The case was too grave a one for the surgeons of the field hospital.
In after years, that ambulance journey into Kroonstad seemed branded
upon Weldon's memory: the baking heat of the February sun, the
interminable miles of dusty road stretching away between other
interminable miles of grassy veldt, scarred and seamed here and
there with ridges of naked rock. And at last the ambulance had
jogged into Kroonstad, only to find that no help lay in the hospital
there, that the journey must be dragged onward through a night ride
to Johannesburg.
If the jolting, crawling ambulance had been bad, the jarring train
was infinitely worse. The Captain made no complaints; he was
grateful for every slight attention; he even forced himself to joke
a little now and then. Nevertheless, Weldon, sitting beside him and
occasionally laying his own fingers across the steady hand on the
blanket, was maddened by the noise of the engine, by the ceaseless
thud, thud as the wheels took every new rail, by the roar, and the
rush, and the dust which filtered in upon them. There was nothing he
could do. He merely sat there beside his friend, and thought.
Occasionally, he thought of Ethel; but, for the most part, his mind
was on the man before him, the man whose active career all at once
had been cut in two.
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