to speak aloud. “Some of our girls--think of it--lost, dazed, stricken
creatures, were kidnapped for the brothels of Naples! The slave hunters
saw their chance from the first hour; who knows how many of our Sicilian
virgins, the purest, the most beautiful of God’s daughters, are now
lost in that hideous, that worst of all slavery? Ah, it is too much!
Dear God, had we not enough to bear without this? One I have tried to
trace, a flower, a lily, the girl whose eyes said to mine, ‘When the
time comes for you to speak, I am ready.’ She was seen alive and well on
board one of the first boats that left for Naples; she has never been
heard of since.”
Bonanno dashed the tears from his eyes, shook his fist in the direction
of Naples. “Accursed city!” he cried, “sink of Europe!”
* * * * *
While King Victor was in Messina helping organize the rescue work, Queen
Elena remained in the harbor shaping the course of the hospital-ship
work. She went from ship to ship, for every vessel, merchantman or
man-of-war of whatever nationality, became for the nonce a floating
hospital. The most seriously wounded were carried on board the ships,
where they could receive better care than in the hospital stations on
shore where, in the midst of confusion, and difficulties beyond belief,
the faithful surgeons worked early and late under the pitiless rain,
drenched to the skin, fasting and suffering with thirst and cold like
all the rest. It was a time when men and women toiled with every fibre
of their being; there was too much to do to allow of specialization; the
King planned, but he lent a hand too when he saw the chance; the Queen
practically shaped the whole future course of the hospital-ship work;
but that was not enough. She rolled up her sleeves, put on her apron and
went to work to help the doctors as only a good nurse can. On board one
of the floating hospitals she received the wounded, washed and dressed
their wounds, bandaged broken limbs, soothed the sick, comforted the
dying. It was then that she came into her true woman’s kingdom, earned
for once and all the title of Queen Elena the Good.
Her fame as a nurse has been spread throughout Italy, throughout the
world, not by courtiers or reporters, but by the patients she tended.
That is a sort of reputation that lasts. In Syracuse a young Messinese
said to a Blue Sister from Malta, who was doing up her shattered arm:
“Guardi, the Queen put on that bandage; mind you roll it as smoothly as
she did.”
In a Naples hospital a child was heard to cry, “The Queen did not hurt
me as much as you do, and she had to pick the mortar out of the wound
before she dressed it.”
It is said that more than one woman died in the Queen’s arms at Messina;
it is certain that she was so much impressed by what she saw there that
she became the most impassioned of all who worked for Italy in the dark
hour. She suffered even in her person; one poor frenzied creature in her
struggles to throw herself overboard, struck the Queen and hurt her, it
was feared at first seriously. Her example of service was followed by
the court ladies and by heroic women of every class; her energy aroused
hope in the forlorn remnant of the stricken people; it was a moral tonic
and stimulus to the whole nation.
When they left Rome both the King and Queen believed the disaster to be
even more complete than it proved; they had been told that all the
inhabitants of Messina and Reggio were killed. Orders were given to the
Roman Red Cross Society to wait their instructions. When they reached
Messina and found how matters stood, the Queen sent a wire to the
president of the Red Cross asking for nurses and doctors to be sent
down. From Vera, one of the first to volunteer, I heard something of the
expedition.
“I got my summons on New Year’s day--you remember, we met at the
Campidoglio that morning and you told me where to go for shoes? I had
just succeeded in finding those shoes for my _profughi_ when I was
called to the telephone. Could I be ready to start that evening for
Messina? Naturally I could--we all could; not that we had been idle, for
there was plenty to do for the refugees already on our hands in Rome;
but if I could be of more use at Messina, I was ready to go. There were
forty of us women in the Red Cross party and a number of surgeons. The
officer in command made us an amusing speech--he didn’t mean to be
amusing: ‘You will take the minimum of luggage and the maximum of
obedience,’ he said. ‘You will drop your titles and remember you are
under military discipline and that insubordination will be
punished’--then came a hint of a dark cabin and of manacles for
insubordinates. We listened to him and felt that we were back in the
days of the French Revolution, that we should henceforth be known as
Citizeness this or that. Many of us had titles, but not all. There was
Princess Teano--you knew her as the beautiful Vittoria Colonna; there
was the Marchesa Guiccioli, whose husband is equerry to the Queen
Mother; there was Countess Teresina Tua, the violinist; Madame Agresti,
Rossetti’s daughter. We left Rome for Spezia, way up at the top of
Italy; it seemed a waste of time when we wanted to go to the south; it
was a dreadful night journey; I sent Natika back to Rome from Spezia.”
