Captain Joyce lay in his bunk dressed in a flannel shirt and a pair of white drill trousers. All his throat and a considerable portion of his chest were exposed, and his feet were naked. I looked at him scarcely crediting my sight: I did not know him as the man I had parted with but a few hours before. He was swelled from head to foot as though drowned: the swelling contorted his countenance out of all resemblance to his familiar face; the flesh of him that was visible was a pale blue, as if rubbed with a powder of the stuff called “blue” which the laundresses use in getting up their linen. His eyes were open, but the pupils were rolled out of sight, and the “whites,” as they are called, were covered with red blotches.
I had no knowledge of medicine, and could not imagine what had come to the poor man. He was unconscious, and evidently fast sinking. I said to Mr. Stroud, “What is this?”
The mate answered, “I’m afraid he’s poisoned himself accidentally. It looks to me like poison. Don’t it seem so to you, sir? See how his fingers and toes are curled.”
I ran my eye over the cabin and exclaimed, “Have you searched for any bottles containing poison?”
“I did so when he sent for me at four o’clock, and complained of feeling sick and ill. He was then changing colour, and his face was losing its proper looks. I asked him if he thought he had taken anything by mistake. He answered no, unless he had done so in his sleep. He awoke feeling very bad, and that was all he could tell me.”
I touched the poor fellow’s hand, and found it cold. His breathing was swift and thin. At moments a convulsion, like a wrenching shudder, passed through him.
“Is it,” I asked, “some form of country sickness, do you think—some kind of illness that was lying latent in him when we sailed?”
“I never heard of any sort of sickness,” he answered, “that made a man look like that—not cholera even. And what but poison would do its work so quickly? Depend upon it he’s either been poisoned, or poisoned himself unawares.”
“Poisoned!” I exclaimed. “Who’s the man in this ship that’s going to do such a thing?”