THE YELLOW FEVER.
The heat of the atmosphere was now so great, that one might have
imagined, as Cranky said, "that there was only a sheet of paper
between the _Adder's_ cabin and _another_ place."
As the months of May, June, July, and August, are the most fatal for
the yellow fever, it now broke out on board; the sick-bay was soon
full; many officers were confined to their cabins, and a day seldom
passed without some one being sent to his long home at the bottom of
the great deep, with a thirty-two pound shot at his heels; and ere
long I bade fair to become one of its victims.
The excitement so long and so recently undergone,--the sudden change
of food, raiment, and quarters, after the total alteration of my
system and habits, during the time that I had lived like
Nebuchadnezzar on the Isle of Tortoises.--now began to tell fearfully
upon me; and I was assailed by that scourge of the Antilles, the
yellow fever. When the conviction of this came over me, I had but
one emotion,--devout thankfulness that it had _not_ fallen upon me
while lonely and desolate, helpless and friendless, on the island.
On the third day after we bore up for Guadaloupe, I was seated at
mess in the ward-room of the frigate, enjoying the tempered
atmosphere of the evening as it passed the open ports, through which
we could see the waves of the blue sea as the _Adder_ sped on, with
the wind upon her quarter, when first the symptoms of the dread pest
assailed me; and from all I knew of it, I made up my mind to prepare
for the worst.
A wine-glass dropped from my hand and shivered on the deck, as the
general premonition, a cold and violent fit of shivering, came
suddenly over me. Then I remember Percival, the first lieutenant,
starting up, and exclaiming,--
"The fever, by Jove! Sentry, pass the word for the doctor--quick,
the yellow admiral is here!"
In ten minutes after I was undressed and in bed, ill with the
confirmed pestilence. How long and weary were its hours of agony,
thirst, and lassitude, which followed that fatal evening!
After the shivering fit, there usually succeeds a violent fever, with
acute pains in the head, back, and limbs; an intense dejection of
mind; an agonizing thirst, with a tongue so dry, that it rattles in
one's jaws like a kernel in a shell; and then comes the frightful
_yellowness_ of complexion, from which the fever takes its name.
Though I have seen some who, after it abated, became cold as ice, and
remained thus, with a tolerably sedate mind, and expired after twelve
hours or so,--others who died after violent bleeding from the
nose,--others who departed raving mad,--in me it took the form of
continued delirium, in which, as I was afterwards told, I raved of
the lonely island, renewed my struggle with Knuckleduster, and nearly
killed a poor marine, who acted as my servant; then I laboured to
raise the wreck of a treasure-ship, and believed myself again and
again to be in a great cavern, till total prostration of mind and
body succeeded, and a long stupor came over me.
* * * * *
A sea-going frigate of the year 1794 was somewhat different in many
respects from a ship of similar rank in the present age of rifled
cannon and screw-propellers; and hence the odours that came from the
ship's stores, the bilge, the sick-bay, and the cockpit, when a
fierce West-Indian sun was blazing overhead, making the pitch boil
between the planks of the main deck, were anything but consolatory or
refreshing to the unfortunates on whom the grim pestilence had laid
his yellow and shrivelled hand.
When awaking, as it were, from a long lethargy, I found myself slung
in a hammock near an open port, through which the blessed breeze of
Heaven, as it came over the dancing waves, blew upon my wan and
fevered cheek, and refreshed me.
A marine, who had charge of me, now placed a pewter flagon, filled
with water-gruel, in my trembling hand. I drank thirstily, and then
sank back with a sigh of mingled weakness and satisfaction. Youth
made the elements of life strong within me; and _hope_ returned with
consciousness, though twice or thrice daily I saw a dark object fall
heavily and endlong past the open port--plash into the sunlit sea and
disappear!
Then would I close my eyes, and strive to pray, and to remember some
of the little lessons my mother taught in purer and happier times;
for these dark objects were the bodies of my fellow-sufferers, who
were thus consigned to the waters from the deck above.
Ere long I was able to ask the marine whereabout we were, and he
said,--
"The isle of Nevis bears about ten miles distant on our lee bow,--the
top of the hill (for the island is only a great conical hill) is in
sight."
"Then how far are we from Guadaloupe?"
"Ten miles from Nevis, sir, will make us one hundred and forty from
Guadaloupe," replied my accurate informant.
As health returned, I longed for the shore, and for active life. The
dull routine of days and nights of sickness anywhere, soon palls upon
the excited senses; but nowhere so soon as in the narrow limits of a
little cabin. The sea is certainly an everchanging and beautiful
object; but when the port-lid was closed, my eyes had nothing to rest
on but a 24-pound carronade slued alongside, and then it seemed as if
every avenue to nature was closed too.
I had nothing near or around me to give pleasure or suggest pleasing
thoughts; and then it is in such a mental and bodily prison, that
"the small still voice" comes home to the heart and soul, and we seem
to think, reflect, and feel, all the more deeply and earnestly,
because soul and heart are both thrust back upon themselves.
The breeze which had hitherto been fair, now freshened and blew right
ahead; so we had to beat to windward against it, and four days after,
when becoming convalescent, I heard the booming of the _Adder's_
guns, as she saluted the flag of Admiral Sir John Jervis, when, under
a press of canvas, we ran into the roadstead of Basse Terre, in the
island of Guadaloupe.