Sir George White and his daughter came on board, and afterwards Lord and Lady Roberts went ashore.
We had fairly good weather all the way home, but after Gibraltar the ship was rather inclined to roll; the remark on the ship's log was "fresh to moderate gale, with confused (!) sea." Two of the sisters were rather bad, so the remaining sister and I had a busy time between the sick officers and the hospital; and, though neither of us was sea-sick, I can't say that we exactly enjoyed it when we had to sponge a bad typhoid in an upper berth (to reach whom we had to stand on a box, and have a man wedged in the gangway to hold our basin of water; never quite sure whether the next roll would not oblige him to pitch all the water over either us or our patient); and the daily syringing of the arm of the officer who had the operation was just about as much as I could stand on the rough days; so we were glad when the wind abated, and all the sisters could take their turn for night duty, &c.
Lord Roberts was awfully nice to me about having looked after the men on board, and he asked me whether I wanted anything he could help me with; so I told him I only wanted to be sure they would let me go back and do some more work, and not get sent to a home station; so he most kindly sent for his secretary, and asked him to write to the Director-General to say he would be obliged if my wishes on this point could be attended to. Was it not kind of him? If I had not been so surprised I should have asked to be allowed to work for the same Major again, but he was just chatting in such a kind, informal way on the deck, that I did not realise how much he could have helped me if I had thought to ask.
I saw the New Year in down in the hospital, and the stokers made such a noise to celebrate it, beating with their shovels, &c. Luckily, by then, all our patients were improving, though some of them were still very ill; all except the very sick ones were tremendously excited at the thought of getting home.
We were rather before our time, so, on the evening of January 1st, we had to anchor in Swanage Bay, and then arrived and anchored off Cowes the next morning at 10 A.M. It was freezing hard and bitterly cold, and we were all longing to get home; but in the afternoon Lord Roberts went ashore to be received by Queen Victoria at Osborne. He returned an Earl and a Knight of the Garter, and I believe the Queen handed him the V.C. won by his son at Colenso.
That night we anchored off Netley, and the cold was intense; we got up to Southampton at 9.30 A.M. on January 3rd, and such a crowd was there to welcome Lord Roberts. Of course it was some time before he got away and we could get our patients landed; but as soon as we got into dock some orderlies came on board from Netley with a good supply of fresh milk, which was much enjoyed in the hospital, and, eventually, we were thankful to see all the bad cases safely off to Netley—three of them had been so very ill, and several times we had thought they could not live to get home.
It is always a little sad saying good-bye to people you have got to know well on board ship, but not nearly so bad near home as out at the front.
We had orders to report ourselves at the War Office, and, after having cleared up the hospital, we were able to get away about 1 P.M.
The next day I called at the War Office, and presented Lord Roberts' letter, and was told that I should go back; they would let me know when—and then I went on leave.
On the 15th of January I had a wire to rejoin the ship for the return voyage on the 19th. It was bitterly cold all the time I was in England, and I had rather a rush to get some new uniform and other necessaries, to unpack and "sort myself," and repack again.