* * * * *
For nearly a fortnight the Gurnet lay here; and although it was meant to be a kind of health-holiday for both Jack and himself, neither was idle.
Yet every day the two friends found time to visit the hospital; and when at last the time of final departure came round, poor Maggie treated herself once more to a hearty cry as she bade her brother adieu.
Neither he nor honest Reikie went away empty-handed; for Maggie and Sister Mary had managed to knit three pairs of warm stockings for them, although to do so they had to work even at the bedsides of the patients.
I have said nothing at all about one other part of this great barrack-hospital into which it had been Dr. Reikie's privilege to have a peep. This was the ward or wards set apart for the wives of soldiers who had been permitted to come to the Black Sea with their husbands. The wretchedness, suffering, and misery of these poor women could never be graphically told. They are dead and gone long ago, so what need is there to resuscitate even the memory of the agonies they endured?
* * * * *
The Gurnet was less crowded on her return voyage to Balaklava, for few, indeed, of the men or officers sent to Scutari ever went back. If they did not die, they were invalided home.
The ship was detained for some time by contrary winds, Captain Gillespie being desirous of saving his precious coals; for the winter was severe enough on the Upland, and fuel so scarce that well did coals merit the name of black diamonds.
But though the sea was rough and the breezes keen and cold, every hour on the ocean seemed to strengthen both Jack and Dr. Reikie; and when they once more landed at Balaklava, they felt men again in every sense of the word.
In hardship and in suffering, then, did the weary winter of 1854-55 drag on. But meanwhile, both by the besieged and the besiegers, the great game of war was being steadily and steadfastly played; and our poor men, now reduced in numbers by cold, by famine, wounds, and pestilence, to little over 11,000, were never out of danger from bullet-shot and shell.