(B.) We had just got through with a very long and hard day's work loading the Spaulding, and were sitting at supper when this order came; but there was no help for it, so "All hands!" it was again for a hard night's work.
All the hospital fittings and furnishings of the Elm City, including the bedding, commissary and small stores, medical stores, and what not, required for the hospital treatment of four hundred and fifty sick men and the maintenance of their attendants, had to be unshipped, packed, and conveyed to the store-boats, and ninety sick men, some of them very sick indeed,—two died during the night,—to be transferred and put to bed again on the Spaulding and Knickerbocker. It was a very dark night, and most of those who were engaged in this work were men of sedentary occupations,—students and clerks,—and women accustomed to a quiet and refined domestic life, and, as I said, all had just gone through with an extraordinarily fatiguing day's work. Some few broke down before morning. At the same time twenty tons of coal were to be got on board the Elm City from the Elizabeth and the Knickerbocker, and wheeled to her deck-bunkers. Then quarters had to be found for her whole hospital company, as well as provisions, on the other boats of the fleet, and to accommodate this necessity a general reorganization was found to be necessary. This was our Sunday's night-work after our Sunday's day-work. It was all done, everybody in place, and, except those required to watch the sick, asleep by four o'clock, and the Spaulding (with 350 sick in bed) and the Elm City (stripped for battle) both reported ready to sail with the morning tide.
One day later, B. writes:—
"Here we are at work again upon the Elm City. Sunday, we spent all night in stripping her, and now we have a day and night's work at least before us in handling over again the very same articles, refitting her for hospital service. It is an exercise of patience, but it must be done without delay. After we had got her all ready for transporting troops, a change in the plans of government occurred, and on application she was again assigned to the Commission."
(M.) The Spaulding is bunked in every hole and corner, and is a most inconvenient ship for carrying sick men, everything above decks running to first-classing, and everything below to steerage. The last hundred patients were put on board, to relieve the over-crowded shore hospital, late last night. Though these night scenes on the hospital ships are part of our daily living, a fresh eye would find them dramatic. We are awakened in the dead of night by a sharp steam-whistle, and soon after feel ourselves clawed by the little tugs on either side our big ship,—and at once the process of taking on hundreds of men, many of them crazed with fever, begins. There's the bringing of the stretchers up the side ladder between the two boats, the stopping at the head of it, where the names and home addresses of all who can speak are written down, and their knapsacks and little treasures numbered and stacked;—then the placing of the stretchers on the platform, the row of anxious faces above and below decks, the lantern held over the hold, the word given to "Lower!" the slow-moving ropes and pulleys, the arrival at the bottom, the turning down of the anxious faces, the lifting out of the sick man, and the lifting him into his bed;—and then the sudden change from cold, hunger, and friendlessness, to positive comfort and satisfaction, winding up with his invariable verdict,—if he can speak,—"This is just like home!"
"Jimmy," eleven years old, one of the strange little city boys who are always drifting about, ran away from home last summer, after a drum, finally turning up on our stern-wheeler as char-boy, where he recognized a friend among the sick men, and devoted himself to him in the prettiest way. His runaway fever over, he longed for his mother; so we tucked him into the Spaulding and sent him home. The astonishing lack of common sense among men strikes us very forcibly.... Those who came down here have hearts, plenty of them, but not more than a head to four, and so they run round the wards, wondering where the best tea is, and the ice-water, which they are probably looking at, at the time, and ask questions about everything under the sun.
(B.) The Spaulding, being all in order, with her sick men, corps of nine surgeons, ladies, and nurses, was started off, and the reserve force went on board the Knickerbocker.