VII
IN THE HUMAN SHAMBLES
Somber as this picture of life is, its background was nothing less than terrifyingly lurid.
For some minutes I had stood before a barn in Galicia. I was expected to go into that barn, but I did not like the idea. Some fourscore of cholera patients lay on the straw-littered earthen floor. Every hour or so one of them would die. Disease in their case had progressed so far that all hope had been abandoned. If by any chance one of the sick possessed that unusual degree of bodily and nerve vigor that would defeat the ravages of the germ, he would recover as well in the barn as in a hospital.
The brave man wishes to die alone. Those in the barn were brave men, and I did not wish to press my company upon them in the supreme hour. Still, there was the possibility that some might question my courage if I did not go into the barn. Cholera is highly contagious. But when with an army one is expected to do as the army does. If reckless exposure be a part of that, there is no help.
I stepped into the gloom of the structure. There was snow on the ground outside. It took a minute or two before my eyes could discern things. Some light fell into the interior from the half-open door and a little square opening in the wall in the rear.
Two lines of sick men lay on the ground—heads toward the wall, feet in the aisle that was thus formed. Some of the cholera-stricken writhed in agony as the germ destroyed their vitals. Others lay exhausted from a spasm of excruciating agony. Some were in the coma preceding death. Two were delirious.
There was an army chaplain in the barn. He thought it his duty to be of as much comfort to the men as possible. His intentions were kind enough, and yet he would have done the patients a favor by leaving them to themselves.
As I reached the corner where the chaplain stood, one of the sick soldiers struggled into an upright position. Then he knelt, while the chaplain began to say some prayer. The poor wretch had much difficulty keeping upright. When the chaplain had said "Amen" he fell across the body of the sick man next to him.
The exertion and the mental excitement had done the man no good. Soon he was in a paroxysm of agony. The chaplain was meanwhile preparing another for the great journey.