Miss Nightingale, on this and her later visits to the Crimea, saw and heard of many deeds of heroism which she loved to tell. "I remember," she wrote, "a sergeant, who was on picket, the rest of the picket killed, and himself battered about the head, stumbled back to camp, and on his way picked up a wounded man, and brought him in on his shoulders to the lines, where he fell down insensible. When, after many hours, he recovered his senses, I believe after trepanning, his first words were to ask after his comrade, 'Is he alive?' 'Comrade, indeed! yes, he's alive, it is the General.' At that moment the General, though badly wounded, appeared at the bedside. 'Oh, General, it's you, is it, I brought in, I'm so glad. I didn't know your honour, but if I'd known it was you, I'd have saved you all the same.' This is the true soldier's spirit."[174] [174] Letter on the Volunteers, 1861. See Bibliography A, No. 25. III During the few days immediately after her arrival at Balaclava, Miss Nightingale carried on an active investigation of the hospitals, regimental and general; arranged various affairs in connection with the sisters and nurses; discussed the building of new huts; and, in conjunction with M. Soyer, planned the erection of several kitchens for extra diet. Here, as at Scutari, she was fearless of contagion, and tended patients stricken with fever. On return to her ship one evening she complained of great fatigue; and on the following morning, feeling no better, she sent for Dr. Anderson, Chief Medical Officer at the General Hospital. He called others of the medical staff into consultation, and a joint bulletin was issued to the effect that Miss Nightingale was suffering from Crimean fever. They advised that she should be removed from the ship, and she was carried on a stretcher by relays of soldiers to the Castle Hospital on the Genoese Heights. The hut in which she lay was immediately behind those of the wounded soldiers. The attack of fever was sharp, and she was, as she afterwards admitted to her friends, "very near to death." There are scraps of manuscript among her papers (for even in illness she could not be kept from the use of her pen) which show a wandering mind.