After the shivering fit, there usually succeeds a violent fever, with acute pains in the head, back, and limbs; an intense dejection of mind; an agonizing thirst, with a tongue so dry, that it rattles in one's jaws like a kernel in a shell; and then comes the frightful yellowness of complexion, from which the fever takes its name.
Though I have seen some who, after it abated, became cold as ice, and remained thus, with a tolerably sedate mind, and expired after twelve hours or so,—others who died after violent bleeding from the nose,—others who departed raving mad,—in me it took the form of continued delirium, in which, as I was afterwards told, I raved of the lonely island, renewed my struggle with Knuckleduster, and nearly killed a poor marine, who acted as my servant; then I laboured to raise the wreck of a treasure-ship, and believed myself again and again to be in a great cavern, till total prostration of mind and body succeeded, and a long stupor came over me.
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A sea-going frigate of the year 1794 was somewhat different in many respects from a ship of similar rank in the present age of rifled cannon and screw-propellers; and hence the odours that came from the ship's stores, the bilge, the sick-bay, and the cockpit, when a fierce West-Indian sun was blazing overhead, making the pitch boil between the planks of the main deck, were anything but consolatory or refreshing to the unfortunates on whom the grim pestilence had laid his yellow and shrivelled hand.
When awaking, as it were, from a long lethargy, I found myself slung in a hammock near an open port, through which the blessed breeze of Heaven, as it came over the dancing waves, blew upon my wan and fevered cheek, and refreshed me.
A marine, who had charge of me, now placed a pewter flagon, filled with water-gruel, in my trembling hand. I drank thirstily, and then sank back with a sigh of mingled weakness and satisfaction. Youth made the elements of life strong within me; and hope returned with consciousness, though twice or thrice daily I saw a dark object fall heavily and endlong past the open port—plash into the sunlit sea and disappear!
Then would I close my eyes, and strive to pray, and to remember some of the little lessons my mother taught in purer and happier times; for these dark objects were the bodies of my fellow-sufferers, who were thus consigned to the waters from the deck above.
Ere long I was able to ask the marine whereabout we were, and he said,—
"The isle of Nevis bears about ten miles distant on our lee bow,—the top of the hill (for the island is only a great conical hill) is in sight."
"Then how far are we from Guadaloupe?"