We had no skilled attendants attached to the hospital, and no one to do the dressing but a few soldiers who had been told off for the purpose. Blood was everywhere; and as I went my rounds as quickly as possible among the moaning sufferers, I had an attendant carrying my box of instruments, a basin of water, and a supply of bandages after me. On all sides I heard the piteous moan, "Verbana su, effendi," "Verbana su, hakim bashi," meaning, "Give me a drink of water, doctor"; and fortunately we were able at least to assuage the intolerable thirst which afflicts men when the moisture of the body has been depleted by great loss of blood. All the cases which required operations were put aside, and left for the following day, as it was necessary, in the hurry of endeavouring to over-take the work, to deal with the larger number of less serious cases first. Whenever I saw that a case was hopeless, and that the man was sure to die, I simply made him as comfortable as I could on the floor, gave him a drink of water, and left him there. I remained in the hospital until three o'clock in the afternoon, and during the whole of that time the carts were jolting over the stones bringing us in fresh cases. I never stopped for a moment whipping out bullets, sewing up wounds, cleaning wounds, and putting up fractured limbs in splints. Sometimes when the carts came in I did not know which of the men were alive and which were dead, the living and the dead were lying so closely one on the top of the other. At three o'clock Hassib Bey, the principal medical officer, sent a message for me, ordering me to go to another place which had been turned into a temporary hospital. It was an isolated building, about a quarter of a mile away from the schoolhouse, and was on the other side of the Tutchenitza. The building had been a private house, and here I found about a hundred wounded men, many of them officers, who had been lying there helplessly since early in the morning, with no attendance except the small services which two jarra bashis were able to afford. A Turkish colonel shot through both jaws was my first patient. The bullet had cut through the base of the tongue, and the poor fellow was unable to speak. His mouth was wide open, and blood was issuing from it. I picked away the broken pieces of bone, put a bandage round the jaw to support it, and, having made the colonel as comfortable as I could, I went on to his brother officers. All the rest of that day I worked by myself, with only the two jarra bashis to assist me, among the wounded men, and when it grew dark I went on with the minor operations by the light of four candles stuck on bayonets. At eleven o'clock that night I dragged myself off to bed. [Illustration: PLEVNA AND ITS ENVIRONS. _To face p. 136._ _Walker & Boutall sc._]