Read Ebook: How Jack Mackenzie won his epaulettes by Stables Gordon Pearse Alfred Illustrator

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Ebook has 199 lines and 12166 words, and 4 pages

ough till they reached the Upland. Sturdy insisted on carrying his share of the medical stores; and indeed he was the hardiest and strongest man of the lot.

The road to-day, Dr. Reikie told the lieutenant, was even less cut up and sticky than usual. "Sometimes, man," he said, "the mud is so deep and tenacious that it sucks the very boots off the poor soldiers' feet--a perfect quagmire."

On their way to the front, Sturdy, hardy sailor though he was, was sickened at the horrible sights he saw on each side of the road. There were men lying there whom it was impossible for the time to assist, struck down with cholera or dysentery on their way back with their bundles from Balaklava.

There were horses dying, horses dead, skeletons of bullocks, some wholly exposed, some half buried, and here and there skeletons even of men, protruding from their all too shallow graves; and although the winter air to-day was crisp and keen, and snow lay on the hillocks that had not been trodden, the stench that filled the air was at times almost unbearable.

Pitiable sight, too, were the Turks whom they met, and who salaamed as they passed, albeit they were carrying their dead on stretchers, or even on their backs, to be buried in one common grave down near to Balaklava.

Sturdy, at his own request, was permitted to spend a few days in camp and in the trenches, so he soon found out something of the terrible life our poor fellows had to endure there.

Badly fed, clothed in rags, with at night scarcely a blanket to cover them from the rain or melting snow, that poured in through the tattered tents; hardly any fuel; no means of cooking their scanty rations; on night duty or day duty, on the march, or under fire in the drains called trenches,--was it any wonder that even those who were not killed or wounded were dying day by day, like braxied sheep, as Dr. Reikie put it?

I am glad, indeed, to drop the curtain over this part of my story, for horrors like these are but little to my taste.

The scene changed as far as our principal heroes were concerned, when one evening Reikie met Sturdy.

He had a letter in his hand.

"We are off," he said.

"Who are off, and off what?"

"Jack isn't sick?"

"No; but Jack has been working too hard, and he isn't well, so I've recommended the change."

The transport of the sick and wounded to Balaklava was in itself a sad and terrible picture.

I do not know whether it would not have been even more humane to permit them to die in the mud of the hospital tents.

Sturdy shuddered as he looked at those poor mummies of men, that were gently lifted in their blankets and placed on horseback--the poor horses themselves staggering under the weight.

There was little complaining heard from the pallid sufferers: many seemed even dying as they were hoisted to the backs of the steeds.

Some moaned, others showed by their faces that they were suffering agonies of pain; and although their messmates were as gentle with them as if they had been sick infants, every now and then one could hear such expressions as--"Gently, Jack, gently!" "Mind my leg, Bill!" "Yes; now I'm easier, thanks, thanks!"

These last words were indeed spoken by a poor soldier of the 77th, whose head drooped back the very next moment--the man was dead.

The march to Balaklava of Dr. Reikie's detachment of sick was far more sad than any funeral procession ever seen.

The movements of the horses, gingerly though the poor wise brutes tried to step, as if sensible of the weary load they had to bear, caused the wounded to moan and groan; but many lay with closed eyes as if dead, while others, horrible to relate, were attacked by fits of wild delirium on the march, and had to be held down by force.

Then the horses often slipped, and more than one fell.

Here Reikie made them all as comfortable as circumstances would permit.

Alas! the attendance they got was but little, though every one, from the doctor downwards, tried to do what they could for them.

To their other miseries were added all the horrors of sea-sickness; for a storm had come on, and although the vessel was under steam, she made all too little headway. She shipped seas at times, or the spray dashing inboard cold and white soaked the wretched patients to the skin.

Next day, however, the sea went down, and the sun shone out; but many were dead, and with scant ceremony and short service were lowered over the side, to float or sink, for there was no shot that could be spared to carry them to the bottom.

Scutari at last!

The word passed from mouth to mouth along the decks, and the poor fellows who heard it smiled in hopefulness. Now they would have rest, they believed; now they would be safe, and soon get well. Then ships would bear them back once more to their own far-off homes in well-beloved England.

But for Jack that name Scutari had a charm it could possess for none of the others.

Those letters from home had brought good news to many, but to no one more than to Jack Mackenzie. For his sister, whom he had not seen for so many long years, was coming out to Scutari as a nurse. His mother, too, was well, and so were his cousins and Uncle Tom.

