They went on, and soon reached the Three-Mortar Battery, situated among the trenches and very near the walls. And here M. Soyer had a great idea, which he carried out to his immense satisfaction. You shall hear about it in his own words:
"Before leaving the battery, I begged Miss Nightingale as a favor to give me her hand, which she did. I then requested her to ascend the stone rampart next the wooden gun carriage, and lastly to sit upon the centre mortar, to which requests she very gracefully and kindly acceded. 'Gentlemen,' I cried, 'behold this amiable lady sitting fearlessly upon that terrible instrument of war! Behold the heroic daughter of England--the soldier's friend!' All present shouted 'Bravo! hurrah! hurrah! Long live the daughter of England!'"
When Lord Raglan heard of this, he said that the "instrument of war" on which she sat ought to be called "the Nightingale mortar."
The 39th regiment was stationed close by; and seeing a lady--a strange enough sight in that place--seated on a mortar, gazing calmly about her, as if all her life had been spent in the trenches, the soldiers looked closer, and all at once recognized the beloved Lady-in-Chief, the Angel of the Crimea. They set up a shout that went ringing over the fields and trenches, and startled the Russians behind the walls of Sebastopol; and Miss Nightingale, startled too, but greatly touched and moved, came down from her mortar and mounted her horse to ride back to Balaklava.
It was a rough and fatiguing ride, and the next day she felt very tired; but she was used to being tired, and never thought much of it, so she set out to visit the General Hospital again. After spending several hours there, she went on to the Sanatorium, a collection of huts high up on a mountainside, nearly eight hundred feet above the sea. The sun was intensely hot, the ride a hard one; yet she not only reached it this day, but went up again the day after, to install three much-needed nurses there; this done, she went on with her work in the hospitals of Balaklava. But, alas! this time she had gone beyond even her strength. She was stricken down suddenly, in the midst of her work, with the worst form of Crimean fever.
The doctors ordered that she should be taken to the Sanatorium. Amid general grief and consternation she was laid on a stretcher, and the soldiers for whom she had so often risked her life bore her sadly through the streets of Balaklava and up the mountainside. A nurse went with her, a friend held a white umbrella between her and the pitiless sun, and poor little Thomas, "Miss Nightingale's man" as he had proudly called himself, followed the stretcher, crying bitterly. Indeed, it seemed as if everyone were crying. The rough soldiers--only she never found them rough--wept like children. It was a sad little procession that wound its way up the height, to the hut that had been set apart for the beloved sufferer. It was a neat, airy cabin, set on the banks of a clear stream. All about were spring buds and blossoms, and green, whispering trees; it was just such a place as she would have chosen for one of her own patients; and here, for several days, she lay between life and death.