Shall tell their little children, with their rhymes,
Of the sweet saint who blessed the old war-times."
CHAPTER VI.
(A.) We were "stampeded" last night. A train arrived, and the ladies were at the kitchen ashore getting tea ready. Dr. Ware went to the cars, as usual, and two or three wounded men were brought down on litters, to be put on the Elm City. The doctor coming along with them said, "These men were shot on the train, just before arriving here." After they had been taken on board, M. said to me, "Do you know they are getting ready to take in the gang-plank, and are firing up on the Elm City?" I went on board; could not see the captain; the engineer was having the fires pushed, and said the orders had come from Colonel Ingalls, commander of the post, to fire up and get away as quickly as possible. All our boats had received the same. I went out, and with difficulty got the ladies to go on board. M., who had gone up to head-quarters to see if there was no mistake, came back with the message, "Drop down below the gunboats, at once, and look out to keep clear of vessels floating down on fire." We of course obeyed orders, knowing nothing of the reasons for them, and in half an hour all our boats were anchored a mile below, with steam up. As soon as this was accomplished, I took a yawl, and pulled back to the railroad landing, where I found everything quiet, Ware and H. taking care of the sick who had been left in the tents. Walking on to the post head-quarters, I found all the camp-followers, teamsters, sutlers, railroad and barge men, organizing in companies, and arms and ammunition serving to them. M., who had volunteered for this duty, had a company. I found the Provost-Marshal, who told me that the enemy had suddenly appeared, apparently in considerable force, about three miles from here, simultaneously on the river and the railroad. A wagon train had been captured, two or three schooners burned, the telegraph cut. It was presumed that it was an expedition designed to play havoc with this post, where there is an immense amount of army supplies of all kinds, with a force absurdly inadequate to its protection,—in fact, but a weak regiment of infantry, and a weaker one of horse; but some artillery was landing, and before daylight they would have two capital batteries of Napoleons ready, and were gathering supports. I got permission to send for the Small, which is short enough to be quickly handled at the landing, and to put on her the sickest of the men who had been brought down during the day to be sent to the post hospital, and who were still in tents near the landing, as it seemed to me they would suffer less disturbance afloat than ashore in case the attack was made. It was daybreak before I got them at anchor below again. At sunrise I was allowed to bring all the boats up; but as there was a standing order against the shipment of sick at this time, (in order to reserve the transports for the wounded,) we kept our patients on the Small for some days, the post surgeon not being able to receive them. The women were greatly annoyed and indignant at being sent, with the boats, out of harm's way.
(N.) We sat on deck ... watching the fleet of transports, hospital-ships, and supply-boats hurrying after and past us, and the signaling from gunboat to gunboat, which seemed done by a lantern at the end of a long pole, dashed up and down through the darkness. It was midnight when a messenger came in the yawl, with orders to bring the Small back to the railroad. All the way up we worked, getting ready for as many sick as could be taken on her. Forty-five beds filled every corner of the boat, and beef-tea, punch, and gruel were ready by the time we reached the railroad-bridge. Dr. Ware and H., who had not run away, had selected the sickest of the men in the tents, and had them all ready to put on board, and with the help of the Spaulding's nurses, whom we called for on the way up, we took them on board that night, and the next day and the next we had them in our little boat,—some of the sickest men I ever saw,—crazy and noisy, soaked, body and mind, with swamp-poison, and in a sort of delirious remembrance of the days before the fever came,—days of mortal chill and hunger,—screaming for food, for something "hot," for "lucifer matches" even. Two of these men died on board, not able to give their names.
The fright about the raid having somewhat subsided, we settled down again, as we supposed, into our daily routine of fitting up transports, and of receiving and feeding the sick who arrive on the trains. All sorts of messages and people are constantly coming to our tent;—surgeons from the front, to have requisitions filled for lemons and onions,[[8]] beef-stock, and brandy; orderlies, for officers sick, and just arrived to take the mail-boat, needing refreshment; and miscellaneous crowds, who have constantly to be instructed that we are not free sutlers. Captain —— had kindly provided a wall tent for our use, and Dr. Ware, in thought for our comfort, has it pitched close by our kitchen, and the sickest men arriving by train are put into it, and we are able to care for them without hurrying across the railroad track with our hot gruel. Here I found myself the other day, spoon-feeding, with a napkin under his chin, the pleasant chaplain who came down on the Daniel Webster to join his regiment on the first day we started as a hospital company. His turn had arrived, poor fellow, and he came back to us with a blister on each temple, and symptoms of typhoid. We had in the tent at the same time five or six officers, all sick. Our little comforts, fans, slippers, mosquito-netting, napkins, cologne, are great comforts to the sick men, though to be sure one man did say to me to-day, when I put a few drops from my bottle, "Gegenüber dem Julichs Platz," on his handkerchief, "O my! how bad that smells! I don't mind it much, but perhaps you have spilt some of that medicine you have in your bottle!" My cologne of cologne!
[8]. As scorbutic symptoms had been reported in certain regiments, the Commission was sending small quantities of fruit and vegetables by every returning hospital transport. It afterwards sent whole cargoes, as will be seen by reference to Appendix D.
The St. Mark arrived about this time, a splendid clipper East-Indiaman, and, after her, the Euterpe, both first-class new sailing vessels, entirely reconstructed interiorly by the Commission, as model hospital-ships, and having their own corps of surgeons, dressers, &c. Drawing too much water to come up the Pamunkey, they anchored at Yorktown, and the sick were taken down on steamboats to them, and they made the voyage round to New York in tow of steamers.