Henry and Tehei were down with island fever. Nakata had caught ngari-ngari, or scratch-scratch. Jack had terrible yaws, and I had equally terrible yaws. We, too, took occasional spells of fever. Dosings of p313 quinine and applications of corrosive sublimate and blue vitriol were daily occurrences. The blue vitriol drove me nearly crazy—Jack called it horse doctoring; but it was the best that I could do. Henry developed bukua on his face; Tehei fainted several times, and wept and prayed; all this made us the most invalided crew ever seen in the South Seas. This much I learned, however, from our tribulations: anyone coming to the Solomons should first purchase a barrel of quinine for the fever and a barrel of corrosive sublimate for the yaws, and leave an order for more to follow.
I was looking forward to getting out of this particular part of the world. It was too wild and raw, too full of sickness and sudden death. How I longed for a real bed, with sheets, in a place where it was not too hot to sleep! The rain pretty near drove us out of the Snark. We had awning all over the deck, and side curtains, but the tropical showers that blew up in a minute and swept away the next were fast and furious while they lasted. No matter how well the canvas was set, the rain got through and pushed below to our bunks. But I determined that in Australia I would get two large ventilators for my room. Then no rain could bother me, for the hatch would be shut. Also, I was thinking seriously of fitting up my bunk with sheets. If the Snark was to be home to me for several years to come, I might as well arrange for comfort. p314
Because of Henry's and Tehei's sickness, Jack thought it best to get a white man to look after things, so he hired a German named Harry Jacobsen; a man who had been mate of the Minota, a recruiting schooner that had gone ashore on Malaita and been looted by the savage islanders. The Minota had been recovered, but just now was not putting out, so Jack was able to get Mr. Jacobsen without much trouble. Our machinery had gone wrong, and we had to wait at Penduffryn until fresh parts came from Sydney, Australia. It was during this wait that the Minota was fitted out for another recruiting trip to Malaita. Captain Jansen and Mr. Jacobsen invited Jack and Mrs. London to go along on this blackbirding cruise; so I was left in charge of the Snark.
Soon afterward, only twenty-five miles away, the Minota grounded on the Mallua Reef, close to the cannibal island of Malaita. Soon they were surrounded by scores of man-eaters in canoes. Of course, Jack and all the rest were well armed, but the savages were so numerous and so treacherous that a day-and-night watch had to be kept against a surprise and a terrible death. They sent up rockets, which, as a matter of fact, I saw; but I had no idea that it was the Minota which was in trouble. I thought some other vessel was on the rocks. Anyway, I was quite unable to go to their help, with my engines out of order. Their safety during the time taken to re-float the Minota was really owing to the efforts of a missionary—one p315 of the few missionaries in the Solomons who had any influence with the cannibals. He got his mission-boys to form a guard for passengers and crew, and thus averted the peril. Poor fellow! he was killed soon after.
In addition to the yaws and the fever, a new trouble came into the life of the Snark family. Jack's hands had begun to swell up, turn very sore, and peel skin. The nails were very hard and thick, and had to be filed. And it was the same with his feet. Nothing like it had ever been heard of before. The traders and beach-combers could diagnose yaws and fever, but not this. Both Jack and Mrs. London were considerably alarmed at this strange manifestation. "It is plain we are not wanted in the South Seas," Jack said, more than once. "California is the place for me."
"And me for Kansas," I assured him.
Wada and Nakata began to dilate upon the virtues of Japan, while Henry and Tehei were praying day and night that they might get back safely to the Society Islands.
After we had lain at Penduffryn a time, Mr. London decided that we would make a visit to the fabled Ontong Java islands that the traders were telling us so much about. They were situated about two hundred miles away from the Solomons, and their exact location was not known. The people were said to be of a queer race, and as we were out to see the unusual, we set sail from Penduffryn, and after two days' beating p316 up the Invincible Straits, we anchored at the island of Ysabel, and lay there seventeen days, trading and hunting wild game. Here Wada, the cook, went clean out of his head, and running away, went to live in a village of coast natives; and we were compelled to sail off without him. Jack promised Nakata a new suit of clothes if he would do the cooking until we reached a port where we could get a new cook. Nakata tried to hold his own job and the cook's job, but got sick, and then Tehei and Henry and I took turn-about getting meals. When we sailed away from Ysabel, we were forced to cut loose our big eight-hundred-pound anchor, for it had gotten caught in the coral reefs so tightly that it was impossible for us to get it out.
Ontong Java is about two hundred miles to the west of Ysabel. Now and then a trading vessel comes here, and once a year a steamer collects the annual output of copra. I suppose the steamer knows the position. Certainly it is never gotten from the chart.
The first day out of Ysabel we had fine weather, but the next day the sea got rough, and for six days it rained and blew as it only can in the tropics; and to add to our discomfort, Tehei got blackwater fever and lay down on deck fully decided to die. Nakata was still sick, and to cap matters he got a second dose of ptomaine poisoning. Mrs. London and Jack came down with fever, and their yaws grew worse. Henry's bukua continued to bother him. And I daily writhed in the agony of alternate washes of blue vitriol and corrosive p317 sublimate. We were so sick and miserable that very little attention was paid to the navigating, and for several days we sailed in a half-hearted way, looking for the islands. One day, Jack's observations indicated that we were inside the lagoon, and next day we had sailed clear past the islands. But one morning Henry called all hands on deck to see the cocoanut trees just visible above the horizon. We sailed up the coast of small islands, some of them only large enough for one cocoanut tree, and the greatest no larger than an ordinary city block. These thirty-nine islands circled around a lagoon ten miles wide. Not one of these islands was over two feet above the water-line, and absolutely the only vegetation was the thickly growing cocoanut trees.