Next day, however, the sea went down, and the sun shone out; but many were dead, and with scant ceremony and short service were lowered over the side, to float or sink, for there was no shot that could be spared to carry them to the bottom.
Scutari at last!
The word passed from mouth to mouth along the decks, and the poor fellows who heard it smiled in hopefulness. Now they would have rest, they believed; now they would be safe, and soon get well. Then ships would bear them back once more to their own far-off homes in well-beloved England.
But for Jack that name Scutari had a charm it could possess for none of the others.
Those letters from home had brought good news to many, but to no one more than to Jack Mackenzie. For his sister, whom he had not seen for so many long years, was coming out to Scutari as a nurse. His mother, too, was well, and so were his cousins and Uncle Tom.
There was also a precious little missive from Violet—that is Tottie. Well, I should not like to call it a love-letter. What do little girls of twelve know about such a thing as love, except for ice-cream and chocolate drops? This letter was not even grammatical, the spelling was somewhat original, and the caligraphy just anyhow. But Jack—well, I won't tell you.
Then there was that letter from Drumglen, so orthodox, so prim, that, as he read it, the old grandam herself seemed to be sitting there before our hero in her high-backed chair. But the letter was affectionate enough for all that; so on the whole Jack was happy.
CHAPTER XI.
THE HORRORS OF SCUTARI.
When Maggie Mackenzie, then barely twenty years of age, volunteered to go out to Scutari to nurse the sick and the wounded, in company with many other ladies, some young and others not quite so young, little did she think or know of all she would see, suffer, and endure. But she was a brave Scotch lassie, and, as she phrased it herself, "having once taken hold of the plough, she had no intention of looking back."