I still had to push myself every morning to wake up and get out the door of our cabin. The suffering I witnessed on my daily rounds was heartbreaking. But more and more I found myself anxious to check in on the men, to see them progress towards recovery. I knew I was helping to make life easier for the crew—some even started to call me Florence, after the famous nurse Nightingale—but I was increasingly troubled by the inequity of the whole thing, how some men enjoyed the spoils of the empire while others toiled mightily in harsh environments to provide it.
Today, as I was looking for the right opportunity to slip unnoticed into Dr. Carson’s surgery, my attention was drawn to a demonstration set up on the forward deck. There were often music recitals and presentations offered by fellow passengers and I took in as many as I could when I wasn’t belowdecks tending to patients. I stopped at the back of a small crowd and rolled up on my tiptoes so that I could see what was going on.
Two gentlemen adventurers were offering a lesson on panning for gold, and they had set out their large flat tin pans, filled with loose sand and gravel, on a low table by a pail of water. I stifled a gasp when one of the gentlemen opened a tiny glass jar and tipped two nuggets of gold into a pan. With a great dramatic flourish, he asked the crowd, “Who would like to try their luck at panning for gold and recover my nuggets? Which one of you will be the next Cariboo Pete?”
I was curious myself, but didn’t want to attract attention, so I stayed where I was as an older man volunteered. He was shown how to grasp the pan with both hands and to gently swirl it in a large circular motion, dipping it regularly into the water pail and letting the sand and gravel particles that collected on the top get washed away.
“That’s the way to get the heavier gold to sink to the bottom,” a deep voice next to me said.
I turned my head to see John Crossman smiling down at me.
“Oh, hello,” I said, taking a step back in surprise. I accidently bumped into the woman behind me, flattening the front of her very large hat. She glared at me as she adjusted it. I flushed. “Sorry.”
“I didn’t mean to startle you,” Reverend Crossman said, his eyes twinkling.
“No, you didn’t,” I said quickly.
“But I’m glad to run into you like this,” he continued. “We really haven’t had a chance to talk since that day with Dr. Carson. How’s the first aid training coming along?”
“Oh, I gave that up a while ago,” I lied.
“That’s too bad.” He studied my face. “I would have said you had a calling.”
I looked at him, forgetting myself for a moment. I was not used to this kind of encouragement, but I caught myself before I said the wrong thing. “It wasn’t really appropriate work for me. It’s frowned upon for a lady with my background.”
“It’s a shame that society puts such restrictions on women. I’ve never really understood it. It serves no one.”
I had never heard such a thought expressed by a man, and it gave me pause. Was it possible we could be kindred spirits? No, I told myself. Do not even think that. I knew my duty, and John Crossman didn’t figure into it. I changed the subject, nodding at the gold panning. “I recall that you have done this before.”
“Nice to know you were listening. I usually bore everyone with endless stories of my adventures.”
In front of us, the volunteer combed his fingers through the bottom sediment and produced the two gold nuggets, displaying them in his outstretched hand. The pea-size lumps sparkled in the light, as if winking at me. When the crowd cheered and applauded, I murmured an excuse to the reverend and slipped away to Dr. Carson’s surgery. But the image of those glowing gold nuggets stayed with me for the rest of the morning. Was gold the reason the men belowdecks worked so hard in unspeakable conditions and why the emigrant women were willing to leave their loved ones and travel halfway around the world? Perhaps the goldfields of British Columbia offered them a real chance to leave a life of hardship and poverty behind.
When I pushed open the heavy oak door of the surgery, Dr. Carson was already busy with two patients. He looked relieved when he saw me and motioned me forward.
“I can’t deal with these two at the same time,” he said. “I’ll stitch Jeff’s bad gash here; you can set Ed’s broken forearm.”
I looked at the seaman sitting at the table. Ed was more of a boy than a man, clearly fighting tears, his face flushed a deep red. “Me?”
“You’ve seen me do it enough times. You know the procedure; there’s a sling on the table. I’ll double-check it when you’re done.”
My knees felt a little like tomato jelly, but I didn’t want to let the doctor down. It took a great deal of my strength to straighten Ed’s muscles that had contracted in response to the break, but I managed it without too much discomfort for the poor boy. “I’ll have you in a sling in a jiff,” I told him, and he seemed relieved.
Dr. Carson inspected my work and pronounced it properly done, but I had no time to bask in glory. We went off on our rounds and spent an exhausting morning tending to the crew.
At the end of the day, Dr. Carson set himself heavily at his desk and sifted through his stores of laudanum. “And how is Harriet doing on the new dose?”
“Well, I think. Her withdrawal has been hard, but she’s improved a great deal. Our plan is working, and we
