Nikitin repeated solemnly: "Andrey Vassilievitch is a splendid fellow." Then we arrived. Here, beside the broad path of the forest there was a clearing and above the clearing a thick pattern of shining stars curved like the top of a shell. Here, in the open, the doctors had made a temporary hospital, fastening candles on the trees, arranging two tables on trestles, all very white and clean under a brilliant full moon. There were here two Sisters whom I did not know, several doctors, one of them a fat little army doctor who had often been a visitor to our Otriad. The latter greeted Nikitin warmly, nodded to me. He was a gay, merry little man with twinkling eyes. "_Noo tak._ Fine, our hospital, don't you think? Plenty to do this night, my friend. Here, _golubchik_, this way.... Finger, is it? Oh! that's nothing. Here, courage a moment. Where are the scissors?... scissors, some one. One moment.... _One_ ... moment. Ah! there you are!" The finger that had been hanging by a shred fell into the basin. The soldier muttered something, slipped on to his knees, his face grey under the moon, then huddled into nothing, like a bundle of old clothes, fainted helplessly away. "Here, water!... No, take him over there! That's right. Well, 'Mr.'--how are you? Lovely night.... Plenty of work there'll be, too. Oh! you're going down to the _Vengerovsky Polk_? Yes, they're down to the right there somewhere--across the fields.... Warm over there." The noise just then of the batteries was terrific. We were compelled to shout at one another. A battery behind us bellowed like a young bull and the shrapnel falling at some distance amongst the trees had a strange splashing sound as of a stone falling into water.[A] The candles twinkled in the breeze and the place had the air of a Christmas-tree celebration, the wounded soldiers waiting their turn as children wait for their presents. The starlight gave the effect of a blue-frosted crispness to the pine-strewn ground. We arranged our wagons safely, then, followed by the sanitars, walked off, Nikitin almost fantastically tall under the starlight as he strode along. The forest-path stopped and we came to open country. Fields with waving corn stretched before us to be lost in the farther distance in the dark shadows of the forest. [Footnote A: It must be remembered that this account is Trenchard's--taken from his diary. In my own experience I have never known the bursting of shell to sound in the least like a stone in water. But he insists on the accuracy of this. Throughout this and the succeeding chapters there are many statements for which I have only his authority.--P.D.] A little bunch of soldiers crouched here, watching, Nikitin spoke to them.