tness some proceeding with a more than ordinary interest.
Exclamations in Portuguese, expressive of surprise and admiration, wore
mingled with English oaths and Irish ejaculations, while high above all
rose other sounds,--the cries of some one in pain and suffering; forcing my
way through the dense group, I at length reached the interior of the crowd
when, to my astonishment, I perceived a short, fat, punchy-looking man,
stripped of his coat and waist-coat, and with his shirt-sleeves rolled
up to his shoulder, busily employed in operating upon a wounded soldier.
Amputation knives, tourniquets, bandages, and all other imaginable
instruments for giving or alleviating torture were strewed about him, and
from the arrangement and preparation, it was clear that he had pitched upon
this spot as an hospital for his patients. While he continued to perform
his functions with a singular speed and dexterity, he never for a moment
ceased 'a running fire of small talk, now addressed to the patient in
particular, now to the crowd at large, sometimes a soliloquy to himself,
and not unfrequently, abstractedly, upon things in general. These little
specimens of oratory, delivered in such a place at such a time, and, not
least of all, in the richest imaginable Cork accent, were sufficient to
arrest my steps, and I stopped for some time to observe him.

The patient, who was a large, powerfully-built fellow, had been wounded
in both legs by the explosion of a shell, but yet not so severely as to
require amputation.

"Does that plaze you, then?" said the doctor, as he applied some powerful
caustic to a wounded vessel; "there's no satisfying the like of you. Quite
warm and comfortable ye'll be this morning after that. I saw the same shell
coming, and I called out to Maurice Blake, 'By your leave, Maurice, let
that fellow pass, he's in a hurry!' and faith, I said to myself, 'there's
more where you came from,--you're not an only child, and I never liked the
family.' What are ye grinning for, ye brown thieves?" This was addressed
to the Portuguese. "There, now, keep the limb quiet and easy. Upon my
conscience, if that shell fell into ould Lundy Foot's shop this morning,
there'd be plenty of sneezing in Sacksville Street. Who's next?" said he,
looking round with an expression that seemed to threaten that if no wounded
man was ready he was quite prepared to carve out a patient for himself. Not
exactly relishing the invitation in the searching that a