Chapter XI: The Horrors of Scutari

When Maggie Mackenzie, then barely twenty years of age, volunteered to go out to Scutari to nurse the sick and the wounded, in company with many other ladies, some young and others not quite so young, little did she think or know of all she would see, suffer, and endure. But she was a brave Scotch lassie, and, as she phrased it herself, "having once taken hold of the plough, she had no intention of looking back."

All the ladies who had gone out, however, were not so determined. Many had left their homes for the very romance of the thing, others from mere sentiment or to gain notoriety; but the few had gone to do all the good they could, and--all honour to them--did it.

It is quite unnecessary to say a single word about the soldiers' guardian angel, Miss Nightingale. It was under her immediate generalship that Maggie and the others were placed when they first reached Scutari. Every Board School boy has heard the name of this hospital. It had originally been a large barrack, but was given up by the Turks for a hospital. At first, and long after Maggie went there, it was in a condition the very reverse of sanitary, and the scenes and suffering within its walls are past all chance of description.

Gradually, however, as the winter wore on, Miss Nightingale's sway was less controlled, and great improvements were made in every way; especially, perhaps, in the cookery for the sick.

Maggie Mackenzie was well established in her quarters--and, indeed, they were very humble, and contained not a vestige of furniture that was indispensable. Nevertheless, the room, which she shared with another young lady, was in a tower; therefore it had one advantage--namely, fresh air. The view from the two windows, when these amateur nurses had a moment to spare to look at it, was very beautiful indeed, looking up the Bosphorus and towards romantic Constantinople--romantic only at a distance. The room was even reasonably quiet, except at early morning, when the strange sound of the muezzins' call for prayer fell upon the ear; but this had no disturbing effect, rather quite the reverse.

In coming out to Scutari, Maggie had roughed it--rather, she roughed it in landing; and here the troubles of herself and the other sisters only seemed to begin, and they were chiefly of a domestic character. Women folks like to be tidy and clean in their dresses and apartments, so very much shocked indeed they were to find that insects of various kinds, some unmentionable, were everywhere, and that rats and mice were so tame that they not only persisted in sharing the ladies' rooms, but looked upon the ladies as intruders.

Nevertheless Maggie soon schooled herself to look upon all these troubles as part and parcel of her present not enviable existence. "Never mind," she told herself over and over again; "I am doing some good."

Then she would sigh as she thought of the awful tide of human misery and wretchedness that rolled in and out of this great hospital every day under her eyes, and which she could do so little to stem.

The tide that rolled in was that which brought the sick and the wounded from the seat of war; that which rolled out was more solemn than sad, for it carried on its bosom the dead that were borne away to their long homes in this foreign land.

Just think of it, reader: nearly one hundred of our poor fellows breathed their last in this huge and comfortless hospital daily; and day after day, we are told, the sick were carried in faster than the dead were carried out!

* * * * *

"Maggie!"

"Jack!"

Yes, Jack had come; and I do think it was not altogether tears of joy that his sister was now shedding. In fact, that fit of weeping did Maggie a deal of good. She had had much need of it before now, but never any excuse to indulge in so sweet an extravagance.

"Come into our drawing-room, Jack," she said at last; "and you also, Dr. Reikie. We are no strangers, you know, doctor; I have heard so much about you."

"Drawing-room!" thought Jack. "Why, sister must be better off than I had imagined. I wonder if she has a Turkey carpet and a piano."

They went upstairs. A big deal door opened into a portion of the corridor partitioned off, and used as a kind of _omniorum_ storehouse. A curtain was now pulled back, and lo! Jack and Reikie found themselves in Maggie's drawing-room.

A rickety old table, surely on its last legs, bales and boxes and barrels, did duty as seats and furniture; but there was a sofa, and to this Maggie pointed, and Jack and Reikie sat down, and felt as if they had come to anchor on a bagful of broken saucepans.

But there was a delightful window to this room, looking away over the dark-blue Sea of Marmora.

"This is Sister Mary," said Maggie, introducing a tall, dark lady, who was sitting in a corner busily mending a pair of soldier's stockings.