Vera sighed; Natika was her Calmuck maid; that little sigh was the only
whimper I ever heard from her through these months when she lived,
worked, spent her genius, power, money, all that she has and is as
freely as water _pro Calabria e Sicilia_.
“At Spezia we caught the troop-ship ‘Taormina’ bound for Messina with a
regiment of soldiers. After endless delays we at last set sail; before
we were well outside the harbor we were recalled by a ‘wireless’ and had
to turn round and go back. I sketched the harbor and Gulf of Spezia, the
arsenal, the dockyard, the two forts, the purple hills behind, the white
fishing villages in the foreground. It was all interesting, but the
delay was hard to bear! Every heart-beat spelt ‘hurry’; every hour of
waiting meant so many fewer lives saved. The soldiers who had only just
embarked were ordered on shore again, and we had to wait until they had
all disembarked!”
Vera’s small nervous hands opened and shut impatiently. She speaks with
a slight lisp that is like the soft pedal of a piano to the music of her
voice. Vera was brought up by an English governess; she is many-colored
as a chameleon, polished as a many-faceted jewel; when she is with us
she turns the English facet to the light.
“As we passed the Bay of Lerici I thought of Lord Byron and of Shelley
who passed his last days there. Is it true you no longer read those
poets? We do in Russia.”
At sunrise on the morning of Saturday, January 2nd, five days after the
earthquake, the “Taormina” with the Red Cross party on board sailed into
the harbor of Messina; the ships at anchor saluted by dipping the
colors; on the admiral’s vessel, the marines presented arms. The
“Taormina” dropped anchor near enough the shore for those on board to
see the sunken Marina, the great yawning cracks in the solid ground,
the railroad station with the cars heaped together as if there had been
a collision. A locomotive lay overturned on its side: some of the cars
had been carried out to sea, where they lay idly washing to and fro,
others had been seized and turned into dwellings by the wretched
_superstiti_. An endless procession of soldiers and sailors with
stretchers bearing the wounded filed past, and the rattle of the gay
little painted Sicilian carts heaped with the dead never ceased as the
long line moved towards the huge funeral pyre. The fumes of the burning
bodies reached them on board the “Taormina,” sickening but not
discouraging the perfumed ladies of the court. There had been some doubt
whether they would be ordered on shore to help in the hospitals under
the rude tents, or whether the wounded would be brought on board. At
last the order came clear and direct: “Prepare to receive the wounded on
board.” After that no time was lost. The operating rooms were made
ready, the long tables were cleared, the surgeons put on their white
gowns, laid out their shining instruments, chose their assistants. When
the forty nurses reported for duty one only among them all wore the
uniform of a trained nurse, Phyllis Wood of the Buffalo General
Hospital.
“I would have exchanged my title for hers,” Vera said, “and what would I
not have given for her clinical thermometer, the only one on board!”
Later I saw and talked with Nurse Phyllis herself: “We had come in for
the worst, for the wounded that were brought on board the ‘Taormina’ had
been _sotto le macerie_ for days,” she said. “They were suffering from
intolerable thirst and hunger. Oh, the cries for water, the screams of
pain, as the poor maimed creatures were brought on board in the arms of
the soldiers and sailors. The first day I was detailed to do the
dressing of the wounds; later I was ordered down into the hold to assist
Dr. Guarneri, the chief surgeon, with the operations. Then my real work
began. We worked at the rate of sixty operations a day, all sorts of
settings, every conceivable fracture. There was no time to give
anesthetics (indeed we had none to give), yet we hardly heard a murmur
from these poor lips. We had two extemporized operating tables and two
young doctors worked with me under Guarneri. Sometimes it seemed
impossible to keep up with the work, to have the dressings and
antiseptics ready; but Guarneri is a splendid surgeon, full of energy
and enthusiasm, so calm and self-possessed that we worked under him
unconscious of time or of fatigue; our hours were from six in the
morning till one at night.”
