The captain was furious, and striding to the telephone, returned after a few minutes to insist on his orders being obeyed; but the medical officer, losing patience at what seemed to him pigheaded cruelty, flatly declined to allow the wounded to be disturbed, and insisted on the immediate despatch of the train. 'Even the regulations of the Peace Conference lay down that wounded sent by hospital trains must be disarmed,' he shouted. 'I care nothing for the Peace Conference, or any other damned conference. I must send these rifles into Port Arthur, to prevent them falling into the enemy's hands,' was the reply. Boiling with indignation, I could remain no longer a spectator of this disgraceful scene, and walked off along the train. It was an unusually long one. Wrapped in my thoughts, I strolled some way from the station. Suddenly I heard a noise--neither groans nor screams, but more like lowing. Where I was and what had happened suddenly came back to me. It was a very dark night, and close to me were standing some waggons, from which were proceeding these noises. Have you ever, when travelling by rail, stopped in a station or at some siding at night alongside a cattle train, and heard the noise of the cattle? If you have, I need not attempt a further description of the sound of the hospital train at Nangalin station that night. I walked slowly along it. In the unlighted goods-waggons crowds of men were lying about, some on straw and some on the bare floor. One heard choking sighs, groans, sobs, prayers, curses, and calls for help, combined with the howling of men in unbearable physical agony. 'Drink, drink! something to drink--I'm burning!' was jerked out at me in a hoarse voice from an open door. With difficulty I clambered up, and then almost fainted at what I came upon. In the dimly-lighted waggon lay a shapeless heap of men, coats, boots, canteens, great-coats, heads, arms, and the place reeked of blood. 'Sir, a drink--a drink, for God's sake!' The cry stabbed me. From the indistinguishable pile of flesh and--other things--I saw at my feet a blood-stained head, a sheet-white face lit up by two burning eyes, and an arm stretched towards me. I gave it--this thing--my water-bottle. The wounded man seized it with both hands, but after a second let them fall helplessly, his head lolling back on someone's enormous and blood-smeared boots. 'Ach! cold. Cover me.' He was in an ague. It was sickening, revolting, horrible. I tried to slip out, but involuntarily my eyes were caught by the sight of a grinning face on which danced the expiring light of the flickering wall-lamp. A smile? and amid such surroundings? Stepping carefully across the wounded men, I went up to it. No! it was not grinning: 'twas the play of light and shadow on the face of another cold corpse. The rows of teeth, the half-opened lips, and the fixed, glazed, staring eyes--a ghastly grin indeed.