A DESERTED BRIGANTINE AT ANCHOR DIPPED SLOWLY WITH THE LONG PACIFIC SWELLS.
Slowly creeping over the ground swells was the port officer’s boat; it had a uniformed crew and rowed well. The Peruvians watched it contentedly; por Dios, no such stupid work here as in that Guayas River—buenos dias, Señor Comandante, buenos dias, Señor Doctor—and they stood aside as the captain led the way into his quarters, the procession closing with the nervous ship’s surgeon and a steward with a bottle of warm champagne—for there was no more ice.
Presently they emerged amiably and the port officers put back to shore. We would be incommunicado until that very afternoon and then we would hear. The little boats that had clustered around the Mapocho with Panama hats, fruits, and suspicious looking native candy were waved ashore in a cloud of disappointment. In the afternoon back came the boat and the young surgeon prepared to meet them ceremoniously at the foot of the companion ladder. He could have spared himself the trouble; the little boat stopped fifty feet off while the port doctor handed out a judgment of five days’ quarantine. Twelve dollars and a half a head for the first cabin and a dollar and a quarter, gold, for the steerage, and all additional! Going into quarantine was not, from a purely business standpoint, without its profits. And also the Ecuadorans and the Peruvians once more met with a common bond of sympathy.
A barefooted Chileno sailor who had been already to haul down the big yellow pest flag at the foremast belayed the halliards permanently to the bridge pin rail and trotted off to help in putting over a small boat. This boat flying a small yellow flag, was anchored a half-mile away and during the days of quarantine was the only means of communication with the shore. Each morning through the medium of this anchored boat we did the ship’s business with the shore and from it the steward would return with watermelons, eggs, turkeys, ducks, and vegetables and quinine for the doctor. Occasionally from day to day the port doctor, the port captain, or a member of the sanitary junta would be rowed out in the official boat to look us over and the tottering wrecks between the decks would be mustered at an open cargo port for a distant and sceptical inspection. The local steamship agents, through the daily messages in the anchored boat, kept us interested with the daily rumors—we were a plague ship, a floating charnel house plying our way shamelessly from port to port, a leper of the high seas shunned even by Guayaquil—and one vague and indefinite that seemed to suggest that a port official contemplated a sea trip in a week or so and was engineering this means of giving us the pleasure of his company when he was ready. It was interesting.
CHAPTER III
THROUGH A TROPICAL QUARANTINE
One morning when the official sanitary junta—the port doctor, the town druggist, and three shopkeepers, all of whom except the first, were contentedly selling us supplies—were making their inspection within easy hailing distance the returning Peruvian diplomat dealt himself a hand in the game. In a few pointed remarks he demanded that they send a doctor on board to make an examination. The port captain returned an indignant oration in which, after paying tribute to the ancestral deeds of the diplomat’s forebears, he hurled shame at the diplomat for his selfish lack of patriotism in so distrusting the conclusions and acts of his countrymen, obviously he had been so enervated by effete foreign associations that—that—well, it sounded like good oratory anyway. There was no doubt in their minds that we were concealing yellow fever.
Slowly the five days of quarantine passed with this solemn official mockery. The Chinamen ceased from troubling and yielded the daily shilling, the chicken coop was returned to the authority of the steward—although once, for variety, a Chinaman shared it with a couple of turkeys for some hours—and then the final day arrived.
Leisurely the official boat rowed out. The passengers for Ecuador, it announced, were to be transferred to the leprous-looking brigantine where they would remain in quarantine until they could be transfered to a northbound steamer. Incidentally they were privileged to pay twelve sols a day, each, for board. Then the official boat was rowed back; and that was all.
Indignantly the passengers met and decided to pay no more daily quarantine charges—it seemed as if the company needed a little stimulating, perhaps; the purser chuckled sympathetically and then a self-appointed committee looked over the chicken coop with a speculative eye. It was heartening, for at least the monotony would be broken. That night an unofficial boat stole out of the darkness alongside; confirmed the rumor that the port captain was holding us for a week longer to suit his convenience; then the messenger disappeared in the night. This was interesting as pure news matter and that was all.