Blue Lights: Hot Work in the Soudan

The ladies from the Institute had also observed this poor girl, and one of them, going to her side, quietly addressed her. Miles, from the position in which he stood, could not avoid overhearing what was said.

“Yes, Miss, I expect my husband,” said the woman in answer to a question. “He’s coming home on sick-leave. I had a letter from him a good while ago saying he was coming home in the Orontes.”

“I hope you will find that the sea air has done him good,” said the lady, in that tone of unobtrusive sympathy which is so powerfully attractive,—especially to those who are in trouble. “A sea voyage frequently has a wonderful effect in restoring invalids. What is his name?”

“Martin—Fred Martin. He’s a corporal now.”

“You have not recognised him yet, I suppose?”

“Not yet, Miss,” answered Mrs Martin, with an anxious look, and shivering slightly as she drew a thin worn shawl of many patches closer round her shoulders. “But he wouldn’t expect me to meet him, you see, knowing that I’m so poor, and live far from Portsmouth. But I was so anxious, you see, Miss, that our kind Vicar gave me enough money to come down.”

“Where did you spend the night?” asked the lady, quickly.

The poor woman hesitated, and at last said she had spent the night walking about the streets.

“You see, Miss,” she explained apologetically, “I didn’t know a soul in the town, and I couldn’t a-bear to go into any o’ the public-houses; besides, I had no money, for the journey down took nearly all of it.”

“Oh, I am so sorry that you didn’t know of our Institute,” said the lady, with much sympathy in voice and look; “for we provide accommodation for soldiers’ wives who come, like you, to meet their husbands returning from abroad, and we charge little, or even nothing, if they are too poor to pay.”

“Indeed, Miss! I wish I had known of it. But in the morning I had the luck to meet a policeman who directed me to a coffee-tavern in a place called Nobbs Lane—you’ll not know it, Miss, for it’s in a very poor part o’ the town—where I got a breakfast of as much hot pea-soup and bread as I could eat for three-ha’pence, an’ had a good rest beside the fire too. They told me it was kept by a Miss Robinson. God bless her whoever she is! for I do believe I should have been dead by now if I hadn’t got the rest and the breakfast.”

The woman shivered again as she spoke, and drew the thin shawl still closer, for a sharp east wind was blowing over the jetty at the time.

“Come with me; you are cold. I know Nobbs Lane well. We have a shed and fire here on the jetty to shelter people while waiting. There, you need not fear to miss your husband, for the men won’t land for a long time yet.”

“May I follow you, madam?” said Miles, stepping forward and touching his cap in what he supposed to be the deferential manner of a private soldier. “I am interested in your work, and would like to see the shed you speak of.”

The lady looked up quickly at the tall young soldier who thus addressed her.

“I saw you in the lobby of the Institute this morning, did I not?”

“You did, madam. I was waiting for a friend who is a frequenter of the Institute. One of your own people brought me down here to see the arrival of the Orontes, and the coffee-shed; but I have lost him in the crowd, and know not where the shed is.”

“Here it is,” returned the lady, pointing to an iron structure just behind them. “You will find Mr Brown there busy with the coffee, and that small shed beside it is the shelter-room. You are welcome to inspect all our buildings at any time.”

So saying, the lady led Mrs Martin into the shed last referred to, and Miles followed her.

There was a small stove, in the solitary iron room of which the shed consisted, which diffused a genial warmth around. Several soldiers’ wives and female relatives were seated beside it, engaged in quieting refractory infants, or fitting a few woollen garments on children of various ages. These garments had been brought from the Institute, chiefly for the purpose of supplying the wives and children returning from warmer climes to England; and one of them, a thick knitted shawl, was immediately presented to Mrs Martin as a gift, and placed round her shoulders by the lady’s own hands.

“You are very kind, Miss,” she said, an unbidden tear rolling down her cheek as she surveyed the garment and folded it over her breast.

“Have you any children?” asked the lady.

