There were eight others who had died in the night, and they buried them all at the same time, and Captain Jolly read the service over them, and entered in his log the simple fact that ten died and were buried.
And Jim said no word of it in his letters home, and only told Jack about it when he got back to camp.
[CHAPTER LVI]
DULL DAYS
The ten days' voyage there and back, in Captain Jolly's bunk and cheerful company, did Jim a world of good. They lay off Scutari six days, and were back in the Cesspool, as Jolly persisted in calling Balaclava Bay, on the twenty-second of November, having just missed the great gale, which tore the camps to pieces and piled the wild Crimean coast with the wreckage of over forty ships and millions of pounds' worth of the goods that were so badly needed on shore.
Nearly every ship they passed, as they drew in, was dismasted and looked half a wreck, and Jim, when he had said good-Lye to the genial Jolly, and had waded through the muddy gorge and climbed the heights, found everything and everybody in the camps in very similar condition.
In spite of his own fitness, and the healthy frame of mind induced by sixteen days of clean salt air and the companionship of Captain Jolly, his spirits sank with every step he took. It was like climbing through a charnel-house--dead horses and mules stuck up out of the mud on every side, just as they had fallen under their loads and been left to die; and Jim's love for every dumb thing that went on four legs was sorely bruised before he got to the plateau.
And when he did get there the sights were more painful still--mud everywhere, and dirty pools and trickling streams, sodden tents, and gaunt, hungry-looking men in rags, trudging to and fro, with bare feet or with boots that only added to the dilapidated looks of their wearers. Truly, he thought, though not perhaps in so many words, this was the seamy side of war, and the glory and glamour were remarkable only by their absence.
He reported himself at Head-quarters, but saw only an aide-de-camp, who was the only clean and wholesome and fairly-fed person he had met since he landed. He learned that his chief, Lord Cardigan, was sick, and that his brigade was to go down to Balaclava as soon as possible, as the horses could not stand the miseries of the heights.
Then he went across to the French camps, and found things in very much better condition there, and Jack getting on famously and eager for all his experiences.