"Poor old Flo," Miss Nightingale wrote from the Black Sea, May 5, 1855, "steaming up the Bosphorus and across the Black Sea with four nurses, two cooks, and a boy to Crim Tartary (to overhaul the Regimental Hospitals) in the _Robert Lowe_ or _Robert Slow_ (for an exceedingly slow boat she is), taking back 420 of her patients, a draught of convalescents returning to their regiments to be shot at again. 'A Mother in Israel,' Pastor Fliedner called me; a Mother in the Coldstreams, is the more appropriate appellation. What suggestions do the above ideas make to you in Embley drawing-room? Stranger ones perhaps than to me, who, on the 5th May, year of disgrace 1855, having been at Scutari six months to-day, am in sympathy with God, fulfilling the purpose I came into the world for. What the disappointments of the conclusion of these six months are no one can tell. But I am not dead, but alive." Miss Nightingale was accompanied to the Crimea by the faithful Mr. Bracebridge, willing as ever to serve her. Among the nurses was Mrs. Roberts, whose exceptional efficiency and personal devotion to the Lady-in-Chief were soon to be called in need. Of the cooks, the chief was Soyer the Great, from whose cheerfully gossiping and pleasantly egotistical pages[170] some details are drawn in this chapter. The "boy" mentioned in Miss Nightingale's letter was Thomas, a drummer, who, though only twelve years of age, used to call himself "Miss Nightingale's Man." He was a regular _enfant de troupe_, says M. Soyer, full of activity, wit, intelligence, and glee. He would draw himself up to his full height, and explain that he had "forsaken his instruments in order to devote his civil and military career to Miss Nightingale." She was attended also by a soldier invalided from the 68th Light Infantry, whom Mr. Bracebridge had picked out to serve as messenger. In 1860 he wrote a manuscript account of his experiences in the Crimea,[171] and this is another first-hand source from which particulars are drawn in the present chapter. The party arrived at Balaclava on May 5, and the decks of vessels in the harbour were crowded with spectators anxious to catch a glimpse of the famous Lady-in-Chief. There was no accommodation for her ashore; so her headquarters were on board the _Robert Lowe_, and when that vessel left, on the sailing transport _London_. [170] See Bibliography B, No. 15.