This was the last effort; a gush of fresh blood poured into his eyes, and the poor Zouave was soon cold and stiff. In a kind of stupor I sat there and watched by moon and lantern light the hasty operations: bullets probed for and snipped out by forceps, while the patients writhed and yelled; legs and arms dressed or cut off like branches lopped from a tree, and chucked into a heap for interment. I shuddered with apprehensive foreboding of what might ensue when my own turn came, and heard, as in a dream, the three surgeons talking with the most placid coolness about their little bits of practice. "Jones, please," said one, a very young staff medico, "will you kindly take off this fellow's leg for me? I have ripped up his trousers and applied the tourniquet--he is quite ready." "But must it come off?" asked Jones, who was patching up a bullet-hole with lint. "Yes; gun-shot fracture of the knee-joint--patella totally gone." "Why don't you do it yourself, my good fellow?" asked the third, who, with an ivory-handled saw between his teeth, was preparing to operate on the fore-arm of a 19th man, whose groans were terrible. "Gage, did you never amputate?" "Never on the living subject." "On a dead one then, surely?" "Often--of course.' "By Jove, you can't begin too soon--so why not now?" "I am too nervous--do it for me." "In one minute; but only this once, remember. Now give me your knife for the flap; and look to that officer of the Welsh Fusileers--his left arm is wounded." So while Dr. Jones, whom the haggard eyes of the man, whose limb was doomed, watched with a terrible expression of anxiety, applied himself to the task of amputation, the younger doctor, a hand fresh from London, came to _me_. After ripping up the sleeve of my uniform, and having a brief examination, which caused me such bitter agony that I could no longer stand, but lay on the grass, he said, "Sorry to tell you, that yours is a compound fracture of the most serious kind." "Is it reducible?" I asked, in a low voice. "No; I regret to say that your arm must come off." "My arm--must I lose it?" I asked, feeling keener anguish with the unwelcome announcement. "Yes; and without delay," he replied, stooping towards his instrument case. "I cannot spare it--I must have some other--excuse me, sir--some older advice," I exclaimed, passionately. "As you please, sir," replied the staff-surgeon, coolly; "but we have no time to spare here, either for opposition or indecision."