cheeks, the awful brightness of the deep-set
eyes, the lips of lead, the hands of ivory, the
recumbent human images lying in the shadow of
death with a kind of solemn twilight on them,
like the sixty who had died aboard the ship and
were lying at the bottom of the sea, O Pangloss,
God forgive you!

In one bed, lay a man whose life had been
saved (as it was hoped) by deep incisions in the
feet and legs. While I was speaking to him, a
nurse came up to change the poultices which
this operation had rendered necessary, and I
had an instinctive feeling that it was not well to
turn away, merely to spare myself. He was
sorely wasted and keenly susceptible, but the
efforts he made to subdue any expression of
impatience or suffering, were quite heroic. It
was easy to see, in the shrinking of the figure,
and the drawing of the bed-clothes over the
head, how acute the endurance was, and it made
me shrink too, as if I were in pain; but, when
the new bandages were on, and the poor feet
were composed again, he made an apology for
himself (though he had not uttered a word), and
said plaintively, "I am so tender and weak, you
see, sir!" Neither from him nor from any one
sufferer of the whole ghastly number, did I hear a
complaint. Of thankfulness for present solicitude
and care, I heard much; of complaint, not a word.
I think I could have recognised in the
dismalest skeleton there, the ghost of a soldier.
Something of the old air was still latent in the
palest shadow of life that I talked to. One
emaciated creature, in the strictest literality
worn to the bone, lay stretched on his back,
looking so like death that I asked one of the
doctors if he were not dying, or dead? A few
kind words from the doctor, in his ear, and he
opened his eyes, and smiled— looked, in a
moment, as if he would have made a salute, if he
could. "We shall pull him through, please
God," said the Doctor. "Plase God, surr, and
thankye," said the patient. "You are much
better to-day; are you not?" said the Doctor.
"Plase God, surr; 'tis the slape I want, surr; 'tis
my breathin' makes the nights so long." "He is
a careful fellow this, you must know," said the
Doctor, cheerfully; "it was raining hard when
they put him in the open cart to bring him here,
and he had the presence of mind to ask to have
a sovereign taken out of his pocket that he had
there, and a cab engaged. Probably it saved his
life." The patient rattled out the skeleton of a
laugh, and said, proud of the story, "'Deed,
surr, an open cart was a comical means o'
bringin' a dyin' man here, and a clever way to
kill him. " You might have sworn to him for a
soldier when he said it.

One thing had perplexed me very much in
going from bed to bed. A very significant and
cruel thing. I could find no young man, but
one. He had attracted my notice, by having
got up and dressed himself in his soldier's
jacket and trousers, with the intention of sitting
by the fire; but he had found himself too weak,
and had crept back to his bed and laid himself
down on the outside of it. I could have
pronounced him, alone, to be a young man aged by
famine and sickness. As we were standing by
the Irish soldier's bed, I mentioned my
perplexity to the Doctor. He took a board with
an inscription on it from the head of the Irishman's
bed, and asked me what age I supposed
that man to be? I had observed him with
attention while talking to him, and answered,
confidently, "Fifty." The doctor, with a pitying
glance at the patient, who had dropped into
a stupor again, put the board back, and said,
"Twenty-Four."

All the arrangements of the wards were
excellent. They could not have been more
humane, sympathising, gentle, attentive, or wholesome.
The owners of the ship, too, had done
all they could, liberally. There were bright
fires in every room, and the convalescent men
were sitting round them, reading various papers
and periodicals. I took the liberty of inviting
my official friend Pangloss to look at those
convalescent men, and to tell me whether their
faces and bearing were or were not, generally,
the faces and bearing of steady, respectable
soldiers? The master of the workhouse,
overhearing me, said that he had had a pretty large
experience of troops, and that better conducted
men than these, he had never had to do
with. They were always (he added) as we
saw them. And of us visitors (I add) they
knew nothing whatever, except that we were
there.

It was audacious in me, but I took another
liberty with Pangloss. Prefacing it with the
observation that, of course, I knew beforehand
that there was not the faintest desire, anywhere,
to hush up any part of this dreadful business,
and that the Inquest was the fairest of all
possible Inquests, I besought four things of
Pangloss. Firstly, to observe that the Inquest was
not held in that place, but at some distance off.
Secondly, to look round upon those helpless
spectres in their beds. Thirdly, to remember that
the witnesses produced from among them before
that Inquest, could not have been selected
because they were the men who had the most to tell
it, but because they happened to be in a state
admitting of their safe removal. Fourthly, to say
whether the Coroner and Jury could have come
there, to those pillows, and taken a little
evidence? My official friend declined to commit
himself to a reply.

There was a sergeant, reading, in one of the
fireside groups; as he was a man of a very
intelligent countenance, and as I have a great
respect for non-commissioned officers as a class, I
sat down on the nearest bed, to have some talk
with him. (It was the bed of one of the
grisliest of the poor skeletons, and he died soon
afterwards.)

"I was glad to see, in the evidence of an
officer at the Inquest, sergeant, that he never
saw men behave better on board ship than these
men."

"They did behave very well, sir."

"I was glad to see, too, that every man had
a hammock."