These, he felt, must be the Boers he shot when he ought to have shot ponies.
And as he got to that point the trouble of thinking worried his brain so that he could think no more, and again all was blank.
At last came a morning when West woke up in a great room which seemed to be familiar.

There were nurses moving about in their clean white-bordered dresses, and he knew that he was in some place fitted up as a hospital.

Several of the occupants of the beds wore bandages suggestive of bad wounds, and to help his thoughts there came from time to time the dull heavy reports of cannon.
He did not recollect all that had preceded his coming yet; but he grasped the fact that he had been wounded and was now in hospital.
He lay for a few minutes with his brain growing clearer and clearer, and at last, seeing one of the nurses looking in his direction, he tried to raise one hand, but could not.

The other proved more manageable, and in obedience to a sign the nurse came, laid a hand upon his forehead, and smiled down in his face.
"Your head's cooler!" she said.

"You're better ?" "Yes," he replied: "have I been very bad ?" "Terribly! We thought once that you would not recover." "And Ingleborough ?" "Ingleborough?
Oh, you mean your companion who was brought in with you ?" West nodded: he could not speak.
"Well, I think he will get better now!" "But his wound: is it so bad ?" "He nearly bled to death; but you must not talk much yet." "Only a little!" said West eagerly.