“Plenty,” said Bush.
Midshipmen and master’s mates had given their lives in defence of their ship.
“Of course. That was only to be expected. So there will be many more than three vacancies. So the hearts of the supernumeraries, of the volunteers, of all those unfortunates serving without pay in the hope of eventual preferment, will be gladdened by numerous appointments. From the limbo of nothingness to the inferno of warrant rank. The path of glory — I do not have to asperse your knowledge of literature by reminding you of what the poet said.”
Bush had no idea what the poet said, but he was not going to admit it.
“And now we are arrived,” said Sankey. “I will attend you to your cabin.”
Inside the building the darkness left Bush almost blind for a space after the dazzling sunshine. There were whitewashed corridors; there was a long twilit ward divided by screens into minute rooms. He suddenly realised that he was quite exhausted, that all he wanted to do was to close his eyes and rest. The final lifting of him from the stretcher to the bed and the settling of him there seemed almost more than he could bear. He had no attention to spare for Sankey’s final chatter. When the mosquito net was at last drawn round his bed and he was left alone he felt as if he were at the summit of a long sleek green wave, down which he went gliding, gliding, endlessly gliding. It was almost a pleasant sensation, but not quite.
When he reached the foot of the wave he had to struggle up it again, recovering his strength, through a night and a day and another night, and during that time he came to learn about the life in the hospital — the sounds, the groans that came from other patients behind other screens, the not‑quite-muffled howls of lunatic patients at the far end of the whitewashed corridor; morning and evening rounds; by the end of his second day there he had begun to listen with appetite for the noises that presaged the bringing in of his meals.
“You are a fortunate man,” remarked Sankey, examining his stitched‑up body. “These are all incised wounds. Not a single deep puncture. It’s contrary to all my professional experience. Usually the Dagoes can be relied upon to use their knives in a more effective manner. Just look at this cut here.”
The cut in question ran from Bush’s shoulder to his spine, so that Sankey could not literally mean what he had just said.
“Eight inches long at least,” went on Sankey. “Yet not more than two inches deep, even though, as I suspect, the scapula is notched. Four inches with the point would have been far more effective. This other cut here seems to be the only one that indicates any ambition to plumb the arterial depths. Clearly the man who wielded the knife here intended to stab. But it was a stab from above downwards, and the jagged beginning of it shows how the point was turned by the ribs down which the knife slid, severing a few fibres of latissimus dorsi but tailing off at the end into a mere superficial laceration. The effort of a tyro. Turn over, please. Remember, Mr Bush, if ever you use a knife, to give an upward inclination to the point. The human ribs lie open to welcome an upward thrust; before a downward thrust they overlap and forbid all entrance, and the descending knife, as in this case, bounds in vain from one rib to the next, knocking for admission at each in turn and being refused.”
“I’m glad of that,” said Bush. “Ouch!”
“And every cut is healing well,” said Sankey. “No sign of mortification.”
Bush suddenly realised that Sankey was moving his nose about close to his body; it was by its smell that gangrene first became apparent.
“A good clean cut,” said Sankey, “rapidly sutured and bound up in its own blood, can be expected to heal by first intention more often than not. Many times more often than not. And these are mostly clean cuts, haggled, as I said, only a little here and there. Bend this knee if you please. Your honourable scars, Mr Bush, will in the course of a few years become almost unnoticeable. Thin lines of white whose crisscross pattern will be hardly a blemish on your classic torso.”