There was also a precious little missive from Violet--that is Tottie. Well, I should not like to call it a love-letter. What do little girls of twelve know about such a thing as love, except for ice-cream and chocolate drops? This letter was not even grammatical, the spelling was somewhat original, and the caligraphy just anyhow. But Jack--well, I won't tell you.

Then there was that letter from Drumglen, so orthodox, so prim, that, as he read it, the old grandam herself seemed to be sitting there before our hero in her high-backed chair. But the letter was affectionate enough for all that; so on the whole Jack was happy.

When Maggie Mackenzie, then barely twenty years of age, volunteered to go out to Scutari to nurse the sick and the wounded, in company with many other ladies, some young and others not quite so young, little did she think or know of all she would see, suffer, and endure. But she was a brave Scotch lassie, and, as she phrased it herself, "having once taken hold of the plough, she had no intention of looking back."

All the ladies who had gone out, however, were not so determined. Many had left their homes for the very romance of the thing, others from mere sentiment or to gain notoriety; but the few had gone to do all the good they could, and--all honour to them--did it.

It is quite unnecessary to say a single word about the soldiers' guardian angel, Miss Nightingale. It was under her immediate generalship that Maggie and the others were placed when they first reached Scutari. Every Board School boy has heard the name of this hospital. It had originally been a large barrack, but was given up by the Turks for a hospital. At first, and long after Maggie went there, it was in a condition the very reverse of sanitary, and the scenes and suffering within its walls are past all chance of description.

Gradually, however, as the winter wore on, Miss Nightingale's sway was less controlled, and great improvements were made in every way; especially, perhaps, in the cookery for the sick.

Maggie Mackenzie was well established in her quarters--and, indeed, they were very humble, and contained not a vestige of furniture that was indispensable. Nevertheless, the room, which she shared with another young lady, was in a tower; therefore it had one advantage--namely, fresh air. The view from the two windows, when these amateur nurses had a moment to spare to look at it, was very beautiful indeed, looking up the Bosphorus and towards romantic Constantinople--romantic only at a distance. The room was even reasonably quiet, except at early morning, when the strange sound of the muezzins' call for prayer fell upon the ear; but this had no disturbing effect, rather quite the reverse.

In coming out to Scutari, Maggie had roughed it--rather, she roughed it in landing; and here the troubles of herself and the other sisters only seemed to begin, and they were chiefly of a domestic character. Women folks like to be tidy and clean in their dresses and apartments, so very much shocked indeed they were to find that insects of various kinds, some unmentionable, were everywhere, and that rats and mice were so tame that they not only persisted in sharing the ladies' rooms, but looked upon the ladies as intruders.

Nevertheless Maggie soon schooled herself to look upon all these troubles as part and parcel of her present not enviable existence. "Never mind," she told herself over and over again; "I am doing some good."

Then she would sigh as she thought of the awful tide of human misery and wretchedness that rolled in and out of this great hospital every day under her eyes, and which she could do so little to stem.

The tide that rolled in was that which brought the sick and the wounded from the seat of war; that which rolled out was more solemn than sad, for it carried on its bosom the dead that were borne away to their long homes in this foreign land.

Just think of it, reader: nearly one hundred of our poor fellows breathed their last in this huge and comfortless hospital daily; and day after day, we are told, the sick were carried in faster than the dead were carried out!

"Maggie!"

"Jack!"

Yes, Jack had come; and I do think it was not altogether tears of joy that his sister was now shedding. In fact, that fit of weeping did Maggie a deal of good. She had had much need of it before now, but never any excuse to indulge in so sweet an extravagance.

"Come into our drawing-room, Jack," she said at last; "and you also, Dr. Reikie. We are no strangers, you know, doctor; I have heard so much about you."

"Drawing-room!" thought Jack. "Why, sister must be better off than I had imagined. I wonder if she has a Turkey carpet and a piano."

A rickety old table, surely on its last legs, bales and boxes and barrels, did duty as seats and furniture; but there was a sofa, and to this Maggie pointed, and Jack and Reikie sat down, and felt as if they had come to anchor on a bagful of broken saucepans.

But there was a delightful window to this room, looking away over the dark-blue Sea of Marmora.

"This is Sister Mary," said Maggie, introducing a tall, dark lady, who was sitting in a corner busily mending a pair of soldier's stockings.

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