Vera sighed; Natika was her Calmuck maid; that little sigh was the only whimper I ever heard from her through these months when she lived, worked, spent her genius, power, money, all that she has and is as freely as water pro Calabria e Sicilia.
“At Spezia we caught the troop-ship ‘Taormina’ bound for Messina with a regiment of soldiers. After endless delays we at last set sail; before we were well outside the harbor we were recalled by a ‘wireless’ and had to turn round and go back. I sketched the harbor and Gulf of Spezia, the arsenal, the dockyard, the two forts, the purple hills behind, the white fishing villages in the foreground. It was all interesting, but the delay was hard to bear! Every heart-beat spelt ‘hurry’; every hour of waiting meant so many fewer lives saved. The soldiers who had only just embarked were ordered on shore again, and we had to wait until they had all disembarked!”
Vera’s small nervous hands opened and shut impatiently. She speaks with a slight lisp that is like the soft pedal of a piano to the music of her voice. Vera was brought up by an English governess; she is many-colored as a chameleon, polished as a many-faceted jewel; when she is with us she turns the English facet to the light.
“As we passed the Bay of Lerici I thought of Lord Byron and of Shelley who passed his last days there. Is it true you no longer read those poets? We do in Russia.”
At sunrise on the morning of Saturday, January 2nd, five days after the earthquake, the “Taormina” with the Red Cross party on board sailed into the harbor of Messina; the ships at anchor saluted by dipping the colors; on the admiral’s vessel, the marines presented arms. The “Taormina” dropped anchor near enough the shore for those on board to see the sunken Marina, the great yawning cracks in the solid ground, the railroad station with the cars heaped together as if there had been a collision. A locomotive lay overturned on its side: some of the cars had been carried out to sea, where they lay idly washing to and fro, others had been seized and turned into dwellings by the wretched superstiti. An endless procession of soldiers and sailors with stretchers bearing the wounded filed past, and the rattle of the gay little painted Sicilian carts heaped with the dead never ceased as the long line moved towards the huge funeral pyre. The fumes of the burning bodies reached them on board the “Taormina,” sickening but not discouraging the perfumed ladies of the court. There had been some doubt whether they would be ordered on shore to help in the hospitals under the rude tents, or whether the wounded would be brought on board. At last the order came clear and direct: “Prepare to receive the wounded on board.” After that no time was lost. The operating rooms were made ready, the long tables were cleared, the surgeons put on their white gowns, laid out their shining instruments, chose their assistants. When the forty nurses reported for duty one only among them all wore the uniform of a trained nurse, Phyllis Wood of the Buffalo General Hospital.
“I would have exchanged my title for hers,” Vera said, “and what would I not have given for her clinical thermometer, the only one on board!”
Later I saw and talked with Nurse Phyllis herself: “We had come in for the worst, for the wounded that were brought on board the ‘Taormina’ had been sotto le macerie for days,” she said. “They were suffering from intolerable thirst and hunger. Oh, the cries for water, the screams of pain, as the poor maimed creatures were brought on board in the arms of the soldiers and sailors. The first day I was detailed to do the dressing of the wounds; later I was ordered down into the hold to assist Dr. Guarneri, the chief surgeon, with the operations. Then my real work began. We worked at the rate of sixty operations a day, all sorts of settings, every conceivable fracture. There was no time to give anesthetics (indeed we had none to give), yet we hardly heard a murmur from these poor lips. We had two extemporized operating tables and two young doctors worked with me under Guarneri. Sometimes it seemed impossible to keep up with the work, to have the dressings and antiseptics ready; but Guarneri is a splendid surgeon, full of energy and enthusiasm, so calm and self-possessed that we worked under him unconscious of time or of fatigue; our hours were from six in the morning till one at night.”
There was work for doctors and nurses among the rescuers as well as among the rescued. Many of the brave soldiers and sailors, who had worked with splendid courage and devotion, died from gangrene caused by handling the decomposing bodies; the death of one of these heroes stands clear in the nurse’s memory. A young lieutenant of Bersaglieri was brought on board the “Taormina,” dying from a hemorrhage brought on by his tremendous exertions.
“He was conscious to the last,” the nurse said. “We had no time to undress him, so he lay in his uniform and we placed his sword beside him. He was only one of many who laid down their lives!”
“I had for my helper,” Nurse Phyllis went on, “a young Roman belle, not twenty years old, with no more knowledge of nursing than a baby. She stood up to her work like a veteran—it was not easy; no American girl of that sort could have done what she did.”