“None. We had one—a dear baby boy,” answered the young wife sadly, “born after his father left England. God took him home when he was two years old. His father never saw him; but we shall all meet again,” she added, brightly, “in the better land.”

“Ah! it makes me glad to hear you say that God took him home. Only the spirit of Jesus could make you regard heaven as the home where you are all to meet again. Now I would advise you to sit here and keep warm till I go and make inquiry about your husband. It is quite possible, you know, that he may be in the sick bay, and they won’t let any one on board till the vessel is made fast. You are quite sure, I suppose, that it was the Orontes in which your husband said he was coming?”

“Yes, quite sure.”

The lady had asked the question because a vague fear possessed her regarding the cause of the soldier’s not having been seen looking eagerly over the side like the other men.

Hurrying from the shed, with her basket on her arm, she made for the gangway, which had just been placed in position. She was accompanied by her companion, also carrying her basket. Miles took the liberty of following them closely, but not obviously, for he formed only one of a stream of men and women who pushed on board the instant that permission was given.

While one of the ladies went in search of one of the chief officers, the other quietly and unobtrusively advanced among the returning warriors, and, opening her basket, drew therefrom and offered to each soldier an envelope containing one or two booklets and texts, and a hearty invitation to make free use of the Soldiers’ Institute during their stay in Portsmouth.

A most bewildering scene was presented on the deck of that great white vessel. There were hundreds of soldiers in her, returning home after longer or shorter absences in China, India, the Cape, and other far-away parts of the earth. Some were stalwart and bronzed by the southern sun; others were gaunt, weak, and cadaverous, from the effect of sickness, exposure, or wounds; but all were more or less excited at having once again set eyes on Old England, and at the near prospect of once more embracing wives, mothers, and sweethearts, and meeting with old friends. The continual noise of manly voices hailing, exclaiming, chaffing, or conversing, and the general babel of sounds is indescribable. To Miles Milton, who had never before even imagined anything of the sort, it seemed more like a vivid dream than a reality. He became so bewildered with trying to attend to everything at once that he lost sight of the shorter of the ladies, whom he was following, but, pushing ahead, soon found her again in the midst of a group of old friends—though still young soldiers—who had known the Institute before leaving for foreign service, and were eagerly inquiring after the health of Miss Robinson, and Tufnell the manager, and others.

During his progress through this bustling scene, Miles observed that the soldiers invariably received the gifts from the lady with respect, and, many of them, with hearty expressions of thanks, while a few stopped her to speak about the contents of the envelopes. So numerous were the men that the work had to be done with business-like celerity, but the visitor was experienced. While wasting no time in useless delay, she never hurried her movements, or refused to stop and speak, or forced her way through the moving throng. Almost unobserved, save by the men who chanced to be next to her, she glided in and out amongst them like a spirit of light—which, in the highest sense, she was—intent on her beneficent mission. Her sole aim was to save the men from the tremendous dangers that awaited them on landing in Portsmouth, and bring them under Christian influence.

Those dangers may be imagined when it is told that soldiers returning from abroad are often in possession of large sums of money, and that harpies of all kinds are eagerly waiting to plunder them on their arrival. On one occasion a regiment came home, and in a few days squandered three thousand pounds in Portsmouth. Much more might be said on this point, but enough has been indicated to move thoughtful minds—and our story waits.

Suddenly the attention of Miles, and every one near him, was attracted by the loud Hibernian yell of a female voice exclaiming—

“Oh, Terence, me darlin’ son, here ye are; an’ is it yersilf lookin’ purtier a long way than the day ye left me; an’ niver so much as a scratch on yer face for all the wars ye’ve bin in—bad luck to thim!”

Need we say that this was Mrs Flynn? In her anxiety to meet her son she had run against innumerable men and women, who remonstrated with her variously, according to temperament, without, however, the slightest effect. Her wild career was not checked until she had flung herself into the arms of a tall, stalwart trooper with drooping moustache, who would have done credit to any nationality under the sun, and whose enthusiasm at the happy meeting with his mother was almost as demonstrative as her own, but more dignified.

