Much-a-Wanted.

The sun of an Italian September was shining in broad, yellow splendor on Ancona—shining on the city, on its tawny background of hills, and on the shimmering spread of the Adriatic at its feet. But for all the sunshine, the city was not cheerful. The narrow streets were deserted by ordinary wayfarers, shops were shut, sometimes a wan face peeped furtively from a half-opened casement. The churches were turned from their normal purposes to those of hospitals. Sant' Agostino, near the Piazza del Teatro, was assigned to one set of patients; even the transepts and aisles of the Duomo, on the top of the Monte Ciriaco, were converted into wards and lined with rows of beds.

It was not that a pestilence brooded over the place, but something worse, much worse.

Unfortunate Ancona, the scene of so many pages of strife written by Greeks, Lombards, and Saracens, by the troops of Barbarossa and of others, was undergoing its latest bombardment on this September day of 1860. Since the opening of the century it had changed its masters four times: now it was about to change them anew.

An army-corps, commanded by the Sardinian general, Cialdini, was encamped outside the advanced works, and had planted batteries which sent projectiles hissing and screaming not only over the ramparts and citadel, but into the heart of the thickly peopled city; and the fleet of the Sardinian admiral, Persano, was steaming to and fro outside the harbor, and occasionally joining in the work of destruction by pitching a heavy missile into the Lazaretto (occupied as barracks), or against the masonry of the Mole. De la Moricière, the general to whom Abd-el-Kader had surrendered, and who had driven the Red Republicans of Paris from the left bank of the Seine in the June of 1848, was "holding the fort" for Pio Nono. He had escaped but a few days previously from the disaster of Castelfidardo with a troop of light dragoons, and was battling stubbornly against odds which forbade the chance of success. He had not much faith in his Swiss—they were purely and simply mercenaries; the Italians at his disposal were neither unquestionably loyal nor of the stuff of which heroes are made; the only men he had beyond his own small ring of French Legitimists—his personal followers so to speak—on whose courage and fidelity he could depend were the Irish and the Austrians. The former, the Battaglione di San Patrizio, were in the citadel and the environing entrenched camp; the latter, being more seasoned and better armed, were assigned to the approaches of the beleaguered stronghold. The inhabitants of Ancona were by no means all well affected; but the one sentiment in which they were unanimous was the hope that it might soon end—for all were in a mortal fright. The roar of artillery, the bursting of shells, the collapse of shattered walls, bugle-blasts, drum-beats, the tramp of armed men, the crepitation of the hoofs of cantering chargers on the hard pavements, were frequent, and now and again rose a shriek of terror, or an alarm of fire. But the inhabitants took care to keep away these sounds as much as possible; they cowered in dark cellars, and prayed and cursed, and played mora, and helped to make each other uncomfortable by the contagion of an abject poltroonery.

On the spacious sloping piazza in front of the Cathedral, where the market used to be held, the main-guard was posted, and a pair of jägers paced backward and forward with the stolidity of Germans between their sentry-boxes. Suddenly they halted, raised a cry, the meaning of which I could not grasp, and the guard turned out. I could see no visiting officer, and was lost in conjecture when I noticed an ambulance party with a stretcher moving slowly downwards by the road leading from the citadel. A blue great coat outlined a figure on the stretcher; one of the legs cased in red trousers was lumpy with bandages, through which the blood oozed, but the face of the sufferer was screened from observation and from the fierce noon glare of the sun by a strip of linen. The party came to a standstill opposite the post of the sentries; the guard presented arms, the officer lowered his sword, the bugle blew thrice a weird melancholy wail of notes, and the stretcher-bearers resumed their careful, slow march.

This, I heard, was a usage borrowed from chivalrous times, and was intended as a compliment; but I could not help thinking it a cruelty to the poor wounded wretch whose recovery the delay of a minute might imperil.

I went up to the party and asked who was the last victim of the war they were carrying.

