Brown came and knelt over the stretcher.
“What is the name of this place?” asked Hornblower of the innkeeper.
“Cerbêre. Hôtel Iéna, monsieur,” answered the innkeeper, fingering his leather apron.
“Monsieur is allowed no speech with anyone whatever,” interposed the sergeant. “He will be served, but he must address no speech to the inn servants. If he has any wishes, he will speak to the sentry outside his door. There will be another sentry outside his window.”
A gesture of his hand called attention to the cocked hat and the musket barrel of a gendarme, darkly visible through the glass.
“You are too amiable, monsieur,” said Hornblower.
“I have my orders. Supper will be served in half an hour.”
“I would be obliged if Colonel Caillard would give orders for a surgeon to attend Lieutenant Bush’s wounds at once.”
“I will ask him, sir,” said the sergeant, escorting the innkeeper from the room.
Bush, when Hornblower bent over him, seemed somehow a little better than in the morning. There was a little colour in his cheeks and more strength in his movements.
“Is there anything I can do, Bush?” asked Hornblower.
“Yes —”
Bush explained the needs of sick-room nursing. Hornblower looked up at Brown, a little helplessly.
“I am afraid it’ll call for two of you, sir, because I’m a heavy man,” said Bush apologetically. It was the apology in his tone which brought Hornblower to the point of action.
“Of course,” he said with all the cheerfulness he could bring into his voice. “Come on, Brown. Lift him from the other side.”
After the business was finished, with no more than a single half-stifled groan from Bush, Brown displayed more of the astonishing versatility of the British seaman.
“I’ll wash you, sir, shall I? An’ you haven’t had your shave to-day, have you, sir?”
Hornblower sat and watched in helpless admiration the deft movements of the burly sailor as he washed and shaved his first lieutenant. The towels were so well arranged that no single drop of water fell on the bedding.
“Thank ‘ee, Brown, thank ‘ee,” said Bush, sinking back on his pillow.
The door opened to admit a little bearded man in a semi-military uniform carrying a leather case.
“Good evening, gentlemen,” he said, sounding all his consonants in the manner which Hornblower was yet to discover was characteristic of the Midi. “I am the surgeon, if you please. And this is the wounded officer? And these are the hospital notes of my confrère at Rosas? Excellent. Yes, exactly. And how are you feeling, sir?”
Hornblower had to translate, limpingly, the surgeon’s question to Bush, and the latter’s replies. Bush put out his tongue, and submitted to having his pulse felt, and his temperature gauged by a hand thrust into his shirt.
“So,” said the surgeon. “And now let us see the stump. Will you hold the candle for me here, if you please, sir?”
He turned back the blankets from the foot of the stretcher, revealing the little basket which guarded the stump, laid the basket on the floor and began to remove the dressings.
“Would you tell him, sir,” asked Bush, “that my foot which isn’t there tickles most abominably, and I don’t know how to scratch it?”
The translation taxed Hornblower’s French to the utmost, but the surgeon listened sympathetically.
“That is not at all unusual,” he said. “And the itchings will come to a natural end in course of time. Ah, now here is the stump. A beautiful stump. A lovely stump.”
Hornblower, compelling himself to look, was vaguely reminded of the knuckle end of a roast leg of mutton; the irregular folds of flesh were caught in by half-healed scars, but out of the scars hung two ends of black thread.
“When Monsieur le Lieutenant begins to walk again,” explained the surgeon, “he will be glad of an ample pad of flesh at the end of the stump. The end of the bone will not chafe —”
“Yes, exactly,” said Hornblower, fighting down his squeamishness.
“A very beautiful piece of work,” said the surgeon. “As long as it heals properly and gangrene does not set in. At this stage the surgeon has to depend on his nose for his diagnosis.”