“Why, are you not aware that Miss Nightingale, Mr. Bracebridge, and myself are going on Saturday next to the Crimea?”
“Oh, that’s right! Some one was saying you would not go to the camp.”
“What could make them say so? Not fear on my part—for of that I never dream; besides, our lives are more in danger here in the hospital than in the open air. The observation I made to the Minister-at-War, respecting the camp, was this,—that unless I could invent a cooking apparatus for the army to supersede the tin kettles I had seen at Chobham, it would be useless to attempt to teach the men to cook. An officer who happened to be present observed, ‘You’re right. Monsieur Soyer; they appear very unfit for a heavy company.—I have remarked that myself.’ By-the-bye, have you seen the French canteens—marmites, as they call them? They are very superior, and much larger than ours, besides being made of better metal. One soldier is, however, required to cook for every sixteen men with them, and they present the same difficulty with respect to open-air cooking.[11] This is especially the case on a long march—while those stoves, the model of which I had submitted to the War Office, were quite free from any such inconvenience.”
“They will be ordered,” said Mr. Milton, “as soon as they are approved of by the Crimean authorities.”
“I am glad to hear you say so; but my greatest anxiety now, Mr. Milton, is to see the new purveyor-in-chief, and have a fair understanding with him, so that during my absence he may not undo what you and I have so successfully commenced.”
“You may depend upon it that I shall advise him for the best on that subject,” said Mr. Milton.
The evening was spent cheerfully at Doctor Macgregor’s. The American clock upon the doctor’s chimney-piece deceived his guests, if not the doctor, who was at once good-natured, amiable, and uncommonly fond of anecdote, and, like a true Scotchman, professed an immense deal of veneration of, and attachment to, his whisky-toddy. “The day,” he used to say, “is for manual labour, the evening for comfort and sociality; but, alas! in my case, night and day are the same—I may be called at any hour; therefore, the longer you favour me with your company, my friends, the better I shall like it, you may depend.”
We now perceived that the clock was under the powerful influence of the doctor’s “treatment;” nevertheless, common sense induced us all to rise and leave, and after a hearty shaking of hands, and no end of good wishes, we parted. On arriving at the second door, which opened upon one of the grand avenues of sick and wounded, we retired in a silent and mournful procession—except the groans of the sufferers, nothing was heard but the friction of our boots upon the stone floor, already worn into a kind of groove between the rows of beds upon which lay the sick and wounded, caused by the constant passing and repassing of the doctors, Sisters of Mercy, orderlies, and other officials in attendance upon the patients.
As we turned the angle of the long corridor to the right, we perceived, at a great distance, a faint light flying from bed to bed, like a will-o’-the-wisp flickering in a meadow on a summer’s eve, which at last rested upon one spot; or as a bee sporting from flower to flower, till it at length lights upon a delicious floral banquet, which the insect determines not to leave till it has extracted the last drop of honey from the devoted pistil.
But, alas! as we approached, we perceived our mistake. A group in the shape of a silhouette unfolded its outline in light shade. As we came nearer and nearer, the picture burst upon us. A dying soldier was half reclining upon his bed. Life, you could observe, was fast bidding him adieu; Death, that implacable deity, was anxiously waiting for his soul to convey it to its eternal destination.