"A countryman of yours," was the answer.

I gently lifted the strip of linen, and recognized in the sufferer a youngster from Sligo, of some nineteen years, the only son of his mother, who had joined the Papal service through motives of the most sincere faith and devotedness. To his aged parent, in her humble Connaught cabin, he had sent the twenty scudi he had received as bounty. Andy was his Christian name—I never heard that of his family; but he usually went by the nickname of "Much-a-Wanted." This originated from a habit he had of using the phrase on all occasions, suitable and unsuitable. If it came on to rain, Andy would say, "much-a-wanted;" if macaroni, which the Irishmen unaccountably disliked, were served up from the dinner-boiler, he met it with the same exclamation; if he got a newspaper from home, or won a mezzo-baioccho at pitch-and-toss, it was alike. All were "much-a-wanted." Verily, I believe if he had been sent to the cells on a false charge, the philosophic Andy would have consoled himself with the cheery reflection that it was "much-a-wanted."

On inquiry I discovered he had come in for his fate characteristically. While they had been preparing the mid-day meal for his company, the cook complained of a scarcity of water. The path to the draw-well was in the direct line of a terrible fire; it was positively furrowed with ripping segments of shell. Instead of ordering the men on fatigue duty (whose actual business it was) to go, volunteers were asked for, and Andy and a comrade stepped forward and undertook to fetch a bucket. Hardly had they started into the open on their hazardous errand, when a shell exploded almost at their feet, knocking them over like ninepins, and sending the fragments of the bucket whizzing in splintered chips far asunder. Andy's comrade was hit on the sole of the foot, and broke into a bellow of pain. It was no want of fortitude; the torment must have been insupportable. The net-work of sinew and muscles in that most delicately formed portion of the human framework was torn through, and the dirty leather of the shoe was forced into the flesh, and there was an ugly circle of jagged spokes around like the star-fractures made by a stone flung through a pane of glass. Andy's right leg was shattered a few inches above the knee, and hung on by a shred of skin; the shock must have deprived him of sensation, and the rapid gush of blood caused a merciful swoon. The hemorrhage was stopped by a surgeon on the spot, and a dose of brandy poured down his throat. As he recovered his speech he murmured in a dazed way his old catch-words "much-a-wanted."

While I was learning these particulars, the pathetic little procession was climbing towards the hospital of St. John of God, where the most accomplished of our staff of surgeons were in waiting to perform serious operations, and the zealous brothers of the institution—a sort of anticipatory Red Cross order—were on the constant watch to supply all that science, good nursing and the beautiful compassion of religion could suggest for the benefit of the afflicted.

On the ground floor the operating-room was situated, and thither the party bore their pale-faced, perspiring, still burden. I followed, thinking I might be of use as I understood Italian; and, in any case, when the sufferer returned to consciousness it might be some comfort to him to have the face of one he knew by his pallet. It was promptly decided that the leg should be amputated at the thigh, and as the surgeons, with workmanlike coolness, proceeded with their grim preliminaries, the pain awoke Andy to his situation. And yet not quite. By the wild unrest of his eyes and the working of his features, it was plain that he was in the throes of acute agony; he felt it, but he could not tell why or wherefore it was. He knew too keenly where the seat of pain was, but he could not divine the exact injury he had sustained, and strove almost frantically to rise so as to obtain a view of his lower extremities. He caught sight of me, and besought me to lift him. I laid my hand on his forehead and tried to pacify him, but in vain. He sank back with a moan that went to my very marrow. While he lay thus, as if in the coma of prostration, I asked quietly if they did not propose to administer chloroform, but they shook their heads and said they had none to spare except for officers. I insisted that the boy would die under the knife unless he had something to numb his sensibility, and at the moment he opened wide his eyes, and, with a look of pleading which I can never forget, gasped—

"Gracious God! How I burn. Take me out and shoot me."

