d to him hour after hour had passed
and he knew it must be ten o'clock at night. He gave up hope, and said
to the sister when she came near him that he supposed no one would be
sent ashore now until morning.

"But it's only midday. You'll all go ashore this afternoon."

"Midday on Monday or Tuesday?" Mac inquired.

"Monday, of course, you silly old boy."

Days seemed to pass before the stretcher-bearers commenced removing the
wounded from his ward, but it was only four in the afternoon when he
was put on a stretcher, taken up in a lift and carried down the gangway
across the pier to an ambulance. For those fifty yards through the
fierce sun, an English woman walked beside him holding a parasol over
his head, and he was deeply touched by so thoughtful a kindness. From
what he had seen of the English ladies of Egypt during the terrible
shortage of trained hospital workers, he knew that no words could
describe the magnificence of their actions. The ambulance rattled
away, and he heard again the many noises of an Egyptian street. It was
a dreary journey of nearly an hour, for the springs of the car had long
abandoned their functions, and the jolting over the cobbled roads was
agony to his wounded head.

He was taken to the 17th General Hospital at Ramleh, and was placed on
a low basket arrangement in a big marquee, with its sides rolled up so
that the least hot of any stray breeze might find its way in. The
floor was the desert sand. It was in these days that the shamefully
inadequate preparations for the wounded were most felt, yet the
sufferers themselves did not complain, and the hospital staffs and the
civilian population of Egypt went to work in that scorching heat to
make the best use of their strength and of the short supply of material
available. So the wounded, knowing that all there were doing their
best uncomplainingly accepted going without dressings when they would
have brought great relief; accepted bad food sometimes, the discomfort
of the wicket beds in the stifling heat of the marquees; and, armed
each with a fly whisk, they made the best of a bad job. The sisters
were magnificent, and, indeed, everybody was. The lightly wounded,
too, did all in their power for those who could not walk.

Several hours after Mac arrived, he was handed a bowl of rice mixed
with condensed milk, and though it had been made some time, and had
fermented, he was hungry and ate it eagerly. Then a sister dressed hi