There was work for doctors and nurses among the rescuers as well as
among the rescued. Many of the brave soldiers and sailors, who had
worked with splendid courage and devotion, died from gangrene caused by
handling the decomposing bodies; the death of one of these heroes stands
clear in the nurse’s memory. A young lieutenant of Bersaglieri was
brought on board the “Taormina,” dying from a hemorrhage brought on by
his tremendous exertions.
“He was conscious to the last,” the nurse said. “We had no time to
undress him, so he lay in his uniform and we placed his sword beside
him. He was only one of many who laid down their lives!”
“I had for my helper,” Nurse Phyllis went on, “a young Roman belle, not
twenty years old, with no more knowledge of nursing than a baby. She
stood up to her work like a veteran--it was not easy; no American girl
of that sort could have done what she did.”
Those days on the “Taormina” were not easy days for the Red Cross
ladies, but I do not think one of them would be willing to give up the
experience they brought. Whatever else was lacking, on board the
hospital ship they had splendid surgical skill, for the Italian surgeons
are among the best in the world. In this dire emergency the national
characteristic, the capacity of working on a spurt, came into play. Soon
help came to the “Taormina” from the other ships already on the ground;
one sent sterilized gauze, another sent bandages, a third medicines, a
fourth a supply of vaseline.
“The English Jackies from a neighboring ship,” said Phyllis, “made and
sent us a quantity of long white garments for our poor naked patients;
they were very primitive, made of a long piece of white cloth with two
seams and a hole for the head, but we were mighty glad to get them.”
How like the decent English this was; how I should have loved to see the
dear sailors sitting on deck sewing the long seams!
While Vera was with the Red Cross at Messina, there was a rumor that the
authorities had decided to destroy what was left of the city.
“Each day we heard a new report,” Vera said, “till we did not know what
to believe. Your friend, the Avvocato Bonanno, brought us one of the
most startling rumors. I remember his saying, ‘We count the dead by tens
of thousands. How can they be decently buried, how can a pestilence be
prevented? There is but one way to complete the destruction the
earthquake has wrought. We should send away the few survivors, then let
the warships bombard this vestige of a city till the last walls crumble,
fall, and bury together the city and its dead.’”
* * * * *
News from Taormina at last--the city, not the ship! Letters began to
come to us in Rome from one and another of our people there, letters
that gave us glimpses of their experiences and the work they were doing.
My old friend Anne Lee of Boston wrote:
“I was wakened by the earthquake but not very much frightened at first.
I did get up and go to the window to watch the sea. It was terrible to
hear and most curious. Out in the bay there was a wide circle of whitish
yellow light which stayed in one place; it looked like moonlight, but
there was no moon, and it was round, not straight like the wake of a
star. I could see the waves breaking high on the shore. In no time the
poor _contadini_ were coming out of their houses over on the hills with
their lanterns; they looked like Will o’ the wisps; they were hurrying
over to the town for protection. The big quaking lasted forty seconds,
but we had small ones all day. The town was in a panic; men, women, and
children ran out into the streets without anything on, or trying to
struggle into their clothes. Some of their shirts were upside down; all
were screaming with fright. They crowded into the churches by hundreds.
At eight I heard music; I went to the window and saw a procession
marching down the narrow street that runs along by the old Roman wall.
