men
wounded in the head, arm, and upper part of the body. Some of these
cases, the most serious, were taken into the Red Cross Hospital, where
they received the most skilful and gentle nursing.

"Two days' steady strain began to show on the Sisters.

"The strain had been the greater because there were no facilities for
anything like a regular meal short of the ship, reached by a long, hard
tramp in the sand, then a row over the tossing waves. But nobody thought
of meals. The one thing was to feed and nurse the 500 wounded and sick
men. Human endurance, however, has its limit, and unless the Sisters
could get a little rest they would give out. I went on duty for
twenty-four hours, at night, with the assistance of one man, taking care
of forty patients, fever, measles, and dysentery cases, and half a dozen
badly wounded men. Among the latter was Captain Mills, of the First
Cavalry, and William Clark, a colored private in the Twenty-fifth
Infantry, regulars. They were brought over from the hospital tents and
placed on cots out on the little porch, where there was just room to
pass between the cots.

"Their wounds were very similar--in the head--and of such a character as
to require cool applications to the eyes constantly. Ice was scarce and
worth its weight in gold, for the lives of these men as well as others
depended chiefly on cool applications to the eyes, with as uniform
temperature as possible. We had one small piece of ice, carefully
wrapped in a blanket. There never was a small piece of ice that went so
far. If I were to tell the truth about it nobody would believe me.

"Never in my whole life, I think, have I wished for anything so much as
I wished for plenty of ice that night. It was applied by chipping in
small bits, laid in thin, dry cotton cloth, folded over in just the
right size and flat, to place across the eyes and forehead, enough of it
to be cold, but not heavy, on the wounds.

"The ears of the sick are strangely acute. Whenever the sick men heard
the sound of chipping ice they begged for ice-water; even the smallest
bit of ice in a cup of water was begged with an eagerness that was
pitiful. I felt conscience-smitten. But it was a question of saving the
eyes of the wounded men, and there was no other way. To make the ice
last till morning I stealthily chipped it off so the sick men would not
hear the sound.

"At midnight a surgeon came over from his tent ward with a little piece
of ice not larger