Page:Under the Deodars - Kipling (1890).djvu/99

 "Not going out this journey," gasped Bobby as he was lifted from the doolie. "Not going out this journey. " Then with an air of supreme conviction:—"I can't, you see".

"Not if I can do anything!" said the Surgeon-Major, who had hastened over from the Mess where he had been dining.

He and the regimental Surgeon fought together with Death for the life of Bobby Wick. Their ministrations were interrupted by a hairy apparition in a blue-grey dressing-gown who stared in round-eyed horror at the bed and cried: "Ow my Gawd! It can't be 'im!" until an indignant Hospital Orderly whisked him away.

If care of man and desire to live could have done aught, Bobby would have been saved. As it was, he made a fight of three days, and the Surgeon-Major's brow uncreased. "We'll save him yet," he said; and the Surgeon, who though he ranked with a Captain, had a very youthful heart, went out upon the word and pranced joyously in the mud.

"Not going out this journey," whispered Bobby Wick gallantly, at the end of the third day.

"Bravo!" said the Surgeon-Major. "That's the way to look at it, Bobby."

As evening fell, a grey shade gathered round Bobby's mouth, and he turned his face to the tent wall wearily. The Surgeon-Major frowned.

"I'm awfully tired," said Bobby, very faintly. "What's the use of bothering me with medicine? I—don't—want—it. Let me alone."

The desire for life had departed and Bobby was content to drift away on the easy tide of Death.

"It's no good," said the Surgeon-Major. "He doesn't want to live. He's meeting it, poor child." And he blew his nose.

Half a mile away, the regimental band was playing the overture to the Sing-song, for the men had been told that Bobby was out of danger. The clash of the brass and the wail of the horns reached Bobby's ears.