First came the _Misericordia_, dressed in white with red shoulder capes
carrying lighted candles. On a _paso_ was San Pancrazio dressed as a
bishop, with two rows of candles burning before him. As soon as they
were in sight of the sea they stopped and cried out a prayer and waved
their hands towards the sea; they went on again to the end of the
street, waving towards Etna standing against the blue sky like a great
white pyramid with a mass of new fallen snow on the summit. It was
glorious. The band was playing a slow muffled march, the other
instruments stopping while the muffled drum carried on the time with
slow steady taps. Before San Pancrazio walked the Archpriest with his
two assistants carrying lighted candles, then came the great crowd of
men, women and children, the white Carmelite nuns, and the yellow and
red handkerchiefs of the peasants making spots of color in the dark
mass; they were all so terrified and earnest looking! They took San
Pancrazio from his own church to the cathedral to wait and protect them
for a while until Saint Peter could be brought to join him. About five
o’clock in the afternoon they brought Saint Peter with the same sort of
procession, only more people, and placed the two cousins opposite each
other in the cathedral. At the mass the church was packed with people
kissing their hands and crossing themselves when they passed the
statues. My poor old cook Venera spent most of the day on her knees.
Down at the little town of Giardini there was a cloudburst a few weeks
before the earthquake. Some of the houses were entirely crushed or
buried. After the earthquake a fearful tidal wave took the water out to
sea over twenty feet, then it rushed back and inundated the town,
breaking and spoiling all that the deluge had spared and sweeping the
fishing boats out to sea. Before the quake the people in Giardini saw
two flashes of lightning; they saw a great fiery dragon pass over
towards Calabria, and queer little dancing light spots as if the water
were boiling.
“Since Tuesday all the English and Americans and a few Sicilians have
been working night and day down at the station, feeding and watering the
sick, wounded, and dying on the endless trains passing through from
Messina to Catania. Many refugees have been left here; one woman gave
birth to a dear little boy at the station. The American and English are
organizing committees to help the sick and wounded who remain here in
Taormina. Miss Swan and I are on the cooking committee; we go Wednesdays
and Fridays and tend the cooking of a great kettle of pasta, or beans,
or rice. Some take the food home; others eat it in the old deserted
church near the clock tower, that used to be used as a school. We give
them cheese, wine, and clothing--some of them have never before been so
well fed or clothed. Many grumbled because they did not have meat, and
didn’t like their clothes--they are already sadly spoiled. The news was
brought by a sailor who walked from Messina; he told us that Messina was
destroyed and thousands killed. Mr. Wood went over Tuesday morning to
see if he could find Mr. and Mrs. Cheney. The great palace where they
lived was a mass of rubbish. He could look into what had been their
parlor and just see a corner of a piece of their beautiful antique
furniture, a mirror still hanging on the wall, one of the yellow damask
silk curtains hanging out of the window. When they found the dear little
woman they only recognized her by the locket she always wore.”
The Cheneys had spent Christmas at Palermo, where their friends had
urged them to stay longer, but they had felt obliged to return to
Messina.
“As the trains came into the station the first cry was ‘Water, water.’
Six hundred or more were put off here at Taormina. We went down to the
station at ten, worked there all day and did not get home till eleven or
twelve at night. There were five or six trains during the day and as
many during the night. The first week was the hardest work and kept us
all jumping. In a few days we got settled and organized into committees.
There were about three groups all working for the same thing, but each
head was afraid some other head would get the greater credit and praise.
Truth is, we were all working for humanity, to try and give the poor
scared hungry souls food and drink and homes; it didn’t matter whether
it was A, B or C; they all did splendid work and all worked with all
their souls, and every one, including the Sicilian ladies and people
from Russia, Germany, Austria and France, was only too glad to help. We
gave away over three hundred loaves of bread a day, crackers, oranges,
cooked polenta, everything that could be found to eat, milk, water and
wine, all paid for by the _forestieri_, and a few of the townspeople.
They were so much dazed for the most that it took them ten days to
‘come to.’ So many had lost friends that at first they could think of
nothing else, and some were perfectly willing to stand by and let the
strangers do the work. The first official action of the town authorities
was on the eleventh day. I looked up from boiling some coffee for a
train that was coming, and there stood the Mayor and two or three other
short fat fathers of the town all talking at the tops of their voices,
their hands and arms going in every direction. They were perfectly
purple in the face and looked like so many bantam cocks ready to tear
each other to pieces. I asked what the matter was?
“The Mayor and the municipality had come down to forbid any more bread
or food being given away; there would be a bread famine, a wheat famine;
we were taking the bread out of the mouths of the Taorminesi, and soon
there would be a mob and the people would break into our houses. We had
on hand three hundred loaves of bread bought, paid for, and broken up.