Others there were, however, whose case was very different. One who came there to meet the strong healthy man to whom she had said good-bye at the same spot several years before, received him back a worn and wasted invalid, upright still with the martial air of discipline, but feeble, and with something like the stamp of death upon his brow. Another woman found her son, strong indeed and healthy, as of yore, but with an empty sleeve where his right arm should have been—his days of warfare over before his earthly sun had reached the zenith!

Whilst Miles was taking note of these things, and moralising in spite of his distaste just then to that phase of mental occupation, the other lady of the Institute appeared and spoke hurriedly to her companion.

“Go,” she said, “tell Mrs Martin that her husband is not on board the Orontes. Let Tufnell, if he is at the shed, or our missionary, take her up to the Institute without delay. Let them take this note to Miss Robinson at the same time.”

The younger lady looked inquiringly at her companion, but the latter pushed on hurriedly and was soon lost in the crowd, so she went at once on shore to obey her instructions.

Being thus left to look after himself, Miles went about gazing at the varied, interesting, and curious scenes that the vessel presented. No one took any notice of him, for he was only one soldier among hundreds, and so many people from the shore had been admitted by that time that strange faces attracted no attention.

We have referred chiefly to soldiers’ friends, but these, after all, formed a small minority of the visitors, many of whom were tradesmen of the town—tailors, shoemakers, and vendors of fancy articles—who had come down with their wares to tempt the returning voyagers to part with their superfluous cash. Even in the midst of all the pushing and confusion, one man was seen trying on a pair of boots; near to him was a sailor, carefully inspecting a tailor’s book of patterns with a view to shore-going clothes; while another, more prompt in action, was already being measured for a suit of the same.

Descending to the ’tween-decks, our hero found that the confusion and noise there were naturally greater, the space being more limited and the noise confined. There was the addition of bad air and disagreeable smells here; and Miles could not help reflecting on the prospect before him of long voyages under cramped circumstances, in the midst of similar surroundings. But, being young and enthusiastic, he whispered to himself that he was not particular, and was ready to “rough it” in his country’s cause!

In a remarkably dark region to which he penetrated, he found himself in the women’s quarters, the disagreeables of which were increased by the cries of discontented children, and the yells of inconsolable infants—some of whom had first seen the light of this world in the sad twilight of ’tween-decks! Shrinking from that locality, Miles pursued his investigations, and gradually became aware that sundry parrots and other pets which the soldiers and sailors had brought home were adding their notes of discord to the chorus of sounds.

While he was looking at, and attempting to pat, a small monkey, which received his advances with looks of astonished indignation, he became conscious of the fact that a number of eyes were looking down on him through a crevice at the top of a partition close to his side.

“Who are these?” he asked of a sailor, who stood near him.

“Why, them are the long-term men.”

“I suppose you mean prisoners?”

“Yes; that’s about it,” replied the tar. “Soldiers as has committed murder—or suthin’ o’ that sort—an’ got twenty year or more for all I knows. The other fellers further on there, in chains, is short-term men. Bin an’ done suthin’ or other not quite so bad, I suppose.”

Miles advanced “further on,” and found eight men seated on the deck and leaning against the bulkhead. If his attention had not been drawn to them, he might have supposed they were merely resting, but a closer glance showed that they were all chained to an iron bar. They did not seem very different from the other men around them, save that they were, most of them, stern and silent.

A powerful feeling of compassion rose in our hero’s breast as he looked at these moral wrecks of humanity; for their characters and prospects were ruined, though their physique was not much impaired. It seemed to him such an awful home-coming, after, perhaps, long years of absence, thus, in the midst of all the bustle and joy of meetings and of pleasant anticipations, to be waiting there for the arrival of the prison-van, and looking forward to years of imprisonment instead of reunion with friends and kindred.

At sight of them a thought sprang irresistibly into our hero’s mind, “This is the result of wrong-doing!”