The wounded arrived by the shipload until every ward, both in the General and in the Barrack Hospital, was crowded to excess, and the men lay in double rows down the long corridors, forming several miles of suffering humanity. During these terrible days Florence Nightingale was known to stand for _twenty hours_ at a time, on the arrivals of fresh detachments of sick, apportioning quarters, directing her nurses and attending at the most painful operations where her presence might soothe and support. She would spend hours over men dying of cholera or fever. “Indeed,” wrote one who watched her work, “the more awful to every sense any particular case might be, the more certainly might be seen her slight form bending over him, administering to his ease by every means in her power and seldom quitting his side until death released him.” Her womanly heart prompted her to acts of humanity which at once made her recognised by the men as the soldier’s friend. When the wounded were brought by hundreds to Scutari after Inkerman, the first duty of the surgeons was to separate the hopeful cases from the desperate. On one occasion Miss Nightingale saw five soldiers set aside in a hopeless condition. She inquired if nothing could be done for the poor fellows, and the surgeons replied that their first duty was with those whom there seemed to be more hope of saving. “Will you give me these five men?” said the Lady-in-Chief. “Do as you like with them,” replied the surgeons; “we think their case is hopeless.” If life could be saved, Florence Nightingale was determined to save it, and throughout the night, assisted by one of the nurses, she sat beside the men, feeding them with a spoon until their senses awakened and their strength began to return. She washed their wounds, cheered their hearts with kind words, and in the morning had the satisfaction of finding that they were in a fit condition to be operated on. At another time a Highland soldier was about to undergo an amputation. Miss Nightingale asked that the operation might be delayed, as she thought that careful nursing might render it unnecessary. Through her unremitting care the man’s arm was saved; and when asked what he felt towards his preserver, he said that the only mode he had of giving vent to his feelings was to kiss her shadow when it fell on his pillow as she passed through the wards on her nightly rounds. When cholera and plague cases came in, foaming at the mouth and black in the face, none were too bad for Florence Nightingale’s patient care. Her influence over the men was established from the first. She was their “good angel” and their confidence in her was unbounded.