Then what a long, delightful talk they all had about home and old times! And what a number of questions had to be asked and answered, only those who have been in a somewhat similar position could believe or understand.
Dr. Reikie got up at last.
"No, Jack," he said; "don't you leave for a short time. I'm going on duty, and to have a look round the wards. I'll call for you shortly. What I shall see, Jack, would not interest although it might horrify you."
Jack Mackenzie gladly stayed behind with his sister, who was at that time off duty.
"Wards" Dr. Reikie had called the chambers where lay the sick and wounded. This was for courtesy's sake, perhaps, for they really were long halls or corridors. The doctor had seen many a hospital, he had done duty at Malta and in Haslar at home, but never had he seen anything approaching to the horrors he now witnessed in those abodes of misery, pain, gloom, despair, and death.
Those poor soldiers lay in two long rows almost side by side, the feet of one row to the feet of the other, with a passage for doctor and nurse between.
Cap in hand, and accompanied by an army surgeon, he walked silently along corridor after corridor.
Oh the horror and the sorrow of it! Oh the agony and the anguish displayed on nearly every second face, when it could be seen! for some were so swathed in bandages and plasters that nothing was visible save the mouth and the sunken eyes. Here and there were patients who groaned—at times some of these started in shrieking terror and delirium; but, for the most part, they lay still and silent, and grateful for the slightest comfort or sympathizing word.
Many of them had been stricken down with dysentery; others were plague-stricken, with pinched, blue, contracted features, and cold, thin hands, like claws of birds—moribund; and others, again, were dead and stiff.
If anything could add to the horror of this terrible scene, it was the sickening odour that permeated every nook and corner of the hospital. Dr. Reikie, although he stopped here and there to inquire kindly how some of his own patients felt, and to give them a few words of hope and consolation, was himself glad when he stood once more in the open air; his heart was sore and sad to think that many of the poor fellows, now so low and sick unto death, had been among the bravest of the brave in action and the merriest of the merry around the camp-fire.