“Hallo, Kettle! Got back at last, you see, and a horrible time I’ve had of it.”
“Than Popish saint more holier,” wrote the little man, reading the words as they sprawled across the paper. “And now I want to get in something about the smell. ‘Angel-breathed’ is the thing, only it don’t seem to lay up handily with the rest. Angels are certain to have good breath, and these flowers smell as nutty as anything I’ve tried. Just take a niff at them yourself. Well, Mr. Onslow, here you are again, and I haven’t said I’m glad to see you. But I am. It’s as good as meat to me to put eyes on you and hear what’s to be doing next. I tell you, it’s been pretty dull work with the donkeyman off all day bird-shooting, and me as ship’s husband sitting here on my own tail. I fancy you’d be a bit astonished at walking on board here same as you would into a house without having to hail a boat.”
“A little; not much. I was prepared for anything after what I saw between Point Sebastian and this.”
“I fancy they’ll have to bring out new geography books about this part of Florida. I never saw such a place. Why, sir, the blessed ground fairly got up and walked during that blow. I don’t think the steamer shifted much; canted a bit to leeward maybe, but didn’t budge out of her keel-groove; but it was the shores that fetched weigh. When once they broke moorings, the trees set back their shoulders and sheeted home, and great islands bore down on us like ships. The lightning burnt flares all the time, and I watched through the chart-house ports because no one could stand on deck outside. I’m not a frightened man, Mr. Onslow, or a superstitious, but I thought that night was too hard for a cyclone. I tell you, sir, and you may laugh if you like, I reckoned it up that Judgment Day had come, and I got the Prayer-book and read myself the Burial Service clean through, sea bits and all, so as to fetch whatever happened, land or water. I haven’t led a bad life, Mr. Onslow; pretty religious ashore, and never sparing myself trouble, in hazing a crew so as to carry out owner’s business at sea; and when I’d said that Burial Service, I felt I’d done all that could be expected. There was only one thing,” the little man added plaintively. “I wished I’d a new-washed jacket aboard. The one I’d on was that smeared and crumpled I should have felt shame to appear in it.”
“Well, I’m glad you weren’t hurt,” said Onslow. “It was a terrible night for any one in this area.”
“I came through it, Mr. Onslow, without so much as a finger-nail broken. So did the donkeyman. He came up here and asked if I wanted him when the blow began, and when I told him ‘No’ he went to his own room and turned in and slept till it was over. But the niggers didn’t. When the steamer began to list they got scared; thought she’d turn bilge uppermost, I suppose; and bolted down to their fishbox of a sloop which lay alongside. Of course, when the shores slipped their moorings and bore down on her, the sloop had to give; and she and the niggers are buried somewhere yonder to starboard, but where I don’t know. I’ve looked, but there isn’t so much as a spar, there isn’t so much as a whiff of circus to put a label on the spot. I’ve had mighty little to do latterly, and I might have struck up some sort of a sign-board to ’em, niggers though they were, if I could have fixed the place to an acre; but when a grave-head gets bigger than that you may be writing ‘here lyeth’ in more senses than one. So I left them quiet. Of course, with the steamer high and dry up-country, and the river two miles away through the thick woods, it wasn’t much good our messing with paint-pots and changing name-plates. We’d built a new fore-hatch and shipped it, and greased up the engines; and, as that seemed to me all that was necessary, I’ve given my shipmate holiday ever since. There’s the making of a sportsman in our donkeyman, Mr. Onslow. There isn’t a thing that crawls or flies or swims in this section of Florida that blessed Irishman hasn’t blown off my old gas-pipe at or tried to catch with a worm on a cod-hook. He wasn’t keen at first; said he’d been brought up in a works; but when I told him everything he took was poached, by James, sir, you might think he was Prince of Wales, the way he sticks at it.”
“Blood will out!” said Onslow, with a laugh, and he marveled at the extraordinary toughness of the donkeyman. At all times there is much sulphur in the water of these Floridan swamps; but since the cyclone the sulphurous emanations had been stirred and set free, till the presence of them was almost unendurable. The waters were black to look upon, yellow to look through: and in the air was a never-failing, never-varying hint at the odor of ancient eggs. It even stole into the chart-house, and mingled with the scent of the magnolia blossoms.
“It isn’t violets,” the captain assented, in reply to Onslow’s comment, “and there’s fever knocking about in those swamps as sure as there is in a Hamburg drain. But what’s fever mean, sir, except carelessness and ignorance? You tackle fever with science, Mr. Onslow, and it hasn’t a show. And if we haven’t got science aboard here, concentrated and labelled and bottled down in our medicine-chest, I don’t know where you will find it. Yes, sir, I will say that—the Port Edes has a romping fine medicine-chest; and I’ve been through it all myself, so I ought to know. The donkeyman’s been most ways through it, too; but he’s on at fever mixtures now, and he’s going solid at them. We’ve three quart bottles: A for bilious, B for malarial, and C for typhoid; and the donkeyman has a swig out of each, with a nip of chlorodyne thrown in, just after his breakfast every morning, and then a rub with some Rheumatic Cure, and if he isn’t as right as a mail-boat—well, never speak to me of drugs again. But it’s making a tough man of him, Mr. Onslow, and that’s what I want, because the donkeyman and I are going to chip in partnership.”
“What! buy a steamer together and take her tramping? Well, I hope you’ll have all manner of luck.”