Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1900-04-24
WITH NUMBER THREE
Third Installmeut of Rudyard Kip
ling's Graphic Story.
THE SISTER SUPREME In COMMAND
All Wounded Send Assurances
Home Not to Worry.
NO SOUNDS OF COMPLAINT

Copyright, 1900. by Rudyard Kipling)
Theoretically, six hundred miles of Txii
should be bad for wounded men. Practi-
cally it does them all the good in the
world.
In the first place, they are cleanly and
houorably out of 1t. Not for weeks the
sun and the dust, the foul water, and the
weary marching; the booted sleep, and the
plug-plug of the rifle butt against their
shoulder.
Many of them will be permanently lost.
The ship will take them to England; they
Will find their biliets waiting. and they
will return to live before the faces of their
fathers.
Moreover these are they who have come
out of a winning fight. Cronje's end is
certain. They left the guns pounding the
soul out Of his lager by the Modder.
1t is not as was that terrible journey
after Magersfontein, when doctors and sis
tiers had 10 sit up with weeping men-men
who had been killed in heaps of a sudden
one day and damned in heaps by their gen.
eral the neXt-rnen who tried to explain
but broke down and turned their faces 10
the wall and cried miserably and hopelessly.
Number Three's staff will remember that
Magersfontein trip as long as they live.
This is distinctly o better business. They
are going Off to sleep. like tired children
Observation-Disclosures officers and siXty-siX
men. They will be different people tomor-
row.
The doctors look at the sisters and nod
joyously.
A good train load: no one will be lost, and
that little end car for once need not do duty
as mOrtuary.
Number twenty-seven wants something
solid to eat. Number twenty-seven won't
get 1t. He is shot through his stomach.
al. I,
Modder dirt. He can have some more milk
ard brandy.
PLEASE. sister. there's colonel hoppln'
about the alleyway.
A sister advances to cut him off Mere
doctors are helpless here. They dare not
herd colonies like oStricheS. Besides he has
one sound leg. He says So
But you are to get on to your back and
lie down. is the order.
But. please, sister, 1 feel quite fit
But | say So
A wave of the hand eliminates the col
onel. He will hop no more tonight.
a fractured Victorian shoulder and col
lar bone. by the look of III and a child with
Il slung arm have lodged the eye of au-
thority for Il few minutes and, sua dente
diabolo tbut / knew Australians liked teal,
are drinking tea III the staff carriage.
Child of Nineteen.
The child is nineteen. He has one months
service. He does not appreciate a sister
drawing comparisons between him and a
seventeen-year-old MILDLY, carried off the
field at Graspan. 1t was his first engage
rnent; he was sceoping potted meat out of
can when the advance began. Then he
was firing. bullet nit his rife on the trig-
ger guard, broke up and continued through
his hand, which is now extensively BAN
dased- 1t hurts n little.
'Of course. it does if you let it hang down
like that says the sister, and she deity
loops up the sling, while the child bushes
adorably
He argues impersonaiiy on the advantages
OF retaining the forefinger of the right
hand. Not his forefinger by name but alb
stract foretinger- One wants it for shooting
and writing. don't you know. Oh, there are
a heap of things one can do with it.
Then the color goes cut of his face and
the sister whirls him into bed.
The Victorian turns pa:e dun and thinks
he will lie down.
One finds out later from other men that
the child was a most plucky child and
would not take chloroform when they dress
ed him. His hand is horribly cut up and
his rife in the rack is smashed across the
stock. The nickel-nOsed bullet has sunk
a quarter of an inch into the steel trigger
guard. 1t would be unfair to steal that rife.
The child is asleep. He looks about thir-
teen.
Now the covers are drawn on the lamps,
the night watches are set and we take our
last turn down the corridor
A thunder storm chases Number Three
southwark the lightning spills all over the
veldt and the sun-warped roofs leak
Thirty or forty or fifty thousand men are
lying tentless in this downpour but it must
be flooding out cronje in the bed of the
Modder.
The Luxury of Sheet.
Our children are here asieep-deeply and
beautifully asleep-ah except one man.
whose eyes shine like the eyes of a pre-
pared moth
What is the natter"
Il haven't slept in these'-he picks up
the sheet-"since the Sd of November It's
too comfortable to sleep. Oh Lord. it is
comfortable to sleep. Oh, Lord, ii is com
Portable. He squirms luXuriously in his
bunk.
Through the long night when we stop all
voices are lowered. Footsteps halt before
US and voices whisper
Have You any New South Wales Ian
GERS. sir. please?"
NO. We have not. Have We any Ok
fords? Yes. sergeant: but nobody is com
ing to wake up this train. Yes We are
full; but they are all doing we'll No. for
the tenth time, there are no dying They
are in bed asleep, and you must go away"
All this in tense whispers.
Doctors and sisters call it an easy night.
They are not actually on their feet or fan
ming pneumonia case from II to 6.
Wei, they had their reward in the clean.
rain-WaShed morning. when every runnel
of the Karoo was bankful and the waste
water tsome day VIC shall get big dams
with system to them) spilled away profit
gately.
Our children were hungry-mutinously
hungry. Officers fancied this and fancied
that: miikmen wanted to know why they
were not full dieters, and full dieters sen,
verbal messages by orderlies asking for
more-much more.
You won't get any breakfast till they're
all fed. said to me an orderly with a pyra-
mid OF Porr:dge basins. You'd better fill
up on Osborne biscuits. You see arr o,
EN- 'aven't the use OF their 'ands."
So they stocked them-"the arr that adm,
| the use of their 'ands''-and they redressed
| their bandages. and they washed their lit.
tie faces and combed their little hair. and
| then the cry went up for tobacco.
Some of the men had changed past recog.
milton during the night. The lines Of pain
the tense, drawn expressions were gone
They had rested. their bellies were full
l they were smoking.
Assuring Those at Home
You must remember that a wounded mar
| Is not sick man. He is generally In su.
lSUPPLANT COFFEE.