It was a rough and fatiguing ride, and the next day she felt very tired; but she was used to being tired, and never thought much of it, so she set out to visit the General Hospital again. After spending several hours there, she went on to the Sanatorium, a collection of huts high up on a mountainside, nearly eight hundred feet above the sea. The sun was intensely hot, the ride a hard one; yet she not only reached it this day, but went up again the day after, to install three much-needed nurses there; this done, she went on with her work in the hospitals of Balaklava. But, alas! this time she had gone beyond even her strength. She was stricken down suddenly, in the midst of her work, with the worst form of Crimean fever.
The doctors ordered that she should be taken to the Sanatorium. Amid general grief and consternation she was laid on a stretcher, and the soldiers for whom she had so often risked her life bore her sadly through the streets of Balaklava and up the mountainside. A nurse went with her, a friend held a white umbrella between her and the pitiless sun, and poor little Thomas, "Miss Nightingale's man" as he had proudly called himself, followed the stretcher, crying bitterly. Indeed, it seemed as if everyone were crying. The rough soldiers—only she never found them rough—wept like children. It was a sad little procession that wound its way up the height, to the hut that had been set apart for the beloved sufferer. It was a neat, airy cabin, set on the banks of a clear stream. All about were spring buds and blossoms, and green, whispering trees; it was just such a place as she would have chosen for one of her own patients; and here, for several days, she lay between life and death.
The news spread everywhere; Florence Nightingale was ill—was dying! All Balaklava knew it; soon the tidings came to Scutari, to her own hospital, and the sick men turned their faces to the wall and wept, and longed to give their own lives for hers, if only that might be. The news came to England, and men looked and spoke—ay, and felt—as if some great national calamity threatened. But soon the messages changed their tone. The disease was checked; she was better; she was actually recovering, and would soon be well. Then all the Crimea rejoiced, and at Scutari they felt that spring had come indeed.
While she still lay desperately ill, a visitor climbed the rugged height to the Sanatorium, and knocked at the door of the little lonely hut. I think you must hear about this visit from Mrs. Roberts, the nurse who told M. Soyer about it:
"It was about five o'clock in the afternoon when he came. Miss Nightingale was dozing, after a very restless night. We had a storm that day, and it was very wet. I was in my room sewing when two men on horseback, wrapped in large guttapercha cloaks and dripping wet, knocked at the door. I went out, and one inquired in which hut Miss Nightingale resided.
"He spoke so loud that I said: 'Hist! hist! don't make such a horrible noise as that, my man,' at the same time making a sign with both hands for him to be quiet. He then repeated his question, but not in so loud a tone. I told him this was the hut.
"'All right,' said he, jumping from his horse; and he was walking straight in when I pushed him back, asking what he meant and whom he wanted.
"'Miss Nightingale,' said he.
"'And pray who are you?'