It was a cheering sight to the sick soldiers to see Miss Nightingale and the nurses moving about the wards. They all wore aprons, and bands with "Scutari Hospital" marked on them, plain skirts and white caps. The men had never been nursed by women before, only by men, some of them very rough, some knowing nothing of sickness and unable to dress their wounds. But these nurses moved about from bed to bed, quickly and quietly, attending to each sufferer in turn, and working for hours and hours with no rest. Some of the soldiers were too ill even to know where they were, until they slowly returned to life, and found themselves no longer lying on the battle-field, but in the hospital, being cared for and looked after by Miss Nightingale or one of her band. The nurses had a hard time of it; the Turkish bread was so sour they could hardly eat it; what butter they had was bad, and the meat, one of them said, "was more like moist leather than food." But they worked on through the day, often through the night as well, carrying out the doctor's orders, giving medicine, supplying lint and bandages, and giving lemonade to the thirsty soldiers. There was barely room to pass between the beds,--so closely were they packed. Here and there a little group of doctors would stand over a bed talking over a bad case, while those soldiers who could walk would go to the bed of a comrade, to help pass some of the long hours away. The winter was bitterly cold. The men on the bleak heights before Sebastopol were only half fed, their clothes were in rags, they had to sleep on the damp ground, and toil for many hours every day in the trenches ankle deep in water and mud. Many hundreds died, many more sickened, and were taken to the hospital. Besides the large kitchen which supplied all the general food, the nurses had another, where jelly, arrowroot, soup, broth, and chickens were cooked for those who were too ill to eat the usual hospital fare. Here Miss Nightingale would cook herself, if there were some urgent case, and with her own hands feed the sick and dying men. She had a great power of command over the soldiers; many a time _her_ influence helped a wounded man through the dreaded operations. He would sooner die than meet the knife of the surgeon. Then Miss Nightingale would encourage him to be brave, and, while she stood beside him, he, with lips closely set and hands folded, set himself for _her_ sake to endure the necessary pain. And the soldiers would watch her gliding down the wards, and long for their turn to come, when she would stand by their special bed and perhaps speak some special word to them. Then the men under her, the orderlies who had to obey her in everything, did it without a murmur. "During all that dreadful period" not one of them failed her in devotion, obedience, ready attention; for her sake they toiled and endured, as they would not have toiled and endured for anyone else.