“True!” observes Captain Macadam, when he understands—“true, the George isn’t fitted up for passengers. But”—turning to first mate Jack Paul—“you’ll no mind; bein’ a seaman yours eh?”
“More than that, Captain,” breaks in Sir Holman, “since the port is reeling full of yellow jack, some of your people might take it to sea with them. Should aught go wrong, now, why here is your passenger, a finished sailorman, to give you a lift.”
Captain Macadam’s face has been tanned like leather. None the less, as he hears the above the mahogany hue thereof lapses into a pasty, piecrust color. Plainly that word yellow jack fills his soul with fear. He mentions the wearisome fact to first mate Jack Paul, as he and that young gentleman, after their cigars and sangaree with Sir Holman, are making a midnight wake for the change house whereat they have bespoken beds.
“It’s no kindly,” complains Captain Macadam, “for Sir Holman to let me run my brig blindfold into sic a snare. But then he has a fourth share in the tea, and another in the rum; and so, for his profit like, he lets me tak’ my chances. He’d stude better wi’ God on high I’m thinkin’, if he’d let his profit gone by, and just had a pilot boat standin’ off and on at Port Royal, to gi’ me the wink to go wide. I could ha’ taken the tea to New York weel enou’. But bein’ I’m here,” concludes the disturbed Captain, appealing to first mate Jack Paul, “what would ye advise?”
“To get your tea ashore and your rum aboard as fast as you may.”
“Ay! that’ll about be the weesdom of it!”
Captain Macadam can talk of nothing but yellow jack all the way to the change house.
“It’s the first time I was ever in these watters,” he explains apologetically, “and now I can smell fever in the air! Ay! the hond o’ death is on these islands! Be ye no afeard, mon?”
First mate Jack Paul says that he is not. Also he is a trifle irritated at the alarm of the timorous Captain Macadam.
“That’ll just be your youth now!” observes the timorous one. “Ye’re no old enou’ to grasp the responsibeelities.”