Mary bowed and smiled, and would have left the room had Maggie permitted her, which she would not.

Then what a long, delightful talk they all had about home and old times! And what a number of questions had to be asked and answered, only those who have been in a somewhat similar position could believe or understand.

Dr. Reikie got up at last.

"No, Jack," he said; "don't you leave for a short time. I'm going on duty, and to have a look round the wards. I'll call for you shortly. What I shall see, Jack, would not interest although it might horrify you."

Jack Mackenzie gladly stayed behind with his sister, who was at that time off duty.

"Wards" Dr. Reikie had called the chambers where lay the sick and wounded. This was for courtesy's sake, perhaps, for they really were long halls or corridors. The doctor had seen many a hospital, he had done duty at Malta and in Haslar at home, but never had he seen anything approaching to the horrors he now witnessed in those abodes of misery, pain, gloom, despair, and death.

Those poor soldiers lay in two long rows almost side by side, the feet of one row to the feet of the other, with a passage for doctor and nurse between.

Cap in hand, and accompanied by an army surgeon, he walked silently along corridor after corridor.

Oh the horror and the sorrow of it! Oh the agony and the anguish displayed on nearly every second face, when it could be seen! for some were so swathed in bandages and plasters that nothing was visible save the mouth and the sunken eyes. Here and there were patients who groaned--at times some of these started in shrieking terror and delirium; but, for the most part, they lay still and silent, and grateful for the slightest comfort or sympathizing word.

Many of them had been stricken down with dysentery; others were plague-stricken, with pinched, blue, contracted features, and cold, thin hands, like claws of birds--moribund; and others, again, were dead and stiff.

If anything could add to the horror of this terrible scene, it was the sickening odour that permeated every nook and corner of the hospital. Dr. Reikie, although he stopped here and there to inquire kindly how some of his own patients felt, and to give them a few words of hope and consolation, was himself glad when he stood once more in the open air; his heart was sore and sad to think that many of the poor fellows, now so low and sick unto death, had been among the bravest of the brave in action and the merriest of the merry around the camp-fire.

* * * * *

For nearly a fortnight the _Gurnet_ lay here; and although it was meant to be a kind of health-holiday for both Jack and himself, neither was idle.

Yet every day the two friends found time to visit the hospital; and when at last the time of final departure came round, poor Maggie treated herself once more to a hearty cry as she bade her brother adieu.

Neither he nor honest Reikie went away empty-handed; for Maggie and Sister Mary had managed to knit three pairs of warm stockings for them, although to do so they had to work even at the bedsides of the patients.

I have said nothing at all about one other part of this great barrack-hospital into which it had been Dr. Reikie's privilege to have a peep. This was the ward or wards set apart for the wives of soldiers who had been permitted to come to the Black Sea with their husbands. The wretchedness, suffering, and misery of these poor women could never be graphically told. They are dead and gone long ago, so what need is there to resuscitate even the memory of the agonies they endured?

* * * * *

The _Gurnet_ was less crowded on her return voyage to Balaklava, for few, indeed, of the men or officers sent to Scutari ever went back. If they did not die, they were invalided home.

The ship was detained for some time by contrary winds, Captain Gillespie being desirous of saving his precious coals; for the winter was severe enough on the Upland, and fuel so scarce that well did coals merit the name of black diamonds.

But though the sea was rough and the breezes keen and cold, every hour on the ocean seemed to strengthen both Jack and Dr. Reikie; and when they once more landed at Balaklava, they felt men again in every sense of the word.

In hardship and in suffering, then, did the weary winter of 1854-55 drag on. But meanwhile, both by the besieged and the besiegers, the great game of war was being steadily and steadfastly played; and our poor men, now reduced in numbers by cold, by famine, wounds, and pestilence, to little over 11,000, were never out of danger from bullet-shot and shell.

The war was even carried on underground, and mines were met by counter-mines; by sorties of the enemy too, which, however, were repulsed with great slaughter. The Russians, moreover, succeeded in pushing out their works beyond their trenches, and the allied armies extended their lines, till they almost met.

The war, indeed, seemed to wax more determined and bitter as the time flew by.