“Then I will see that you have room in one of the bomb-proofs, but ’t will be a time of horror, that I warn you.”
He spoke only too truly, and the misery of the next twenty days are impossible to picture. The moment the bombardment began, father and daughter were forced to seek the protection of one of the caves that had been dug in the side of the bluff; and here, in damp, airless, almost dark, and fearfully overcrowded quarters, they were compelled to remain day and night during the siege. Almost from the first, scarcity of wood produced an entire abandonment of cooked food, every one subsisting on raw pork or raw salt beef, or, as Janice chose, eating only ship biscuit and unground coffee berries. Once the fire of the allies began to tell, each hour supplied a fresh tale of wounded, and these were brought into the bomb-proofs for the surgeons to tend, their presence and moans adding to the nightmare; yet but for them it seemed to Janice she would have gone mad in those weeks, for she devoted herself to nursing and feeding them, as an escape from dwelling on her mother’s danger and their own helplessness. Even news from the pest-ship had its torture, for when her father twice each day descended the bluff to get the word from the doctor’s boat, as it came ashore, she stood in the low doorway of the cave, and at every shot that was heard shrieking through the air, and at every shell which exploded with a crash, she held her breath, full of dread of what it might have done, and in anguish till her father was safe returned with the unvarying and uncheering bulletin the surgeons gave him of Mrs. Meredith’s condition.
Yet those in the bomb-proofs escaped the direst of the horrors. Above them were enacted scenes which turned even the stoutest hearts sick with fear and loathing. The least of these was the slaughter of the horses, baggage, cavalry, and artillery, which want of forage rendered necessary, one whole day being made hideous by the screams of the poor beasts, as one by one they were led to a spot where the putrefying of their carcasses would least endanger the health of the soldiery, and their throats cut. All pretence of care of the negroes disappeared with the demand on the officers and soldiers to man the redoubts, and on the surgeons to care for the sick and wounded soldiers, who soon numbered upwards of two thousand. Naked and half starving, they who had dreamed of freedom were left for the small-pox and putrid fever and for shot and shell to work their will among them. In the abandoned houses and even in the streets, they lay, sick, dismembered, dying, and dead, with not so much as one to aid or bury them.
On the morning of the 17th a fresh number of wounded men were brought into the already overcrowded cave; and though Janice was faint with the long days of anxiety, fright, bad air, poor food, and hard work, she went from man to man, doing what could be done to ease their torments and lessen their groans. The last brought in was in a faint, with the lower part of his face and shoulder horribly torn and shattered by the fragments of a shell, but a little brandy revived him, and he moaned for water. Hurriedly she stooped over him, to drop a little from a spoon between the open lips.
“Janice!” he startled her by crying.
“Who are—? Oh, Sir Frederick!” she exclaimed. “You! How came you here?”
“They let me out of the prison Clowes me put in,” Mobray gasped; “and having nothing better, I enlisted in the ranks under another name.” There he choked with blood.
“Doctor,” called Janice, “come quickly!”
“Humph!” growled the surgeon, after one glance. “You should not summon me to waste time on him. Can’t you see ’t is hopeless?”
“Oh, don’t—” began Janice.