Grafton passed on--sick. On along the muddy road--through more
pack-trains, wagons, shouts, creakings, cursings. On through the
beautiful moonlight night and through the beautiful tropical forest,
under tall cocoanut and taller palm; on past the one long grave of the
Rough Riders--along the battle-line of the first little fight--through
the ghastly, many-coloured masses of hideous land-crabs shuffling
sidewise into the cactus and shuffling on with an unearthly rustling of
dead twig and fallen leaf: along the crest of the foothills and down to
the little town of Siboney, lighted, bustling with preparation for the
wounded in the tents; bustling at the beach with the unloading of
rations, the transports moving here and there far out on the moonlighted
sea. Down there were straggler, wounded soldier, teamster, mule-packer,
refugee Cuban, correspondent, nurse, doctor, surgeon--the flotsam and
jetsam of the battle of the day.

* * * * *

The moon rose.

"Water! water! water!"

Crittenden could not move. He could see the lights in the tents; the
half-naked figures stretched on tables; and doctors with bloody arms
about them--cutting and bandaging--one with his hands inside a man's
stomach, working and kneading the bowels as though they were dough. Now
and then four negro troopers would appear with something in a blanket,
would walk around the tent where there was a long trench, and, standing
at the head of this, two would lift up their ends of the blanket and the
other two would let go, and a shapeless shape would drop into the
trench. Up and down near by strolled two young Lieutenants, smoking