That enjoying
Half-pay for life made mankind worth destroying.
CHAPTER LX.
THE YELLOW FEVER.
The heat of the atmosphere was now so great, that one might have imagined, as Cranky said, "that there was only a sheet of paper between the Adder's cabin and another place."
As the months of May, June, July, and August, are the most fatal for the yellow fever, it now broke out on board; the sick-bay was soon full; many officers were confined to their cabins, and a day seldom passed without some one being sent to his long home at the bottom of the great deep, with a thirty-two pound shot at his heels; and ere long I bade fair to become one of its victims.
The excitement so long and so recently undergone,—the sudden change of food, raiment, and quarters, after the total alteration of my system and habits, during the time that I had lived like Nebuchadnezzar on the Isle of Tortoises.—now began to tell fearfully upon me; and I was assailed by that scourge of the Antilles, the yellow fever. When the conviction of this came over me, I had but one emotion,—devout thankfulness that it had not fallen upon me while lonely and desolate, helpless and friendless, on the island.
On the third day after we bore up for Guadaloupe, I was seated at mess in the ward-room of the frigate, enjoying the tempered atmosphere of the evening as it passed the open ports, through which we could see the waves of the blue sea as the Adder sped on, with the wind upon her quarter, when first the symptoms of the dread pest assailed me; and from all I knew of it, I made up my mind to prepare for the worst.
A wine-glass dropped from my hand and shivered on the deck, as the general premonition, a cold and violent fit of shivering, came suddenly over me. Then I remember Percival, the first lieutenant, starting up, and exclaiming,—
"The fever, by Jove! Sentry, pass the word for the doctor—quick, the yellow admiral is here!"
In ten minutes after I was undressed and in bed, ill with the confirmed pestilence. How long and weary were its hours of agony, thirst, and lassitude, which followed that fatal evening!