A BAD STORM                    71
the distance. Our barracks were only struck by a few detached logs. At 5.30 p.m. the wind shifted almost due south, always stiffening. Quite decent-sized trees were being uprooted and dragged along the earth. Piles were torn off the roofs and flew about in mid-air like a flight of jackdaws. In the central two-storied building, a wall was blown in by the pressure of the wind; crowds of workmen rushed to prop it up. At 6 o'clock serious fears arose, lest the two-storied barracks, where the Admiral's room was situated, should collapse. He was brought to us on a stretcher, dishevelled by the wind and considerably wetted by the rain. The storm reached its culminating point about 7 p.m. At 10 the wind shifted S.W., and commenced slacking off. The total result was, that all the two-storied houses of the hospital were considerably damaged, and three of them had had their roofs blown off altogether.
On July 27 my big wound was completely filled up and cicatrized.
"Thank God," I wrote in my diary.— High time, too. No less than seventy-four days have elapsed since it was inflicted.
August 4.—No desire to write at all. Peace negotiations are under way. The newspaper reports are very vague and ambiguous.    Still,