Of every hundred on board the transport, an average of ten had died since leaving the Crimea. The names and causes of death of these men ought to be recorded; but the surgeons of the transport are wholly occupied in despatching their living charge to the hospital; and the surgeons there have enough to do in receiving them. Attempts are made to obtain the number and names and injuries of the new patients: there may or may not be a list furnished from the ship; and the hospital surgeons inquire from bed to bed: but in such a scene mistakes are sure to arise; and it was found, in fact, that there was always more or less variation between the numbers recorded as received or dead and the proper number. No one could wonder at this who had for a moment looked upon the scene. The poor fellows just arrived had perhaps not had their clothes off since they were wounded or were seized with cholera, and they were steeped in blood and filth, and swarming with vermin. To obtain shirts and towels was hard work, because it had to be proved that they brought none with them. They were laid on the floor in the corridors, as close as they could be packed, thus breathing and contaminating the air which was to have refreshed the wards within. If laid upon so-called sheets, they entreated that the sheets might be taken away; for they were of coarse canvas, intolerable to the skin. Before the miserable company could be fed, made clean, and treated by the surgeons, many were dead; and a too large proportion were never to leave the place more, though struggling for a time with death. It was amidst such a scene that Florence Nightingale refused to despair of five men so desperately wounded as to be set aside by the surgeons. The surgeons were right. As they said, their time was but too little for the cases which were not hopeless. And Florence Nightingale was right in finding time, if she could, to see whether there was really no chance. She ascertained that these five were absolutely given over; and she and her assistants managed to attend to them through the night. She cleaned and comforted them, and had spoonfuls of nourishment ready whenever they could be swallowed. By the morning round of the surgeons, these men were ready to be operated upon; and they were all saved.