“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?”
“Ay,” said the mate, “we haven’t budged a foot all night.”
The suspicion rushed upon me whilst I looked at the raft, and ran my eyes over the bright hot morning sky and the burnished surface of sea, sheeting into dimness in the misty junction of heaven and water.
“I shouldn’t be surprised,” said I, “to discover that we brought the cholera aboard with us yesterday from that dead man’s raft yonder.”
“How is cholera to be caught in that fashion?” exclaimed Mr. Perkins, pale and a bit wild in his way of staring at me.
“We may have brought the poison aboard in the parcel of books.”