He answered with a glance of pitying pleading. He looked so helpless—so woe-begone—that she bent over near his face to smooth his disordered bandages. When she withdrew she was blushing very prettily, and Vincent was smiling in triumph. "On these terms," the smile seemed to say, "I will be mute for an age."
What an adroit ally war is to love! Here was the self-contained Olympia—so confident of herself—fond and yielding as Rosa; when war rushed in, infirmity came to the rescue of Vincent's despairing passion.
Meanwhile, Jones began a systematic search among the prisoners for the missing Caribees. Rosa joined with impatient ardor. There were three thousand inmates of the improvised city, but no one resembling Jack or Dick could be found. Linda, ministering to some of Vincent's comrades, was piteously besought to ask her mistress's good offices for an orderly in the small-pox ward. This was a tent far off from the main barracks on the beach, attended only by a single surgeon and a corps of rather indifferent nurses. Two of Vincent's men were in this lazar, shut off from the world, for the soldier, reckless in battle, has a shuddering horror of this loathsome disease. Rosa instantly resolved that she would herself nurse the plague-smitten rebels. She had no fear of the disease, the truth being that she had only the vaguest idea of what it was. With great difficulty she obtained permission to visit the outcast colony. She was forced to enter the noisome purlieu alone, even the maid's devotion rebelling against the nameless horror small-pox has for the African.
Once within the long marqueé, however, Rosa was relieved to find that the casual spectacle was not different from that of the other seriously sick-wards. A melancholy silence seemed to signalize the despair of the twoscore patients, each occupying a cot screened from the rest by thin canvas curtains. Double lines of sentries guarded each opening of the marqueé, so that no one could pass in or out without the rigidly viséd order of the surgeon-in-chief. Braziers of charcoal burned at the foot of each bed, while the atmosphere was heavy with a strong solution of carbolic acid, then just beginning to be recognized as a sovereign preventive of malarious vapors, and an antiseptic against the germs of disease. Rosa inquired for the protégés she was seeking. They were pointed out, on one side of the tent, the steward accompanying her to each cot.
"All have the small-pox?" she inquired, shuddering, as she glanced at the white screens, behind which an occasional plaintive groan could be heard.
"Oh, no! there are some here that have no more small-pox than I have."
"Then why do you keep them here?" Rosa asked, indignantly.
"Oh, red tape, miss. There's two men that were brought here three months ago. They'd no more small-pox than you have, miss; but they were assigned here, and I have given up trying to get them taken to the convalescent camp. The truth, is the surgeon in charge is afraid to show up here. The others make by the number they have in charge, for we are allowed extra pay and an extra ration for every case on hand."
"Why, this is infamous!" Rosa cried. "It is murder. Why don't you write to the—the—head man?"
"And get myself in the guard-house for my trouble? No, thank you, miss. I wouldn't have spoken to you if it hadn't been for the sympathy you showed coming in, and to sort o' show you that you are not running so much danger as folks try to make you believe."