After a flying visit to Auckland, our old steam-roller staggered through a southerly buster into Sydney Heads on Christmas Eve, and it was then that I began to make acquaintance with the Microbe of the Black Death.
We had got alongside the wharf at Circular Quay. On the other side of the jetty a white-painted Messageries mail-boat was being moored. If Sydney had only known the terrible cargo which she carried, Sydney would have seen her sunk a thousand fathoms deep rather than let her touch Australian soil. She was the Pacifique, the ship I was to cross to New Caledonia in, and the Black Death was a passenger on board her. It was many days more before I learnt the how and the why of this—after I had walked in the same streets, lived in the same houses, and sat at the same table with the Spectre. I had also seen his material reality. This was what it looked like.
A lot of little circular globules, flattened in the centre, some red and some white, were floating in a greyish-white liquid under the microscope. Among them were some tiny dark, wriggling things swimming in the fluid and running their heads against the edges of the white globules. They were plague-microbes in blood-serum. If they got inside the white corpuscles the person to whom that blood belonged would have a very good chance of dying the Black Death. If not, he would be very ill, but would probably live, as I did.
The newspapers had come on board, and I was having a farewell cocktail in the Doctor’s cabin, a cosy little snuggery, which by this time contained many pleasant memories for me.
“There’s bubonic plague at Noumea,” said he; “and they seem to have it pretty bad, too. Of course you won’t think of going while anything like that’s messing around?”
Now I loved the Doctor because, in addition to his social qualities and medical skill, he possessed the art of making a cocktail which was an entirely delightful antidote to his medicine.
I confess that I didn’t like the news, but I made bold to reply:
“Of course I shall. Do you suppose I’ve come fifteen thousand miles to get into that place to be scared by——? Anyhow, I suppose it’s only among the Kanakas?”
“My dear fellow, bubonic plague’s a mighty good thing to stop away from,” he said, with unwonted seriousness.