"

"No one is to be blamed for yelling, with a pair of shell fragment wounds
like yours," broke in the surgeon, bending over and examining. "My boy,
you have regular man's-size wounds."

"Not going to croak me, are you, sir?" asked the young sailor, looking up
into Medico's eyes.

"Oh, no; not this trip, my lad."

"Then I don't care," returned the young seaman. "Wouldn't care much,
anyway, but there's a mother at home who would! Ouch! There I go again.
My mother'd be ashamed of me."

"No, she wouldn't," smiled the surgeon. "Look here, what I took out of
that hole in your leg."

He held up a jagged fragment of shell. It was somewhat oval-shaped, about
an inch and a half in length and half as wide.

"It hurt you more when I took that out than it would to pull a dozen of
your teeth at once. Let's look at this other hole, the one on the other
thigh. That's going to be a tougher job. I'll give you a few whiffs of
chloroform, so you won't notice anything."

"Do I have to have the chloroform, sir?" demanded the sailor lad, who was
not more than eighteen.

"You don't have to, Bassett, but it will be for your comfort," replied
Medico.

"Then don't ask me to smell the stuff, sir. When this war is over I want
to look back and think of myself as a fighting man--not as a chap who had
to be gassed every time the sawbones looked at him. Beg your pardon,
sir."

But Medico merely smiled at being called sawbones.

"Chloroform or not, just as you like, lad," the surgeon went on. "Either
way, you can always look back with satisfaction on your record as a
fighting man, for your grit is all of the right kind."

"Much obliged to you, sir, for saying that," replied the young sailor.
"Ouch! Wait, please, sir. Let me get a grip on the cot frame with both
hands. Now, I'm all ready, sir."

"Same old breed of Yankee sailor as always," Darrin smiled down into the
lad's face while the surgeon began the painful work of extracting another
shell fragment. This one being more deeply imbedded, the surgeon was
obliged to make a selection of scalpel and tissue scissors and do some
nerve-racking cutting. But the seaman, his hands tightly gripped on the
edges of the operating table, which he had termed a cot, did not once cry
out, though ice-cold sweat beaded his forehead under Darrin's warm hand.

Then a bayman washed down the enameled surface of the table, rinsing the
blood away, and another attendant skilfully dressed and bandaged the
s