At four in the morning Captain Macadam comes into first mate Jack Paul’s room at the change house. He is clad in his linen sleeping suit, and his teeth are chattering a little.
“It’s the bein’ ashore makes my teeth drum,” he vouchsafes. “But what I wushed to ask ye, lad, is d’ye believe in fortunes? No? Weel, then, neither do I; only I remembered like that lang syne a wierd warlock sort o’ body tells me in the port o’ Leith, that I’m to meet my death in the West Injies. It’s the first time, as I was tellin’ ye, that ever I comes pokin’ my snout amang these islands; and losh! I believe that warlock chiel was right. I’ve come for my death sure.”
Captain Macadam promises his crew’ double grog and double wages, and works night and day lightering his tea ashore, and getting his rum casks into the King George’s Packet. Then he calls a pilot, and, with a four-knot breeze behind him, worms his way along the narrow, corkscrew channel, until he finds himself in open water.
Then the pilot goes over the side, and Captain Macadam takes the brig. He casts an anxious eye astern at Port Royal, four miles away.
“I’ll no feel safe,” says he, “while yon Satan’s nest is under my quarter. And afterward I’ll no feel safe neither. How many days, mon, is a victeem to stand by and look for symptoms?”
First mate Jack Paul, to whom the query is put, gives it as his opinion that, if they have yellow fever aboard, it will make its appearance within the week.
“Weel that’s a mercy ony way!” says Captain Macadam with a sigh.
There are, besides first mate Jack Paul, and the Captain with his two officers, twelve seamen and the cook—seventeen souls in all—aboard the King George’s Packet as, north by east, it crawls away from Port Royal. For four days the winds hold light but fair. Then come head winds, and the brig finds itself making long tacks to and fro in the Windward Passage, somewhere between Cape Mazie and the Mole St. Nicholas.
“D’ye see, mon!” cries Captain Macadam, whose fears have increased, not diminished, since he last saw the Jamaica lights. “The vera weather seeks to keep us in this trap! I’ll no be feelin’ ower weel neither, let me tell ye!”
First mate Jack Paul informs the alarmed Captain that to fear the fever is to invite it.