The man with the crutch sat down opposite, and remarked that most of the folk were gone to the camp, but he could not because his foot had been injured.

He then went on to tell how it had happened, with the usual garrulity of the wounded.

He was assisting to place the beam of a battering-ram upon a truck (it took ten horses to draw it) when a lever snapped, and the beam fell.

Had the beam itself touched him he would have been killed on the spot; as it was, only a part of the broken lever or pole hit him.

Thrown with such force, the weight of the ram driving it, the fragment of the pole grazed his leg, and either broke one of the small bones that form the arch of the instep, or so bruised it that it was worse than broken.
All the bone-setters and surgeons had gone to the camp, and he was left without attendance other than the women, who fomented the foot daily, but he had little hope of present recovery, knowing that such things were often months about.
He thought it lucky that it was no worse, for very few, he had noticed, ever recovered from serious wounds of spear or arrow.