The chloroform mask soon muffled his cries and he became unconscious. I grasped his cold hand and slender wrist. The arm was rapidly amputated. The red stump with the disc of severed bone in the middle was cleaned and bandaged and he was carried back to the prisoners' ward, retching and vomiting. On Captain Wheeler's table lay a healthy looking German with a bronzed face. His legs were pitted with a great number of small wounds caused by minute bomb fragments. The mask was clapped over his mouth and the chloroform allowed to drip on to it. But he inhaled the fumes with difficulty, and began to choke. The anaesthetist got angry and snarled: "That's it, choke away--a choker like all the rest of them--you blasted race of murderers--I'm sorry for the individual though, this deluded fool, for instance." Captain Dowden was vainly trying to converse with a German who had been hit in the back. The bullet had passed through the lower part of his lung, and then through the abdomen, leaving a hole through which part of the intestine projected. "Come along and ask him some questions," he said to me. "Don't stand about there doing nothing--make yourself useful. Tell him he'll be well treated--better than the English wounded are treated in Germany." The prisoner answered in a drawling whisper: "I never expected bad treatment--the English wounded are not treated badly by us either." "Aren't they! That's all he knows about it!... Ask him if he likes war." "O God, no--war's good for the rich, not for the poor." "I thought these Huns loved warfare--ask him if he thinks Germany will win." "Germany's in a bad way--Ach Gott, don't ask me any more, give me something to stop my pain!" "That's the retort diplomatic! Send him off to sleep--let's get the job done." When the man had lost consciousness, Captain Grierson, the anaesthetist, put the chloroform bottle aside, jumped down from the stool, and searched the pockets of his helpless patient. He did not find much, however, only a few letters and picture postcards until he came to a deep trouser pocket from which he drew a big German pipe. "Not a bad souvenir," he said, as he put it into his own pocket and returned to his stool. Of course this was not stealing, it was merely "scrounging" or "pinching" or "collecting souvenirs," which is an entirely different thing. For a time the surgeons worked silently, amputating arms and legs, holding the bare skin between two fingers and cutting the flesh, throwing bleeding bits on to the floor, dressing and bandaging stumps and excised wounds. Captain Calthrop was grumbling at the tedium of the work when his anaesthetist lit upon a happy thought and said: "How'd you like to try your hand at giving an anaesthetic? I'll have a shot at surgery--I've never done it before. I'd like to see if I'm any good at it." "Right you are," replied Captain Calthrop, "we'll change over." "Jolly good idea," added Captain Wycherley at the next table, "we'll change over too."