In spite of the city fathers the bread was given to the refugees on the
next train. Then there was a rumor that the milk had given out. Just
before I reached the station that day I met three men driving a herd of
twenty goats; they had escaped with their goats from Messina. The milk
was bargained for and fifteen quarts, good and fresh, was milked from
the goats and paid for by some Boston girls.”
A young lady, whose name is I think Miss Fernald, wrote the following
story of what she saw at that station of Giardini to her brother:
“The first train from Messina. Oh, George, you can never imagine the
horror of that first train! It squirmed through the tunnel like an
injured worm, and stopped at our station crammed jammed with dying,
crushed and bleeding humanity, leaving a trail of human blood as it
wound its way from Messina. We had provided ourselves with bandages,
brandy, wine, bread, milk. As soon as the train stopped we rushed to the
windows and doors with our supplies. I shall never forget the roar of
this groaning humanity wildly screaming for water and doctors. People
were dying every moment, stretcher after stretcher was brought in and
gently laid down in the station. Dr. and Mrs. Dashwood (English
residents of Taormina) were angels in the work of rescue; they brought
four babies into the world at the station. We turned the place into a
hospital in the twinkling of an eye; soon the building was packed with
the injured and dying. Delirious women, women gone mad from fright,
wounded children, and gentlemen, so patient and grateful. It made my
heart ache to hear their humble thanks for what was being done to
comfort them. One train we entered had a basket with twelve or fifteen
babies, five of whom had died on the way from Messina. The hour’s
journey had taken nine hours because of the many washouts. One beautiful
young lady, who, no one knew, died at the station; they called her ‘a
princess.’ Every person from the villas went down with huge supplies of
food. There was hot soup and cocoa, besides bread and fruit. We girls
spent three nights and three days at the station and saved many lives by
giving nourishment and what comfort was possible to half naked and
starving people. The trains returning to Messina were crowded with
people looking for their families, and also with a bad set of thieves.
We have a regiment now at the station and soldiers all along the beach
to Messina. Any one seen in the ruined city without a passport is shot
on sight. Our new year’s eve was spent resting on sacks of figs at the
station, administering to and comforting the poor crazed women and
children, and waiting for the next train. I can’t write of the effect of
this dreadful spectacle. Now things are more systematic as regards our
work. It was my duty to go about and find the poor wretches who had
wandered into Taormina. I found in one church five sisters who had found
their way with great difficulty from Messina. The distance is nearly
thirty miles. They were thinly clad and in a starving condition. The
natives here have responded to the call fairly well and clothes have
come in--but such rags. However, new ones are being made and distributed
as fast as possible. The Prince of Cherami of the San Domenico is doing
wonderful work as well as the villa people. All the visitors have fled
from Taormina, the hotels are entirely deserted and will of course be
closed. At the station I saw a woman with a cage of twelve birds; she
had lost all her five children. We have felt shocks for five days. Most
of the villa people are trembling with fear. What is to be done with
these homeless wretched people? God only knows. It’s over a week now
since the earthquake; the trains still come in filled to overflowing
with injured taken every day from the ruins.”
“The German battle-ship ‘Serapim,’” says Miss Lee, “brought a great
number of refugees. One music hall singer had her little canary on her
finger; the little creature was singing, the only happy thing on that
dreadful ship. I worked for over three weeks at the station of Giardini.
One night Mr. Kitson was going through the Red Cross car, helping with
milk, wine and so forth. At the end of the car was a large clothes
basket full of little new-born babies, two dead, three or five alive,
and nothing to cover them or keep them warm, so the dead ones had been
kept for that. They had been born on the train and had had no one to
tend them, poor little souls. It made him perfectly sick and was, we
think, partly responsible for his long illness. I was kept in the
surgical ward room to have the water ready for the doctors and so I did
not see all the horrors as those did who went through the cars--I was
spared that, thank God.”
III
AMERICA TO THE RESCUE
On the first of January, three days after the great earthquake, a band
of Calabrians, living in New York, flashed this message across the
Atlantic to their mother country:
“Do not forget Scylla!”