"Bellamy's hangin' all dried and brown—
Yo-ho-ho, and a bottle o' rum!
A-rattlin' his chains by Kingston town—
Yo-ho-ho, and a bottle o' rum!"
But words cannot describe the horrors of the week which succeeded. For five days men died at the rate of three a day. Then the disease seemed to diminish in virulence, and although we had as many as seventy sick at once, practically all survived. As a rule, men who were stricken either perished within twenty-four hours or else made a slow recovery. Flint was one of the few exceptions, and I can only suppose that in his case the illness resolved itself into a battle betwixt a naturally sinewy frame and the weaknesses developed by the strong liquors with which it had been saturated.
That we three and Darby were untouched I attribute as much as anything to the measures which Peter took. He brewed a drastic purgative of rum, molasses and gunpowder, and he was insistent that Darby should procure a large earthen crock to contain boiled water which we kept in Moira's stateroom. Bones, Silver, Pew and those others of the crew who escaped the infection did so simply because of their physical vigor or perhaps because they were so accustomed to living in filth that the exaggerated conditions aboard the Walrus might not harm them.
A week from the day we steered westward we sighted the mouth of a broad river, crossed a bar at high tide and bore upstream between low, sandy shores overgrown with pine forests. On the verge of evening we rounded a point of land and dropped our anchor opposite a little, log-built town perched on a sandy bluff.
A huddle of merchant shipping eyed askance the splintered sides and serried ports of the Walrus, and there was a general tendency to slacken anchor-cables and allow us ample room. Ashore men scurried to and fro; several small cannon were run out upon the platform of the stockade, and the British flag was displayed.
Peter and I had seized the opportunity of the semidarkness to escort Moira to the rail for a view of our new surroundings, and we were staring hungrily at this outpost of civilization when the thud-thud of Silver's crutch sounded on the deck behind us.
"Ye might think from them goin's-on ashore as there was a mighty treasure in Savannah," he observed; "but bless ye, there ain't enough worth the takin' in that town to pay for the gunpowder to blow down the stockade."
I assented, and Flint's voice came faintly through the twilight:
"Fifteen men on the Dead Man's Chest—
Yo-ho-ho, and a——
"Ho, Darby! Darby McGraw! Fetch aft the rum, Darby McGraw!"