The other two glanced at my arm, poked it, felt it as if it had been that of a lay figure in a studio, and supported the opinion of their brother of the knife. But the prospect of being mutilated, armless, for life, and all the pleasures of which such a fate must deprive me, seemed so terrible, that I resolved to seek for other advice at the hospital tents, and towards them I took my way, enduring such pain of body and misery of mind that on reaching them I should have sunk, had brandy not been instantly given to me by an orderly. It was Sunday morning now, and the gray light of the September dawn was stealing over the waters of the Euxine, and up the valley of Inkermann. The fragrant odour of the wild thyme came pleasantly on the breeze; but now the rain was falling heavily, as it generally does after an action--firing puts down the wind, and so the rain comes; but to me then it was like the tears of heaven--"Nature's tear-drop," as Byron has it, bedewing the unburied dead. A red-faced and irritable-looking little Deputy Inspector of Hospitals, in a blue frogged surtout, received me, and from him I did not augur much. The patients were pouring in by hundreds, and the medical staff had certainly no sinecure there. After I had been stripped and put to bed, I remember this personage examining my wound and muttering, "Bad case--very!" "Am I in danger, doctor?" I inquired. "Yes, of course, if it should gangrene," said he, sharply. "I don't care much for life, but I should not like to lose my arm. Do you think that--that--" "What?" he asked, opening his box of tools with _sangfroid_. "I shall die of this?" "Of a smashed bone?" "Yes." "Well, my dear fellow, not yet, I hope." "Yet?" said I, doubtfully. "Well, immediately, I mean. There is already much sign of inflammation, and consequent chance of fever. The os humerus is, as I say, smashed to pieces, and the internal and external condyles of the elbow are most seriously injured. Corporal Mulligan, a basin and sponge, and desire Dr.----" (I did not catch the name) "to step this way." The corporal, a black-bearded Connaught Ranger, who had lost an eye at Alma, brought what the surgeon required; he then placed a handkerchief to my nostrils; there was a bubbling sensation in the brain, but momentary, as the handkerchief contained chloroform; then something peaceful, soporific, and soothing stole over me, and for a time I became oblivious of all around me. CHAPTER LVII.--IN THE MONASTERY OF ST. GEORGE.