THE JAWS OF DEATH.
The hospital steamer, with its freight of living skeletons, had
accomplished its voyage in safety, and lay moored at the wharf in
Annapolis. Nurses and sailors were carrying the emaciated forms from the
ship to the shore, to the clean and tidy wards of the hospital.
It was a sight which wrung tears from the eyes of those who did not
often weep. The ship was a charnel-house. Death in its most horrible
forms was there,--from starvation, from corruption, scurvy, lock-jaw,
gangrene, consumption, and fever. How ghastly the scene! Men, once
robust and strong, weak and helpless as babes, with hollow cheeks,
toothless gums, thin pale lips, colorless flesh, sunken eyes, long,
tangled hair, uncombed for many months, skeleton fingers with nails like
eagles' claws, lying in rags upon the deck,--some, with strained eyes,
looking up for the last time to the dear old flag which waved above
them, for which they had fought, for which they had starved, for which
they were dying, gazing in rapture on its blessed folds, till their eyes
were fixed in death, and the slowly-heaving heart stood still forever!
They, and all their comrades, sleeping on a hundred battle-fields, and
mouldering in the trenches at Andersonville, were the victims of
Jefferson Davis and General Lee, whose names shall rot through all
coming time.
There was work for the gentle-hearted nurses who stood waiting in the
hospital wards,--work which required tenderest care;--removing the rags,
washing the fevered skeletons, bathing the bleeding wounds where the
sharp bones had pierced the skin; feeding them,--a crumb at a time;
administering cordials drop by drop, to bring back with delicate nursing
the receding tides of life.
With a bleeding heart, but yet with steady nerves, Azalia passed among
them, doing her appointed work. There was one who was lying as if
asleep, with his hands clasped upon his breast. His beard had been long
uncut. His cheeks were wasted, his eyes sunken, but he had a manly brow.
A strange fear and trembling crept over her,--a shuddering of the heart.
Alarmed and frightened at she knew not what, she brushed back the
matted hair from his temples, and laid her hand upon his brow, cold and
damp with the dews of death. The soldier opened his eyes, looked into
her face, stared wildly around him, and tried to speak. It was but one
word, and that a whisper,--her own name, "Azalia!"
A cry rang through the ward, startling the physicians and the nurses,
and waking those who were asleep. She clasped him in her arms, fell upon
his face, and kissed his wasted lips. "O Paul! Can it be that you are
here?" she said.
The throbbing of her heart was like the fluttering of a frightened bird.
Sweet, calm, and beautiful as the setting sun was the smile upon his
face, and in his eyes the celestial light of Peace! They closed, and he
lay again as if in slumber.
"They told me that you were dead," she said.
There was no reply; she laid her hand upon his heart, but could feel no
beating there; touched her fingers to his fleshless wrist, but could
find no throbbing of the pulse. The thin blood was receding from his
colorless lips,--the tide was going out. "Doctor! Doctor! O come quick!
Save him!" she cried.
The doctor came and gazed upon the face of Paul. "He is not quite gone,"
he said, then moistened his lips with brandy. There was a quickening of
the pulse. "If he rallies from this, we may save him," he said.
They wrapped him in warm flannels, rubbed his fleshless limbs, and gave
him cordials, drop by drop. How long the hours,--the weary hours of hope
and fear,--of expectation and distress,--while the faltering spirit, as
if tired of earth, was but fluttering awhile along the shore of Time
before taking its returnless flight over the dark and silent river to
another land! Through the night Azalia sat by his side, watching him
with sleepless eyes, fanning his pale brow. The morning sun beamed upon
her still sitting there. Those who were accustomed to watch for her
appearance in the early morning, restless with fever, beheld her as
clothed with celestial brightness, and said one to another, "There sits
our Angel of Light!"
Through the day she was there, watching the slow heavings of his heart,
holding her breath while listening to assure herself that he was still
breathing; hoping and fearing, holding her hands at times upon her own
heart to still its wild, tumultuous beating,--giving him atom by atom
the needful nourishment,--bending over him to smooth his
pillow,--opening the casement for the winds to blow upon his bloodless
cheek,--thus snatching him from the very jaws of death and winning him
back to life!