I stepped to his door, knocked, and entered. Captain Cayzer lay in a bunk under a middling-sized porthole; the cabin was full of the morning light. I started and stood at gaze, scarce crediting my sight, so shocked and astounded was I by the dreadful change which had happened in the night in the poor man's appearance. His face was blue, and I remarked a cadaverous sinking of the eyeballs; the lips were livid, the hands likewise blue, but strangely wrinkled like a washer-woman's. On seeing me he asked in a husky whispering voice for a drink of water. I handed him a full panikin, which he drained feverishly, and then began to moan and cry out, making some weak miserable efforts to rub first one arm, then the other, then his legs.
The steward stood in the doorway. I turned to him, sensible that my face was ashen and asked some question. I then said, "Where is Mr. Perkins?" He was on deck. I bade the steward attend to the captain, and passed through the hatch to the quarter-deck, where I found the mate.
"Do you know that the captain is very ill?" said I.
"Do I know it, sir? Why, yes. I've been sitting by him chafing his limbs and giving him water to drink, and attending to him in other ways. What is it, d'ye know, sir?"
"Cholera!" said I.
"Oh, my God, I hope not!" he exclaimed. "How could it be cholera. How could cholera come aboard?"
"A friend of mine died of cholera at Rangoon when I was there," said I. "I recognize the looks, and will swear to the symptoms."
"But how could it have come aboard?" he exclaimed, in a voice low but agitated.
My eyes, as he asked the question, were upon the raft. I started and cried, "Is that thing still there?"
"Aye," said the mate, "we haven't budged a foot all night."