Some typical cases of frostbite were grotesque in their ghastliness. Fancy the experience of two men who came to us for treatment after dragging their wounded bodies over the hundred and eighty miles of snow that separated Kars from Erzeroum. Their hands had been frost-bitten early in the march, and for the last week nothing was left but the skeleton of each hand from the wrist to the finger-tips. Every particle of flesh had rotted off, and the bones were black with decomposition. They came to me holding out their blackened skeleton hands feebly and pitifully before them, and I lopped off the maimed remnants at the wrists. Both these men died from the effects of that terrible march, which not even the lurid imagination of a Dante could easily rival.
We in our turn had to send out some of our lightly wounded men to relieve the congested hospitals and to diminish the chances of an epidemic. On Christmas Day we sent away sixty-six, most of whom were wounded in the hands or arms, and they started to march to Baiburt. We were able to give them warm jerseys, under-clothing, long stockings, and woollen comforters, thanks to the generosity of Lord Blantyre; and three days later we sent out another thirty, each of whom got ten piastres from Lord Blantyre's fund in addition to the clothes. All of the men reached Baiburt safely.
The hospitals were soon so crowded that typhus and typhoid fever raged with added violence, and hospital gangrene, that I had seen before in Plevna, once more made its dreaded appearance. We had eight cases in our hospital, and lost three of them. Pyæmia and frostbite were the other chief causes of mortality.
Pinkerton and I, with Morisot and Williams to help us, managed our three hundred beds fairly well; but it was a great blow to us when Williams took the fever, and was added to the sick list. When Pinkerton and myself met Fetherstonhaugh and Denniston in the evenings at dinner, we used to look at each other curiously, wondering which would be the first. It was Fetherstonhaugh. He was attacked by a kind of remittent fever, but tried to shake it off and went about his work as usual. One night, when the rest of us were at dinner, Fetherstonhaugh came into the dining-room, and remarked that there were three men with their throats cut in his room. We rushed in, but found nothing, and came to the conclusion that it was time Fetherstonhaugh left off work, so we sent him down to Trebizond.
That was the last that I saw of him for a long, long time; but the curious agency that for want of a better name we call coincidence brought us together again after many years in a strange way. It happened in Melbourne, when I had settled down to steady work at my practice, and had almost forgotten the stirring days in Asia Minor, except for a few rare glimpses when memory lifted the veil. I was engaged one day at the Supreme Court as a professional witness in some case; and when I stepped out of the box, it occurred to me that I knew the face of a man who was sitting below me in the body of the court.
"Hullo, Ryan, how are you?" he said.
I looked again, and recognized Denniston, who told me that he had come out from England on a trip, and had just strolled into the court out of idle curiosity. As he was talking to me, I looked through the door leading into the passage, and saw another face that I recognized.
"I wonder what has become of Charlie Fetherstonhaugh?" said Denniston.
"Look behind you. There he is," I replied, as Charlie Fetherstonhaugh himself came up, sound and hearty, having left the three men with their throats cut behind him in the hospital at Erzeroum. He too had dropped from the clouds, and strolled into the court by mere chance. So we had dinner together that evening, and great was the jollification thereat.