and through with so small a hole that no blood flowed; others had a gaping aperture whence life was ebbing in a red stream; and there were men, too, who suddenly became delirious and black, killed all at once by internal hæmorrhage. The heads had suffered yet more severely than the bodies; jaws had been smashed, teeth and tongue formed but a bloody mixture; eyes had been driven half out of their torn sockets; skulls had been split open, and cerebral substance was visible. All those whose brains or marrow had been touched by the projectiles lay like corpses, in the prostration of coma; whilst others, the fractured, the feverish ones, moved restlessly and begged for water in low, supplicating voices. And in the shed close by, where the operations were performed, there were yet more horrors. In this first scramble, only the more urgent operations were proceeded with, those necessitated by the desperate condition of the wounded. Whenever there was any danger of hæmorrhage Bouroche immediately began to amputate. And, in the same way, when the projectiles were lodged in any dangerous part, the base of the neck, the region of the axilla, the origin of the thigh, the bend of the elbow, or the knee joint, he did not spend time in feeling for them and removing them. The wounds which he preferred to leave under observation, were simply dressed by the attendants in accordance with his instructions. For his own part he had already performed four amputations, spacing them out, resting himself, as it were, between these more serious operations by extracting a few bullets. And he was now beginning to feel tired. There were only two tables, his own and another, at which one of his assistants operated. A sheet had just been hung up between them, so that the men operated upon might not see one another. And, despite all the washing with sponges, the tables remained blood-red, whilst the pails, which were emptied a few paces off over a bed of China asters, those pails, whose clear water a glassful of blood sufficed to dye, seemed to be pails of pure blood--blood flung in a splashing, drenching shower over the flowers of the lawn. And, although the air freely circulated in the open shed, a nauseous stench now arose from the tables, linen and instruments there, mingling with a vague smell of chloroform. Pitiful at heart, Delaherche was shuddering with compassion, when he felt interested at sight of a landau entering the porch. This carriage, the only vehicle, no doubt, that the men of the field ambulance had been able to find, was packed full of wounded. There were eight of them inside it, one atop of another; and when, in the last man who was lifted out, the manufacturer recognised Captain Beaudoin, he raised a cry of mingled terror and surprise: 'Oh! my poor friend! Wait a moment, I will call my mother and my wife.'