If there was any weakness or selfishness, or behavior not up to the highest level of heroic manhood, among the wounded American soldiers in that hospital during those three terrible days, I failed to see it. As one of the army surgeons said to me, with the tears very near his eyes: "When I look at those fellows and see what they stand, I am proud of being an American, and I glory in the stock. The world has nothing finer." It was the splendid courage and fortitude of the men that made their suffering so hard to see. As the row of prostrate bodies on the ground grew longer and longer Saturday afternoon and evening, the emotional strain of the situation became almost unbearable, and I would have exchanged all the knowledge and ability I possessed for the knowledge and skill even of a hospital steward, so that I might do something more than carry around food and water to those suffering, uncomplaining American soldiers. Late Saturday afternoon there was a heavy tropical shower, which drenched not only the wounded who were awaiting examination in front of the operating-tents, but also the men who had been operated upon and carried away into the long grass. I doubt, however, whether it made their condition any worse--at least for a time. Most of them had been exposed for hours to a tropical sun, and the rain must have given them, at first, a feeling of coolness and relief. As the sun set and darkness settled down upon the camp after the short tropical twilight, candles were again lighted around the operating-tables, and the surgeons worked on without intermission and without rest. The rattle of rifles and machine-guns and the booming of artillery along the line of battle died away into an occasional sputter after dark; the full moon rose into a cloudless sky, and the stillness of the jungle south of the camp was broken only by an occasional shot from a sentry or from a Spanish sharp-shooter hidden in a tree. Around the operating-tables there was a sound of half-audible conversation as the surgeons gave directions to their assistants or discussed the injuries of the men upon whom they were at work, and now and then a peremptory call for "Litter-squad here!" showed that another man was about to be brought to the operating-table, or carried from it into the field and laid on the ground.