CHAPTER XIII
ON BOARD A BRITISH FRIGATE
It is impossible to give any adequate picture of the days which immediately followed. The horror of them is still upon me as I write. There are dangers which call out the best in man, which arouse all his faculties to face and overcome them; there are others that paralyze the arm and numb the brain and stupefy the soul. The danger before us was of this latter class. For an hour after I entered that room and learned the situation I sat dazed and stolid, and my men were in no better condition. We were hopeless.
It is said you can become accustomed to anything. Possibly that is why my companions at length began to stir and speak. It was their reproaches that aroused me. “Why had we not fought the enemy on the deck of the Martha, and ended our lives there, instead of foolishly surrendering her, and dying here in this foul pen?” they were saying. They did not hesitate to throw the blame on me. Stung to the quick, I sprang to my feet. I threw off the lethargy I was in, and I said resolutely:
“Comrades, do not be unreasonable. You know I acted for the best when I surrendered the Martha. I did as any other wise commander would have done under the same circumstances. Let us suppose we had fought; some of us would have survived the conflict and been thrust in here to meet the same foul conditions. Can we tell which of us it might have been? Would we have been any better prepared to face the situation than now? Here we are all well and strong. Let us arouse ourselves. Let us do for these suffering men around us all we can do. Not every one who has the smallpox dies with it. Let us face this foe as we would any other, and endeavor to conquer it; and if we do go down before it, let us die as we would on a ship’s deck—like men, doing our duty for ourselves and others.”
I did not have to make a second appeal. A ringing “Aye, aye, sir!” followed my speech, and then the lads crowded about me asking what they should do.
“First, we’ll find who these suffering men are and how we can help them,” I answered. “Then we’ll see if we cannot clean up this foul pen, and make it more habitable. The disease will not rage so severely where there is no filth, I’ve been told; and it may be I can prevail upon the prison authorities to furnish us with clean beds and proper medical attendance. Rest assured I’ll do all I can to bring about a better condition of things here.”
“That you will, sir,” they responded, and turned with me to attend to the sick ones about us.
As I had expected, we found them all Colonial prisoners. Some had been there for weeks, others like ourselves were newcomers. Two weeks before one of their number had come down with the smallpox, and the case had been promptly reported to the prison officials. The only thing that had been done by them, however, was to put a man in charge of the room who was an immune, and to bury the dead—for four of their number had already died from the disease.
I found the only thing we could do for the present was to place the suffering men in easier positions, and moisten their parched lips with the scanty supply of water at our command. But later, when the turnkey came—an old fellow, deaf and gruff and indifferent to our condition—I appealed to him to ask the superintendent of the jail to furnish us with implements for cleaning up the room, and with clean clothing for the sick, and with medical care.
He demurred, saying: “They won’t do nothin’ for ye. They’d rather ye’d die here like rats in a hole.”