“Next morning Mr. Hopkins was down with the disease, just the same symptoms and this fluttery heart.
“We could find nothing like it in our medical book, but Mr. Dorney worked out a dose for a weak heart; but you see, sir, they couldn’t swallow. When we tried to dose them they seemed to choke. Mr. Dorney said all along it was hydrophobia they’d got. You can understand how we felt about it, sir.
“The next day the steward went down with it just the same as the others. That was one of the worst of all the things, sir, because with all these people falling sick, one of the chronometers ran down and something went wrong with the other. You see, sir, it had been in the infected cabin.”
“Rot, boy,” Sard said, “a chronometer couldn’t pick up infection.”
“Well, sir, perhaps it can’t, but that was how we felt about it when everything in the cabin got poisoned.
“And then that morning, sir, poor Captain Cary died in the room where he was with Jellybags. He hadn’t said anything that we could understand since he had fallen ill. You can imagine what we all thought, sir; we all knew what Captain Cary was. We buried him that afternoon, sir. It was dead calm and hazy and blazing hot. Mr. Dorney read the service and just as we put poor Captain Cary into the sea, that little black cat came out of the cabin, and it had the disease. It dragged one of its legs and was fighting in its throat and its coat was all staring. It came to the grating where Captain Cary had lain and mewed. Mr. Dorney said, ‘My God, the cat’s got it.’ I don’t think anything scared the men so much as that cat coming out; there was a regular growl; and they growled a good deal too, because Mr. Dorney took the service instead of the padre. Mr. Dorney said that he was acting captain and it was the captain’s place to read the service; marriage, christening or burial. The crowd didn’t like that at all, nor did the padre; but Mr. Dorney said that they’d ‘joost have to loomp it.’
“Poor old Jellybags died the next day.
“Then we got a slant of wind which lasted for three days: the disease never seemed to do much when the wind was stronger than light airs. Then the wind died out and it came on thick, just as we were expecting to pick up Cape Caliente. It was blazing hot, with mist, just when we didn’t know where we were. Then the disease came on again: the poor steward died and the poor little cat died, and the padre seemed very queer.
“Then Sainte Marie, the French A.B., who had helped to bring out the steward’s body, went down with it. He was the first man forward to get it, and, of course, he got it by coming aft. And now everybody was terrified, not only at the disease but at being shut up in the mist and lost. We hadn’t picked up Cape Caliente and we were all afraid we’d been caught in the southerly set and put to the south of it on one side or other. We couldn’t tell where we’d got to. We tested the water alongside to see if we were near the mouth of the Santa Maria, but the water wasn’t brackish. We’d hands aloft looking for high land. From time to time we hove the lead, but it’s all volcanic water there, sir, just like the bottomless pit. It was like being under a curse. One of the worst things was that when the padre went queer he kept intoning the burial service. It was dead calm and very hot, with the sail slatting and all the gear jangling and the ship’s bells tolling as she rolled.
“Then about dark that night the wind freshened a little. We got her to lay a course about west-north-west. She made as much as two knots for the first couple of hours, though it was still thick. We had the fog-horn blowing because we hoped to get an echo if we were anywhere near the high land. Just before midnight we heard breakers on the lee bow. Mr. Dorney put her about and kept her on the other tack for a couple of hours. Then we heard breakers again on the lee bow. Mr. Dorney put her about again and took a cast of the lead and got volcanic rock at 125 fathoms. Then the wind dropped and it came on very thick. We had all hands on deck waiting for a call and from time to time we heard the padre, sometimes fighting with this thing in his throat, sometimes calling out the burial service. It went on like that, sir, for some hours. Sometimes we had a few stray slants of air and then they would die away again. At about 3.30 we heard breakers on the port bow and then breakers on the starboard beam. Mr. Dorney said we must be among the Chamuceras. Anyway, we were embayed. I don’t think Mr. Dorney had been off his feet for two days and two nights, sir. We drew clear of these breakers, and it was just beginning to grow light when we heard breakers again on our starboard bow and then breakers on the port bow and then the wind died on us, sir, and there wasn’t a breath. Suddenly the padre appeared on deck in red socks and with a red tamash for a loin-cloth. He stood at the poop rail, laughing and cussing, and then the fog cleared away, and old Holdfast, the Vancouver man, who was in the cross-trees, sang out, ‘Land, ho,’ and the look-out man shouted, ‘Breakers dead ahead, sir.’