All the ladies who had gone out, however, were not so determined. Many had left their homes for the very romance of the thing, others from mere sentiment or to gain notoriety; but the few had gone to do all the good they could, and—all honour to them—did it.
It is quite unnecessary to say a single word about the soldiers' guardian angel, Miss Nightingale. It was under her immediate generalship that Maggie and the others were placed when they first reached Scutari. Every Board School boy has heard the name of this hospital. It had originally been a large barrack, but was given up by the Turks for a hospital. At first, and long after Maggie went there, it was in a condition the very reverse of sanitary, and the scenes and suffering within its walls are past all chance of description.
Gradually, however, as the winter wore on, Miss Nightingale's sway was less controlled, and great improvements were made in every way; especially, perhaps, in the cookery for the sick.
Maggie Mackenzie was well established in her quarters—and, indeed, they were very humble, and contained not a vestige of furniture that was indispensable. Nevertheless, the room, which she shared with another young lady, was in a tower; therefore it had one advantage—namely, fresh air. The view from the two windows, when these amateur nurses had a moment to spare to look at it, was very beautiful indeed, looking up the Bosphorus and towards romantic Constantinople—romantic only at a distance. The room was even reasonably quiet, except at early morning, when the strange sound of the muezzins' call for prayer fell upon the ear; but this had no disturbing effect, rather quite the reverse.
In coming out to Scutari, Maggie had roughed it—rather, she roughed it in landing; and here the troubles of herself and the other sisters only seemed to begin, and they were chiefly of a domestic character. Women folks like to be tidy and clean in their dresses and apartments, so very much shocked indeed they were to find that insects of various kinds, some unmentionable, were everywhere, and that rats and mice were so tame that they not only persisted in sharing the ladies' rooms, but looked upon the ladies as intruders.
Nevertheless Maggie soon schooled herself to look upon all these troubles as part and parcel of her present not enviable existence. "Never mind," she told herself over and over again; "I am doing some good."
Then she would sigh as she thought of the awful tide of human misery and wretchedness that rolled in and out of this great hospital every day under her eyes, and which she could do so little to stem.
The tide that rolled in was that which brought the sick and the wounded from the seat of war; that which rolled out was more solemn than sad, for it carried on its bosom the dead that were borne away to their long homes in this foreign land.
Just think of it, reader: nearly one hundred of our poor fellows breathed their last in this huge and comfortless hospital daily; and day after day, we are told, the sick were carried in faster than the dead were carried out!
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