Then, in a sharp shout of entreaty as if wrung by a stronger spasm than before—

"If you're friends, if you're men, you'll put me out of pain."

The surgeon-major at last relented and nodded to an aide, who administered the chloroform. Quickly and skilfully the operation was performed, and when the patient came back to things of the world he lay in a ward on the same floor, a cradle over the stump to avert the risk of hemorrhage from the dressings being disturbed. He was very feeble and languid, and spoke like one in a trance.

"Do you feel better after your sleep, Andy?"

"Yes, thank you; 'twas much-a-wanted. But my feet are very cold."

His feet! Then he knew nothing of what had occurred; that he was no longer as others, but maimed in his youth, destined to go through life a cripple—if he ever rose from his bed.

"Put more covers over me," he besought.

He got a stimulating cordial from one of the brothers who specially charged himself with his guardianship, and I passed through some of the remaining wards on my way out. Those who were the least querulous appeared to be the very men who were most grievously wounded, perhaps they were too spent to sigh; those who were loudest in their yells of anguish—there is no other word—were a number of unfortunates who had their flesh scorched and shrivelled by the blow-up of a magazine. It is as trying to hear a strong man yell with anguish as to see a strong man shed tears. Here and there a lighted taper was placed at the foot of a bed, and the white sheet drawn over the mute and motionless occupant told its own story.

The next forenoon I visited Andy. He was weak but sprightly, and still unconscious of his great loss. He asked me how we were getting on, and when we should have the enemy beaten, for he could distinctly hear the whistling of shells and the repercussion of the booming of the big guns.

On the following day there was a change in him for the worse. There were two reasons to explain it; a shell had fallen on the roof of the hospital and crashed into one of the wards of the upper story where it burst. This naturally caused a fearful commotion, and fevered and mutilated patients had started from their beds in panic and crouched in the corridors and on the staircases. But, to my thinking, the alteration in Andy's condition was to be traced rather to another accident. He had learned the extent of his misfortune. A rough, good-natured comrade who had snatched time for a friendly call had blurted it out.

"Keep up your spirits, my hearty; you won't be the first lad to hobble through life on a timber-peg."

The poor fellow turned a ghastly white, gazed around him in a scared, vacant manner—so the brother told me—and asked with dry, tremulous lips for a drink of water. Afterwards he had dozed into a delirious slumber. In his ravings he fancied he was on a lone and dangerous post in advance of our lines, and that his officer had forgotten him.

"I'm perishin' wid the cowld," he peevishly muttered, "and no sign o' the relief. Ten hours on sentry; I give them ten minutes more. If they don't come, I'll go."

Then there must have been a struggle in his harassed brain between duty and the sense that he had been neglected.

"No," he continued. "Desertion before the inamy—disgrace! Can't do that. As I'm here, I'll see it out. I wish the relief would come."

And then the poor crazed youth went through the motions of slapping his hands across his breast to quicken the circulation, and began humming the air of "The Pretty Maid Milking her Cow."

By degrees the motion of his hands slackened, his voice grew fainter, he turned his head on one side, and dropped into a deep, calm sleep.

Duty took me elsewhere, but I returned in a few hours. As I stole up to the bedside the patient was awake and looked brighter and better than before. It was the blazing of the wick before the candle expires.

"He has had a lucid interval," whispered the brother, "and was so meek and patient that it made me weep. But he is delirious again—still yearning for that relief."

At that instant the sunset flame shooting through a window burnished the sufferer's face until it looked like that of some waxen image with a halo; by a powerful effort he propped the upper portion of his body on his left elbow, raised his right arm in salute, and cried—

"Hurrah! I saw the sunlight on yer bay'nets, boys. Andy wouldn't lave his post. But whisper, sargent, ye were much-a-wanted, much-a-wanted!"

And with a glad laugh the boy-soldier fell back.

There was a thin crimson streak upon the pillow. The relief had, indeed, come at last.

John Augustus O'Shea, in Merry England.