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The volunteer division, which was assigned to barn duty that night, had hardly retired to the cots or the haymow, when the clanging bell told them there was a blaze. "Lively, boys!" cried Cole, who assumed the post of captain until Bert arrived. Surely no boys ever dressed more rapidly than did the ten lads in the barn.
Even the doctors and nurses with their tired faces looked like ghosts, and the wounded soldiers in their narrow white cots seemed figures of dead men modelled in wax. Some of them opened their eyes, in deep violet hollows; others kept the lids down, caring for or conscious of nothing.
The light folding cots had to be set up and got ready for sleeping, the kitchen tent also required much domestic art and ingenuity for the most convenient and practical arrangement, and a fireplace for cooking had to be built with rocks brought up principally from the water's edge. So eager were they to finish all this work that they did not stop to prepare much of a luncheon.
After that he began to realize that he was heir to a fine assortment of canned delicacies and an oil stove and four suitcases filled, he hoped, with good clothes. Not omitting possession of two spring cots and several pairs of high-grade blankets, and two sweaters and Lord knows what all. Those suitcases were enough to make any man sit and bite his nails, wondering if he were crazy.
The men in the cots close by shouted with laughter at the look of it, and the man himself laughed till he brought pain to the wound. Then he would lay hold of the sides of the bed to control his merriment. The dressing proceeded, with brisk comment from the wardful of men, and swift answers from the patient under treatment.
So it was not long before a cheerful blaze was throwing grotesque lights and shadows down the hall, showing up the odd array of cots and beds which had been brought, without regard to final disposition, into the hall.
We lay on our canvas cots unable to see a foot beyond our tent opening; unable to hear anything but the insistent, terrible drumming over our heads; unable to think of anything through the tumult of waters.
I think of the skeletons mouldering on the mouldering cots, of the bones, the fragments of crumbling bones, the dust of crumbled bones on the stone floors, as they have been for hundreds of years, as they will be for thousands of years to come.
To Ralph it seemed an exceeding fair land, and he was as joyous as it was fair; but the Lady was pensive, and at last she said: "Thou deemest it fair, and so it is; yet is it the lonesomest of deserts. I deem indeed that it was once one of the fairest of lands, with castles and cots and homesteads all about, and fair people no few, busy with many matters amongst them.
Lisfranc shrugged his shoulders as he spoke of "ce grand homme de l'autre cots de la riviere," that great man on the other side of the river, but the great man he remained, until he bowed before the mandate which none may disobey.
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