第55章 A Catastrophe(2)

When Mr.Wood and Henry fell in the water,they struck out for shore,which was only a few hundred yards away;but Henry presently said he believed he was not hurt (what an unaccountable error!),and therefore would swim back to the boat and help save the wounded.

So they parted,and Henry returned.

By this time the fire was making fierce headway,and several persons who were imprisoned under the ruins were begging piteously for help.All efforts to conquer the fire proved fruitless;so the buckets were presently thrown aside and the officers fell-to with axes and tried to cut the prisoners out.

A striker was one of the captives;he said he was not injured,but could not free himself;and when he saw that the fire was likely to drive away the workers,he begged that some one would shoot him,and thus save him from the more dreadful death.

The fire did drive the axmen away,and they had to listen,helpless,to this poor fellow's supplications till the flames ended his miseries.

The fire drove all into the wood-flat that could be accommodated there;it was cut adrift,then,and it and the burning steamer floated down the river toward Ship Island.They moored the flat at the head of the island,and there,unsheltered from the blazing sun,the half-naked occupants had to remain,without food or stimulants,or help for their hurts,during the rest of the day.A steamer came along,finally,and carried the unfortunates to Memphis,and there the most lavish assistance was at once forthcoming.

By this time Henry was insensible.The physicians examined his injuries and saw that they were fatal,and naturally turned their main attention to patients who could be saved.

Forty of the wounded were placed upon pallets on the floor of a great public hall,and among these was Henry.There the ladies of Memphis came every day,with flowers,fruits,and dainties and delicacies of all kinds,and there they remained and nursed the wounded.

All the physicians stood watches there,and all the medical students;and the rest of the town furnished money,or whatever else was wanted.

And Memphis knew how to do all these things well;for many a disaster like the 'Pennsylvania's'had happened near her doors,and she was experienced,above all other cities on the river,in the gracious office of the Good Samaritan'

The sight I saw when I entered that large hall was new and strange to me.

Two long rows of prostrate forms--more than forty,in all--and every face and head a shapeless wad of loose raw cotton.It was a gruesome spectacle.

I watched there six days and nights,and a very melancholy experience it was.

There was one daily incident which was peculiarly depressing:this was the removal of the doomed to a chamber apart.It was done in order that the MORALE of the other patients might not be injuriously affected by seeing one of their number in the death-agony.The fated one was always carried out with as little stir as possible,and the stretcher was always hidden from sight by a wall of assistants;but no matter:everybody knew what that cluster of bent forms,with its muffled step and its slow movement meant;and all eyes watched it wistfully,and a shudder went abreast of it like a wave.

I saw many poor fellows removed to the 'death-room,'and saw them no more afterward.But I saw our chief mate carried thither more than once.

His hurts were frightful,especially his scalds.He was clothed in linseed oil and raw cotton to his waist,and resembled nothing human.

He was often out of his mind;and then his pains would make him rave and shout and sometimes shriek.Then,after a period of dumb exhaustion,his disordered imagination would suddenly transform the great apartment into a forecastle,and the hurrying throng of nurses into the crew;and he would come to a sitting posture and shout,'Hump yourselves,HUMP yourselves,you petrifactions,snail-bellies,pall-bearers!going to be all DAY getting that hatful of freight out?'and supplement this explosion with a firmament-obliterating irruption or profanity which nothing could stay or stop till his crater was empty.And now and then while these frenzies possessed him,he would tear off handfuls of the cotton and expose his cooked flesh to view.It was horrible.

It was bad for the others,of course--this noise and these exhibitions;so the doctors tried to give him morphine to quiet him.But,in his mind or out of it,he would not take it.He said his wife had been killed by that treacherous drug,and he would die before he would take it.

He suspected that the doctors were concealing it in his ordinary medicines and in his water--so he ceased from putting either to his lips.

Once,when he had been without water during two sweltering days,he took the dipper in his hand,and the sight of the limpid fluid,and the misery of his thirst,tempted him almost beyond his strength;but he mastered himself and threw it away,and after that he allowed no more to be brought near him.Three times I saw him carried to the death-room,insensible and supposed to be dying;but each time he revived,cursed his attendants,and demanded to be taken back.

He lived to be mate of a steamboat again.

But he was the only one who went to the death-room and returned alive.

Dr.Peyton,a principal physician,and rich in all the attributes that go to constitute high and flawless character,did all that educated judgment and trained skill could do for Henry;but,as the newspapers had said in the beginning,his hurts were past help.

On the evening of the sixth day his wandering mind busied itself with matters far away,and his nerveless fingers 'picked at his coverlet.'

His hour had struck;we bore him to the death-room,poor boy.