Word of the approach of the ambulances must have been sent ahead, for a train of more than a dozen coaches was even now in waiting.
As quickly as possible Nona and Barbara crawled out of their wagon, stamping their feet on the frozen ground and waving their arms in order to start their circulation. Then they began to assist in transferring the wounded soldiers from the wagons to the cars. The men were wonderfully patient and plucky, for they must have suffered tortures. They had first to be lifted on to an ambulance cot and then transferred to another cot inside the train. A few of the soldiers fainted and for them Nona and Barbara were relieved. At least they were spared the added pain.
Yet by and by, when the long line of cars started for Petrograd, the occupants of the coaches were amazingly cheerful. Tea and bread had been served all of the travelers and cigarettes given to the men.
Some of the soldiers sang, others told jokes, those who were most dangerously ill only lay still and smiled. They were on their way to Petrograd! This meant home and friends to some of them. To others it meant only the name of their greatest city and the palace of their Czar. But to all of them Petrograd promised comfort and quiet, away from the horrible, deafening noises of exploding bullets and shells.
Naturally Nona and Barbara were affected by the greater cheerfulness about them.
"If only Mildred were with us, how relieved I would be. Really, I don't know how we are to bear the suspense of not knowing what has become of her," Barbara said not once, but a dozen times in the course of the day.
But night brought them into the famous Russian capital.
On their arrival Barbara and Nona went with the wounded soldiers to a Red Cross hospital in Petrograd.
There, to her consternation, a few days later Nona Davis became ill. The illness was only an attack of malarial fever, which Nona had been subject to ever since her childhood; nevertheless, the disease had never chosen a more unpropitious time for its reappearance.
For a few days she seemed dangerously ill, then her convalescence left her weak and exhausted. She was totally unfit for work and only a burden instead of an aid to the hospital staff.