"Been 'stopping one'?" he remarked.

"Only a graze, thank God," I replied.

Then the matron and the German doctor, as fine a gentleman as ever drew
breath, came along to have a look at me, and he was turned out; but we
chummed, as Australians have a knack of doing in time of trouble, and I
tried hard to get him to talk of his adventures, but he was a mummy on that
subject. He would not yarn about his own doings on the fateful day when he
was laid out, though he was eloquent enough concerning the doings of his
comrades. All I could get out of him in regard to his own part in the fray
was that his men and he had been ambushed, and that he had "stopped one"
with his head, and one with his hand, and another with his leg, his horse
had been killed, and he knew mighty little more about it until he found
himself in the hands of the Boers, who had treated him well and kindly. I
asked the matron about his wounds, and she told me that a bullet had
entered the corner of his right eye, coming out by the right ear, ruining
the sight for ever. Another had carried away his right thumb, and a couple
had passed through his right leg, one just below the groin, another 'just
above the knee. That was what he modestly termed "stopping a few."

After I had been in hospital a little while, the matron gave me leave to
prowl about to pick up "copy," and my feet soon led me into the ward where
the wounded Dutchmen were lying, and there I met a couple of burghers who
had been in the _mêlée_ when Dowling was gathered in. One of them was
a handsome Swede, with a long blonde moustache, that fell with a glorious
sweep on to his chest, as the Viking's did of old. He was an adventurer,
who knew how to take his gruel like a man. He had joined the Boers because
he thought they were the weaker side, and had done his best for them. He
saw Dowling talking to me one day, and asked me if I knew the "little