Georgeanna to Mother.
Steamer Spaulding.
The Spaulding is bunked in every hole and corner. The last hundred patients were put on board to relieve the over-crowded shore hospital late last night; stopped at the gang plank, each one, while Charley numbered all their little treasures and wrote the man’s name. Though these night scenes on the hospital ships are part of our daily living, a fresh eye would find them dramatic. We are awaked in the dead of night by a sharp steam whistle, and soon after feel ourselves clawed by the little tugs on either side of our big ship, and at once the process of taking on hundreds of men, many of them crazy with fever, begins. There’s the bringing of the stretchers up the side ladder between the two boats, the stopping at the head of it, where the names and home addresses of all who can speak are written down, and their knapsacks and little treasures numbered and stacked. Then the placing of the stretchers on the deck, the row of anxious faces above and below decks, the lantern held over the hold, the word given to “lower,” the slow-moving ropes and pulleys, the arrival at the bottom, the lifting out of the sick man, and the lifting into his bed; and then the sudden change from cold, hunger, and friendlessness to comfort and satisfaction, winding up with his invariable verdict, if he can speak, “This is just like home.”
(The Spaulding being all ready was now started northward, and the “staff” moved back to the Small once more, from which they were busy day and night receiving the sick and wounded, fitting up hospital ships, and starting them to northern ports.)