I sent my enthusiastic assistant to the nurses' quarters, with a
message that they were not to report themselves to me until they had
had a night's rest. Then I turned in.

At midnight I was awakened by the orderly, and summoned to the tent
of the officer in command. This youth's face was considerably
whiter than his linen. He was consulting with his second in
command, a boy of twenty-two or thereabouts.

A man covered with sand and blood was sitting in a hammock-chair,
rubbing his eyes, and drinking something out of a tumbler.

"News from the front?" I inquired without ceremony, which hindrance
we had long since dispensed with.

"Yes, and bad news."

It certainly was not pleasant hearing. Some one mentioned the word
"disaster," and we looked at each other with hard, anxious eyes. I
thought of the women, and almost decided to send them back before
daylight.

In a few moments a fresh man was roused out of his bed, and sent
full gallop through the moonlight across the desert to headquarters,
and the officer in command began to regain confidence. I think he
extracted it from the despatch-bearer's tumbler. After all, he was
not responsible for much. He was merely a connecting-link, a point
of touch between two greater men.