‘I am not here to asseverate that I know the fact, of my own knowledge,’ answered Pangloss, ‘but I have grounds for asserting that the stores were the best of all possible stores.’
A medical officer laid before us, a handful of rotten biscuit, and a handful of split peas. The biscuit was a honeycombed heap of maggots, and the excrement of maggots. The peas were even harder than this filth. A similar handful had been experimentally boiled six hours, and had shown no signs of softening. These were the stores on which the soldiers had been fed.
‘The beef – ’ I began, when Pangloss cut me short.
‘Was the best of all possible beef,’ said he.
But, behold, there was laid before us certain evidence given at the Coroner’s Inquest, holden on some of the men (who had obstinately died of their treatment), and from that evidence it appeared that the beef was the worst of possible beef!
‘Then I lay my hand upon my heart, and take my stand,’ said Pangloss, ‘by the pork, which was the best of all possible pork.’
‘But look at this food before our eyes, if one may so misuse the word,’ said I. ‘Would any Inspector who did his duty, pass such abomination?’
‘It ought not to have been passed,’ Pangloss admitted.
‘Then the authorities out there – ’ I began, when Pangloss cut me short again.
‘There would certainly seem to have been something wrong somewhere,’ said he; ‘but I am prepared to prove that the authorities out there, are the best of all possible authorities.’
I never heard of any impeached public authority in my life, who was not the best public authority in existence.
‘We are told of these unfortunate men being laid low by scurvy,’ said I. ‘Since lime-juice has been regularly stored and served out in our navy, surely that disease, which used to devastate it, has almost disappeared? Was there lime-juice aboard this transport?’
My official friend was beginning ‘the best of all possible – ’ when an inconvenient medical forefinger pointed out another passage in the evidence, from which it appeared that the lime-juice had been bad too. Not to mention that the vinegar had been bad too, the vegetables bad too, the cooking accommodation insufficient (if there had been anything worth mentioning to cook), the water supply exceedingly inadequate, and the beer sour.
‘Then the men,’ said Pangloss, a little irritated, ‘Were the worst of all possible men.’
‘In what respect?’ I asked.
‘Oh! Habitual drunkards,’ said Pangloss.
But, again the same incorrigible medical forefinger pointed out another passage in the evidence, showing that the dead men had been examined after death, and that they, at least, could not possibly have been habitual drunkards, because the organs within them which must have shown traces of that habit, were perfectly sound.
‘And besides,’ said the three doctors present, ‘one and all, habitual drunkards brought as low as these men have been, could not recover under care and food, as the great majority of these men are recovering. They would not have strength of constitution to do it.’
‘Reckless and improvident dogs, then,’ said Pangloss. ‘Always are – nine times out of ten.’
I turned to the master of the workhouse, and asked him whether the men had any money?
‘Money?’ said he. ‘I have in my iron safe, nearly four hundred pounds of theirs; the agents have nearly a hundred pounds more and many of them have left money in Indian banks besides.’
‘Hah!’ said I to myself, as we went up-stairs, ‘this is not the best of all possible stories, I doubt!’
We went into a large ward, containing some twenty or five-and-twenty beds. We went into several such wards, one after another. I find it very difficult to indicate what a shocking sight I saw in them, without frightening the reader from the perusal of these lines, and defeating my object of making it known.
O the sunken eyes that turned to me as I walked between the rows of beds, or – worse still – that glazedly looked at the white ceiling, and saw nothing and cared for nothing! Here, lay the skeleton of a man, so lightly covered with a thin unwholesome skin, that not a bone in the anatomy was clothed, and I could clasp the arm above the elbow, in my finger and thumb. Here, lay a man with the black scurvy eating his legs away, his gums gone, and his teeth all gaunt and bare. This bed was empty, because gangrene had set in, and the patient had died but yesterday. That bed was a hopeless one, because its occupant was sinking fast, and could only be roused to turn the poor pinched mask of face upon the pillow, with a feeble moan. The awful thinness of the fallen cheeks, the awful brightness of the deep set eyes, the lips of lead, the hands of ivory, the recumbent human images lying in the shadow of death with a kind of solemn twilight on them, like the sixty who had died aboard the ship and were lying at the bottom of the sea, O Pangloss, God forgive you!
In one bed, lay a man whose life had been saved (as it was hoped) by deep incisions in the feet and legs. While I was speaking to him, a nurse came up to change the poultices which this operation had rendered necessary, and I had an instinctive feeling that it was not well to turn away, merely to spare myself. He was sorely wasted and keenly susceptible, but the efforts he made to subdue any expression of impatience or suffering, were quite heroic. It was easy to see, in the shrinking of the figure, and the drawing of the bed-clothes over the head, how acute the endurance was, and it made me shrink too, as if I were in pain; but, when the new bandages were on, and the poor feet were composed again, he made an apology for himself (though he had not uttered a word), and said plaintively, ‘I am so tender and weak, you see, sir!’ Neither from him nor from any one sufferer of the whole ghastly number, did I hear a complaint. Of thankfulness for present solicitude and care, I heard much; of complaint, not a word.
I think I could have recognised in the dismalest skeleton there, the ghost of a soldier. Something of the old air was still latent in the palest shadow of life I talked to. One emaciated creature, in the strictest literality worn to the bone, lay stretched on his back, looking so like death that I asked one of the doctors if he were not dying, or dead? A few kind words from the doctor, in his ear, and he opened his eyes, and smiled – looked, in a moment, as if he would have made a salute, if he could. ‘We shall pull him through, please God,’ said the Doctor. ‘Plase God, surr, and thankye,’ said the patient. ‘You are much better to-day; are you not?’ said the Doctor. ‘Plase God, surr; ’tis the slape I want, surr; ’tis my breathin’ makes the nights so long.’ ‘He is a careful fellow this, you must know,’ said the Doctor, cheerfully; ‘it was raining hard when they put him in the open cart to bring him here, and he had the presence of mind to ask to have a sovereign taken out of his pocket that he had there, and a cab engaged. Probably it saved his life.’ The patient rattled out the skeleton of a laugh, and said, proud of the story, ‘’Deed, surr, an open cairt was a comical means o’ bringin’ a dyin’ man here, and a clever way to kill him.’ You might have sworn to him for a soldier when he said it.
One thing had perplexed me very much in going from bed to bed. A very significant and cruel thing. I could find no young man but one. He had attracted my notice, by having got up and dressed himself in his soldier’s jacket and trousers, with the intention of sitting by the fire; but he had found himself too weak, and had crept back to his bed and laid himself down on the outside of it. I could have pronounced him, alone, to be a young man aged by famine and sickness. As we were standing by the Irish soldier’s bed, I mentioned my perplexity to the Doctor. He took a board with an inscription on it from the head of the Irishman’s bed, and asked me what age I supposed that man to be? I had observed him with attention while talking to him, and answered, confidently, ‘Fifty.’ The Doctor, with a pitying glance at the patient, who had dropped into a stupor again, put the board back, and said, ‘Twenty-four.’
All the arrangements of the wards were excellent. They could not have been more humane, sympathising, gentle, attentive, or wholesome. The owners of the ship, too, had done all they could, liberally. There were