No provision had been made for the eight passengers who were doomed to travel by her. The captain had no money or credit to buy stores, and when I offered to lend him some, he declined, in case his owners should hold him responsible. The result was that the food we ate on that miserable voyage made me look back longingly to the days when I had eaten salt horse and pickled pork in the forecastle of a black-birder.
The decks were not washed down till the fifth morning, when we reached Sydney Heads. Then there was a general clean-up before the Medical Superintendent came on board, in case a worse fate than quarantine might await us. Up went Yellow Jack again, and that afternoon saw us anchored off the quarantine station at North Head.
I have been in prisons of many sorts, but that quarantine taught me for the first time what imprisonment really means. The penalty for leaving the St. Louis without authority was £300 fine and six months’ hard labour—so there we were for eight days and nights of about one hundred and fifty hours each.
On one side there was the quarantine station—about as beautiful a land and seascape as those about to die ever took a last look from at earth and sea and sky.
On the other hand, the varied beauties of “Our Harbour,” with Manly Beach to the northward, North Shore with its red-roofed villas sprinkled among the trees; and, away in the dim distance, the spires and chimneys of Sydney. A couple of hours would have taken us to it, but as we looked at it with longing eyes, thinking of what a cocktail at the bar of the Australia Hotel would taste like, it might just as well have been twenty thousand miles away.
It was during those eight days of mingled dirt and discomfort, cursing, and cribbage that I saw as curious a contrast between life and death as you might search the wide world over for.
On the starboard side, which is the right-hand side looking forward, lay the route of the excursion steamers running between Sydney and Manly Beach.
They came past at all hours of the day, and they came near enough for us to hear strains of stringed and wind instruments, which brought back memories of the dear old Thames with painful distinctness.
On the port side, with almost equal frequency, there came a green-painted, white-awninged launch, flying the Yellow Flag and carrying corpses, “cases,” and “contacts” from the depôt at Wooloomooloo. As she rounded into the jetty she whistled. Day and night for eight days and nights we heard that whistle—and the meaning of it was usually death. But you get hardened to all things in time, and before our durance vile ended we had got to call her the Cold Meat Boat.
One day the Medical Superintendent of the station acceded to an urgent request made by myself and a fellow-passenger. Neither of us had washed properly for six days, and so, after a little discussion and many promises, he let us go ashore that we might enjoy ourselves under a hose. We douched each other for more than half an hour, and then we went to stretch ourselves on the beach—a silver-sanded rock-walled curve, trodden by many feet which will never tread earth again.