Harper's Round Table, December 17, 1895

Copyright, 1895, by Harper & Brothers. All Rights Reserved.

December on the Majuba coast, and the day had been the hottest of the month, as the log-book entry showed.
It was a few minutes past sundown, and the awnings that had covered the decks of the old steam-frigate Sumter were being taken in to allow a freer passage for any air that might begin to stir with the nightfall.
The barefooted sailors trod gingerly about, carefully avoiding the metal-work on the hatch combings and the soft blotches of pitch that had bubbled up through the deck seams. The only sounds were the chattering of a large monkey that was swinging himself to and fro in the heat-slackened shrouds, and the discordant squawking of some tame parrots on the forecastle.
A group of officers lolled against the after-rail, and three or four youngsters, a little apart from them, had just finished a whispered conversation. But for some minutes there had not been a loud word spoken throughout the ship. There was one thought present in the minds and hearts of all, from the Captain, ill and half delirious with fever below in his close sweltering cabin, to Midshipman Bobby Seymour, who had had a lump in his throat for the past twenty-four hours—one thought, over and over—home, home, home.
It was the early evening of the night before Christmas. A sagging wind-sail, that hung down the forward hatchway like a huge empty trouser leg, swayed a little, and the movement caught the junior Lieutenant's eye.
The land breeze! Feel it? he said, lifting his hand as if to enforce silence.
Warm, and almost fetid with an indescribable odor, a breath had crept softly across the water from the low-lying African coast—a breath redolent of swamps, of strange unhealthy products of the overheated earth, suggestive of fever that burned into the bones.
I don't like it, said Bobby Seymour, wriggling his small shoulders. He spoke in a half whisper. I wish I was at Irvington with the river all iced up, the sleigh-bells jingling-jangling everywhere, and—