In the harbor even more ruin was wrought, for the ships were dashed about like broken toys that a wilful child flings hither and thither. The Prince, which had just arrived loaded with clothing, medicines, stores of every description, went down with all her precious freight; the Resolute was lost, too, the principal ammunition ship of the army; and other vessels loaded with hay for the horses, a supply which would have fed them for twenty days.
This dreadful calamity was followed by day after day of what the soldiers called "Inkerman weather," with heavy mists and low drizzling clouds; then came bitter, killing frost, then snow, thaw, sleet, frost again, and so round and round in a cruel circle; and through every variation of weather the soldier's bed was the earth, now deep in snow, now bare and hard as iron, now thick with nauseous mud. All day long the soldiers toiled in the trenches with pick and spade, often under fire, always on the alert; others on night duty, " five nights out of six, a large proportion of them constantly under fire."
[fragment illegible in the scan of the first edition]
Is it to be wondered at that plague and cholera broke out in the camp of the besiegers, and that a steady stream of poor wretches came creeping up the hill at Scutari?
The Lady-in-Chief was ready for them. Thanks to the Times fund and other subscriptions, she now had ample provision for many days. Moreover, by this winter time her influence so dominated the hospital that not only was there no opposition to her wishes, but everyone flew to carry them out. The rough orderlies, who had growled and sworn at the notion of a woman coming to order them about, were now her slaves. Her unvarying courtesy, her sweet and heavenly kindness, woke in many a rugged breast feelings of which it had never dreamed; and every man who worked for her was for the time at least a knight and a gentleman. It was bitter, hard work; she spared them no more than she spared herself; but they labored as no rules of the service had ever made them work. Through it all, not one of them, orderlies or common soldiers, ever failed her " in obedience, thoughtful attention, and considerate delicacy." " Never," she herself says, " came from any of them one word or one look which a gentleman would not have used; and while paying this humble tribute to humble courtesy, the tears come into my eyes as I think how amidst scenes of loathsome disease and death there arose above it all the innate dignity, gentleness and chivalry of the men (for never surely was chivalry so strikingly exemplified), shining in the midst of what must be considered as the lowest sinks of human misery, and preventing instinctively the use of one expression which could distress a gentlewoman."
If it was so with the orderlies, you can imagine how it was with the poor fellows for whom she was working. Every smile from her was a gift; every word was a precious treasure to be stored away and kept through life. They would do anything she asked, for they knew she would do anything in her power for them. When any specially painful operation was to be performed (there was not always chloroform enough, alas! and in any case it was not given so freely in those days as it is now), the Lady-in-Chief would come quietly into the operating room and take her stand beside the patient; and looking up into that calm, steadfast face, and meeting the tender gaze of those pitying eyes that never
[fragment illegible in the scan of the first edition]
flinched from any sight of pain or horror, he would take courage and nerve himself to bear the pain, since she was there to help him bear it.
" We call her the Angel of the Crimea," one soldier wrote home. " Could bad men be bad in the presence of an angel? Impossible! '*
Another wrote: " Before she came there was such cussin' and swearin' as you never heard; but after she came it was as holy as a church."
And still another — perhaps our Highland lad of tlie night vigil, perhaps another — wrote to his people: " She would speak to one and another, and nod and smile to many more; but she could not do it to all, you know, for we lay there by hundreds; but we could kiss her shadow as it fell, and lay our heads on our pillows again content."
Miss Nightingale never wearied of bearing testimony to the many virtues of the British soldier. She loved to tell stories like the following: