CHAPTER XLV.

THE BLACK PLAGUE.

Believing that Bandolo had perished at the moment he disappeared over the Stubbenkamer, we descended the Kœningstuhl, and took the direct road along the granite isthmus towards Bergen, which we reached about mid-day, and where we were hospitably entertained by the burgomaster, who was very friendly to us, as foes of the Imperialists; for Bogislaus IV., Duke of Pomerania and Rügen, was in alliance with the northern kings. As the duke's vassal, he considered it his duty to show us every attention, and procured us a waggon, drawn by two stout horses, by which we travelled towards the Sound. I took care that the night should be set in before we reached Oldevehr, for the narrow strait was full of Austrian gunboats.

In the creek, we found our little shallop still safe in its concealment, and, embarking, put forth before the moon rose, and reached the mole of Stralsund in safety; but to find that we had now to encounter another and more terrible foe than starvation or the Imperialists.

A pestilence, like unto that terrible Black Plague which desolated Denmark in the thirteenth century, and carried off two-thirds of the inhabitants, committing irreparable injury on its agriculture and commerce, a pestilence now conduced by starvation and misery, by excitement, grief, and poverty, and by the terrible malaria arising from the slime of the wet ditches, the sluices of which had been destroyed by the Austrian artillery, and increased by the fetid atmosphere of the shallow trenches, where Wallenstein had buried vast numbers of his slain to windward of the city--for so I may call it, from the long prevalence of the wind in one direction--a pestilence that assailed the old and the young, the active and the listless, the bravo soldiers who manned the ramparts, and the timid citizens who lurked in their cellars to avoid the bursting bombs and passing cannon-shot, had now broken out in Stralsund, to increase the troubles, the anxieties, and the already manifold dangers of the siege.

In one day this terrible epidemic had seized on more than fifty persons. Next day there were a hundred victims. No pen can convey an adequate idea of the terror of the Stralsunders. The upper classes, however, comforted themselves that the pest confined itself as yet to the lower--those poor, haggard, and wretched beings, whom lack of raiment, work, and food, made their shattered frames, like those of the drunken and the dissipated, most liable to infection.

In three days it spread so fast that three hundred perished. Many rushed to schnaps and corn-brandy to drown their cares and apprehensions; and those unhappy wretches, in a state of madness and intoxication, were frequently seen rushing, half nude, from the lower purlieus of the city, pale, wan, and ghastly, or livid and yellow as oranges, uttering shrieks of blasphemy and lewdness; and making us shudder at the thought of the terrible scenes enacted in the dens from whence they had come. Into these places our men were reluctant to penetrate to bury the dead, many of whom we knew to be lying uncoffined and unshrouded. But the orders of the marshal were not to be resisted. Men were required to volunteer for the burial service as for a forlorn hope, and liberal supplies of corn-brandy were given to those who did so. Colonel Dübbelsteirn's Dutchmen, immovable and phlegmatic fellows, had this duty luckily assigned to them. Deep trenches were dug outside the Frankendör, and into these the dead (many of whom were worn to mere skeletons by famine and sickness) were flung over each other, pell-mell, old men and little children, side by side, and there we covered them up, shovelling great piles of earth, stones, and rubbish over them.

This malignant pest soon spread into our own ranks, and terrible havoc it made among our brave Highlanders. This was soon perceptible by the diminution of our numbers; for every company, as it came to its post at the Frankendör, lacked an officer, a sergeant, and ten, fifteen, or twenty of its files. The churches were turned into hospitals, where, with no other bedding than straw and their plaids, our soldiers lay side by side, and dying fast from lack of sufficient medical attendance; and being rendered--by their previous scanty food, the low and foggy atmosphere, the putrid effluvia of the German trenches, the malaria of our own stagnant ditches--peculiarly liable to attack, and less able to resist it.

The chief of our medical staff, Dr. Pennicuik of that Ilk, was of more service than twenty of the Danish doctors; while it was pleasing to see the Rev. Gideon Geddes and Father Ignatius emulating each other, and working side by side like good Samaritans among the sick and dying; yet not so oblivious of their former polemics, as to resist the opportunity of firing an occasional shot at each other, over the very corpse of some poor fellow, whose spirit had eluded both their kind efforts to detain him here. Stralsund became a mere charnel-house; now it was that I trembled for Ernestine, and wished her in the Imperial camp--any where but within those walls, which engirt so much suffering, and so many new miseries, in addition to those caused by scarcity of food, and the cannonading by land batteries and gun-boats on the Sound. I was reluctant, and terrified to enter her presence, lest I should convey that pestilence for which I had no fear personally, and the cautions I gave were countless. When not on duty, Phadrig Mhor and Gillian M'Bane were installed as a _garde du corps_, and occupied the lower story of the house, with orders to bar ingress to all under pain of death; but now none came hither; for Father Ignatius had the good sense to remain away, and Ian Dhu never came nearer the door than the garden plot, where he was wont to converse for a few minutes, and then retire, for no entreaty of Ernestine could make him enter.

One forenoon, when the frowsy November fog was rising like a veil from the face of the beleaguered city, I had come off guard at the Frankendör. Culcraigie's company had relieved mine, which I dismissed to their comfortless billets in the market-place, and then hurried, as was my wont, to inquire for Ernestine. I observed that the gate of the garden stood wide open; that the house door was ajar, and that all the blinds in front were still drawn closely down, although the noon was approaching. A pang of terror shot through me, for usually the gate and door were kept shut, and at such an hour the blinds were always drawn up, and the smiling face of Ernestine was the first object that greeted me. But on this morning the blinds remained motionless, and no face was smiling there.

I rushed into the vestibule, and found M'Bane fast asleep on a bench. The poor fellow was exhausted.

"Gillian, thou glaiket gilly," said I; "how and where is the young lady?"

"Where?"

"Yes--where? Must I prick you with my skene-dhu? Where is she?"

"Gone to the hospital."

"_Hospital!_" I gasped as if a ball had passed through my heart; "to the great church opposite the Bourse?"

"Yes, captain--a poor gilly like me could never gainsay that----"

I rushed through the streets, on my way passing two carts laden with the dead who had died over-night--pale, frightful, and emaciated remains; but decently covered by a pall of white linen cloth. These were on their way to the trenches, and were surrounded by a half-intoxicated party of Dübbelsteirn's musketeers, armed only with shovels and mattocks. On one of those carts lay the body of Major Fritz, which, as a mark of respect, had been rolled up in one of the blankets of his bed, and was tied in three places with rough cord. Poor Fritz! even his widow's doubloons, her dinners and her wine (when others had none), could not save him from the pest. Reaching the church, I entered for the first time the abode of more mental and bodily suffering than I (devoutly) hope it may ever be my lot to see again. It presented a complication of all that was terrible and revolting.

Our soldiers lay in rows: a few on pallets, a few on trusses of straw, but many more on the cold pavement, which bore the long German epitaphs and polished brasses of the men of other times. There were patients in all stages of this putrid and malignant fever--from him who was merely affected by premonitory pains in the head, and the throbbing of the temporal artery, to him whose bloodshot eyes were red as living coals, who had the hissing of serpents in his ears, whose breath was but a succession of laborious sighs, whose swollen tongue was white as coral or black as ebony, and whose skin was spotted like a leper's; for this pest was the worst species of that which is known in Europe as the Putrid Fever, and was accompanied by such excruciating pains in the stomach and loins that the patients speedily became collapsed and exhausted.

Many of our strongest, our best, and bravest soldiers were lying there cold and stiff, with glazed eyes, with relaxed jaws, and forms wasted to the mere shadows of what they were. Others were in all the agonies of death, with foam on their lips, their eyes red as blood, their tongues hard and white. Others were trembling as if in ague fits; many were delirious, and sang Highland coronachs, low, sad, and wailing; and some, who imagined themselves at home, were caressing and talking to those relations and lovers their fancy had conjured up. Many more believed themselves engaged, and encouraged each other by slogans and outcries.

"Cairne na' cuimhne!" I heard a M'Farquhar shout with the voice of a stentor; "club your muskets--come on, loiterers! Dirk and claymore is the order!"

"Go, go!" replied another delirious man with scorn; "teach your mother how to make brose! Dost think 'tis the first time I have smelt powder or heard the clash of swords! Go--I am one of the clan Donnoquhy!"

Full of gloom and despondency, the Germans were swearing, while the Frenchmen chatted and sang. What a medley it was! But in some places there were sounds of prayer and lamentation; these were principally among our own soldiers. In a corner, Torquil Gorm, our pipe-major, was praying in touching terms that the blessed _Iosa Criosd_, _Mhic Daibhi_, _Mhic Abrahaim_, would have mercy upon his sufferings. In another place, Donald M'Vurich was lamenting over his dead comrade, a M'Intosh, and repeatedly exclaiming--

"Who among the Clanchattan was like thee, O Ronald Glas? Would to Heaven that I--poor Donald--might have satisfied death by dying in your place!"

These men had only been shepherds at home; yet Donald's grief was worthy of Athens or Sparta. It is not always under the garments of purple and fine linen that we find the noblest hearts.

The genius who presided over this harrowing scene was Doctor Pennicuik, our chirurgeon-general, a kind, good man, and able leech. He was disrobed to his shirt and breeches, with his sleeves rolled up and his hands dyed in blood, for he was bleeding the patients as fast as they were borne in, and the blood was carried away by his assistants in large tin basins. There, too, were the reverend Gideon Geddes and Father Ignatius, both ministering to the bodily and spiritual wants of such as would receive attention at their hands; but they sometimes made mistakes, for our chaplain might approach some red-hot Romanist, while the poor Jesuit applied himself to some sour Presbyterian, by whom he was repulsed with very little ceremony. At last they both fastened upon one old Gaël, who appeared to be nothing in particular, and on being asked what he was, replied in a faint voice--

"One of the Clan Donald."

"But of what persuasion?"

"A musketeer of Culcraigie's company."

This man was elderly, and his hair was white as snow. He was dying, and his son, Eachin M'Donuil, who had recently accompanied me to Rügen, held up his head that he might hear the solemn prayers and exhortations of the two pastors, who required him to forgive all his enemies, that he might die at peace with all mankind. This he avowed himself quite willing to declare, excepting so far as concerned the M'Leods of M'Leod, the destroyers of his race in Eigg; and, at the thought of them, the old man's dying orbs flashed fire.

Then he was told that he must forgive all without exception, or all their exhortations and his repentance were in vain.

"Well," said he, with an effort, as he grasped his son's hand and a vindictive gleam passed over his stern grey eyes; "if it must be so, I forgive the M'Leods, but _remember them_, _you_, my son, Eachin--_remember_!" With these words he expired; and Eachin kissed first the cold brow of his father, and then the blade of his dirk.

I thanked Heaven on perceiving Ernestine, not, as in my first terror I had expected, stretched among the females in that portion of the church, which had been screened off for them, but on her knees between the pallets of two soldiers, to whom she was administering something prepared for them by the surgeon. Inspired by a fit of piety, or benevolence, or mercy (which you will), or by that pure and beautiful zeal, which leads the sisters of mercy to visit the abodes of suffering, poverty, and misery, she had stolen to this frightful hospital to minister to the sick. But she, so highly born, so cultivated in mind, and refined in nature, so gentle, so sensitive, and full of emotions of pity, had over-calculated her own strength of purpose, and now trembled at the unexpected and revolting horrors combined in that dismantled and crowded church.

"Ah! Ernestine," said I, "what frenzy brought you here--and on such an errand? You were never meant fur drudgery such as this, and now you have rendered all my care and anxiety vain, perhaps most fatally vain, by running into the jaws of disease and death."

"Pardon me," said she, raising her pale face and saddened eyes to mine. "It was a sudden thought--a happy gleam, that a few good deeds done in the name of Gabrielle (for this was her birthday) might please her spirit--dear Philip, that was all--a few good deeds done in the name of our poor Gabrielle, for the good of the suffering and the glory of Heaven."

"At the risk of your own life, Ernestine!"

"Chide her not, captain," said the harsh voice of Gideon Geddes; "for in one hour she hath dune mair than ten surgeons. The merciful are blessed, for they shall obtain mercy. But," he added in a friendly whisper, "take her awa--for this is nae place for dames of high degree."

"My good child," said Father Ignatius, with a kind smile on his long and lantern-jawed face, "I love most to see deeds of mercy when they come from a woman's hand, and brother Geddes hath quoted rightly."

"Brither Geddes meaneth, that the blessedness of the merciful consisteth in what they receive--not what they _give_," retorted our testy preacher; "for I do not believe that we can be saved by works alone; and, mairower, do not the Gospels say--" he continued, erecting his short punchy figure, and preparing even there to plunge into a controversy, which the doctor at once interrupted by despatching them on separate errands.

"Philip," said Ernestine, in a low voice; "take me away, for the atmosphere of this place is stifling."

I gladly led her out into the purer air of the street, where the noonday sun was shining, and where, overcome by all she had seen and heard, she burst into a flood of tears.

"Ay, Ernestine," said I, as a shot from the enemies' batteries whistled over our heads; "here is much to shock a girl like you: war, pestilence, and famine, are no trifling foes to encounter."

Another shot, a thirty-six pounder, struck a pinnacle of the church and hurled it into the street; for now, taking advantage of our lessened numbers, the Imperialists had pushed their batteries, trenches, and parallels, far round the flank of the Frankendör, and were almost within pistol-shot. In some places we could hear the voices of Carlstein's pioneers, as they laughed and sang at their work behind the ramparts of earth.

By a circuitous route, and through streets the ends of which Leslie had protected by barricades and traverses of earth, and timber, turf, and stone, I conveyed Ernestine back to her pretty mansion-house; and though I gave Phadrig and Gillian stricter orders than before concerning the admission of visitors, I feared much that the effect of her entering such a den of disease as the great church would prove fatal, and my forebodings were but too sadly realised.