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So it was Velo all the time! Zaidos could not imagine how Velo had secured them. He knew when he had lost them that night in the barracks at Saloniki. Velo certainly had not been there. His hurt head beat painfully, and it was difficult for him to think. If Velo had the papers, however, he must get them. Velo was dead apparently. Zaidos knew that look. The papers were his.
"For a woman perhaps," said Helen with a little smile, "but not for a nurse. That is a different thing, John." "I can't see it," said Zaidos. As he spoke, another dull roar marked the falling of a second shell. "I don't see why they start up to-night," said Zaidos. "I wonder if that did any damage." "They want to worry us enough so that the men will lose sleep," said a soldier standing near.
She was right, and he did, making great jumps toward recovery when he once got started. The time came when she let him talk and Zaidos told her all about everything. He even told her how hard he had been and how long it had taken him to forgive Velo. So the days went on smoothly. Zaidos did not know how many; but one morning there awoke in him a great longing for his adopted land.
So the whispering in Velo's mind went on, and he listened and listened, and presently he sat up. On his face was written what is written on every man's face when he gives the keys of his soul over to Evil. Zaidos came climbing out. "Well, the doctor is going to save your friend Smith," he said cheerfully. "Good work, too! One of the nicest fellows I ever knew, that Smith.
He had taken it for granted that he had slipped unnoticed through the door at which he himself was standing, and as he waited he momentarily expected his cousin to come hurrying up. Velo smiled. He hoped Zaidos would come. He wanted to be there when he tried to make his lame excuses for leaving the barracks in the face of the refusal to give him permission.
Another torpedo tore into the ship. Zaidos' eyes bulged as he watched, the monster ship flaming and roaring with repeated explosions, her own guns valiantly firing to the last. As she plunged nose-first into the sea, the boys could see the crew, like ants, pouring, leaping over the side, only to go down in the vast whirlpool made by the sinking vessel.
Zaidos called a couple of privates from the trench, and went with them back to the main hospital. The man on the stretcher lay like dead. Nurse Helen received him. "I'm coming your way to-morrow, John," she said. "I have been detailed to the First Aid shelter." "I'm sorry," said Zaidos. "It is too near the firing line in there for a woman."
Work deliberately, yet with the greatest speed. Many a man has died from one little twist given in getting him on his stretcher. Forget the fight, forget everything for the time but that the torn body is in your hands. Do you know anything at all about lifting a man?" "I do," said Zaidos. "I'm a Boy Scout. Besides, we learned all that at school." "Good!" said the doctor.
Floating there, almost exhausted in the sea, they were to be in the center of a sea fight. Velo still wept, and Zaidos himself felt a sob of excitement choke his throat. "We are going to get it from both sides," he remarked to his cousin. "That Red Cross ship is trying to get out of range until this thing is over." "What is going to become of us?" cried Velo. "Don't know!" said Zaidos.
For the doctor's present was a wedding dress, just as satiny and lacy and long as any bride in Mayfair could have worn. The veil covered her lovely face, and through it her dark eyes lingered tenderly on the eager white faces that lined her path. And last they rested on Tony. Zaidos caught the look, and it made him feel that he would do most anything to have anyone look at him like that.
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