A FEVER CASE, AND A POTION OF LOVE, IF NOT ALTOGETHER A LOVE-POTION--
WHAT ARE THE DOCTORS ABOUT WHEN MEN DIE DESPITE OF THEIR KNOWLEDGE, AND
ARE CURED WITHOUT IT?--RALPH KNOWETH NOT.
However, I must retrograde. It may seem surprising that I have made so
little mention of my messmates, for it would seem that, to a midshipman,
the affairs and characters of midshipmen would be paramount. To me they
were not so, for reasons that I have before stated. Besides, our berth
was like an eastern caravanserai, or the receiving-room of a pest-house.
They all died, were promoted, or went into other ships, excepting two
and myself; who returned to England. It must not be supposed that we
were without young gentlemen; sometimes we had our full complement,
sometimes half. Fresh ones came, and they died, and so on. Before I
had time to form friendships with them, or to study their characters,
they took their long sleep beneath the palisades, or were thrown
overboard in their hammocks. This was much the case with the wardroom
officers. The first lieutenant, the doctor, and the purser, were the
only original ones that returned to England with us. The mortality
among the assistant-surgeons was dreadful; they messed with us. Indeed,
I have no recollection of the names, or even the persons, of the
majority of those with whom I ate, and drank, and acted, they being so
prone to prove this a transitory world.
We were tolerably healthy till the capture of Saint Domingo; when, being
obliged to convey a regiment of French soldiers to the prisons at Port
Royal, they brought the fever in its worst form on board; and,
notwithstanding every remedial measure that the then state of science
could suggest, we never could eradicate the germs of it. The men were
sent on board of a hulk, the vessel thoroughly cleansed and fumigated,
and finally, we were ordered as far north as New Providence; but all
these means were ineffectual, for, at intervals, nearly regular, the
fever would again appear, and men and officers die.
Hitherto, I had escaped. The only attack to which I was subjected took
place in the capstan-house, for so the place was called where we were
bivouacked during the heaving down of the ship. I record it, not that
my conduct under the disease may be imitated, but on account of the
singularity of the access, and the rapidity of the cure.
I had to tow, from Port Royal up to Kingston, a powder-boy, and, through
some misconduct of the coxswain, the boat's awning had been left behind.
Six or seven hours under a sun, vertical at noon, through the hottest
part of the day, and among the swamps and morasses, so luxuriant in
vegetable productions, that separate Port Royal from Kingston, is a good
ordeal by which to try a European constitution. For the first time, my
stamina seemed inclined to succumb before it.
When I returned to Port Royal, at about four in the afternoon, the first
peculiar sensation with which I was attacked was a sort of slipping of
the ground from under me as I trod, and a notion that I could skim along
the surface of the earth if I chose, without using my legs. Then I was
not, as is most natural to a fasting midshipman, excessively hungry, but
excessively jocular. So, instead of seeking good things to put into my
mouth, I went about dispensing them from out of it. I soon began to be
sensible that I was talking much nonsense, and to like it. At length,
the little sense that I had still left, was kind enough to suggest to me
that I might be distinguished by my first interview with that king of
terrors, Saffron-crowned Jack. "Shall I go to the doctor?" said I.
"No--I have the greatest opinion of Doctor Thompson--but it is a great
pity that he cannot cure the yellow-fever. No doubt he'll be offended,
and we are the greatest of friends. But, I have always observed, that
all those who go to the doctor begin going indeed--for, from the doctor
they invariably go to their hammocks--from their hammocks go to the
hospital--and from the hospital go to the palisades." So while there
was yet time, I decided to go in quite an opposite direction. I went
out of the dockyard gates, and to a nice, matronly, free mulatto, who
was a mother to me--and something more. She was a woman of some
property, and had a very strong gang of young Negroes, that she used to
hire out to his Majesty, to work in his Majesty's dockyard, and permit,
for certain considerations, to caulk the sides and bottoms of his
Majesty's vessels of war.
Notwithstanding this intimate connection between his Majesty and
herself; she did not disdain to wash, or cause to be washed, the shirts
and stockings of his Majesty's officers of the navy; that is, if she
liked those officers. Now, she was kind enough to like me exceedingly;
and, though very pretty, and not yet very old, all in a very proper and
platonic manner. She was also a great giver of dignity balls, and when
she was full dressed, Miss Belinda Bellarosa was altogether a very
seductive personage. A warrant officer was an abomination. She had
refused the hands of many master's mates, and I knew "for true," to use
her own bewitching idiom, that several lieutenants had made her most
honourable overtures.
Well, to Miss Belinda I made the best of my way. I am choice in my
phrases. I could hardly make my way at all, for a strange sort of
delirium was supervening. Immediately she saw me, she exclaimed, "Ah,
Goramity! him catched for sure--it break my heart to see him. You know
I lub Massa Rattlin, like my own piccaninny. S'elp me God, he very
bad!"
"My queen of countless Indians! dear duchess of doubloons! marry me
to-night and then you'll be a jolly widow tomorrow."
"Hear him! him! how talk of marry me?"
"Oh! Bella, dear, if you will not kill me with kindness, what shall I
do? I cannot bear this raging pain in my head. You've been a kind soul
to me. Pardon my nonsense, I could not help it. Let one of your
servants help me to walk to the doctor."
"Nebber, nebber, doctor!" and she spat on the floor with a sovereign
contempt. "Ah, Massa Ralph, me lub you dearly--dat sleep here
to-night--me lose my reputation--nebber mind you you. What for you no
run, Dorcas, a get me, from Massa Jackson's store, bottle good port?
Tell him for me, Missy Bellarosa. You Phebe, oder woman of colour dere,
why you no take Massa Ralph, and put him in best bed? Him bad, for
certainly--make haste, or poor buckra boy die."
So, with the assistance of my two dingy handmaidens, I was popped into
bed, and, according to the directions of my kind hostess, a suffocating
number of blankets heaped upon me. Shortly afterwards, and when my
reeling senses were barely sane enough to enable me to recognise
objects, my dear doctress, with two more Negresses, to witness to her
reputation, entered, and putting the bottle of port, with a white powder
floating at the top of it, into a china bowl, compelled me to drink off
the whole of it. Then, with a look of great and truly motherly
affection, she took her leave of me, telling the two nurses to put
another blanket on me, and to hold me down in the bed if I attempted to
get out.
Then began the raging agony of fever. I felt as one mass of sentient
fire. I had a foretaste of that state which, I hope, we shall all
escape, save one, of ever-burning and never-consuming; but, though
moments of such suffering tell upon the wretch with the duration of
ages, this did not last more than half an hour, when they became
exchanged for a dream, the most singular, and that never will be
forgotten whilst memory can offer me one single idea.
Methought that I was suddenly whisked out of bed, and placed in the
centre of an interminable plain of sand. It bounded the horizon like a
level sea: nothing was to be seen but this white and glowing sand, the
intense blue and cloudless sky, and, directly above me, the eternal sun,
like the eye of an angry God, pouring down intolerable fires upon my
unprotected head. At length, my skull opened, and, from the interior of
my head, a splendid temple seemed to arise. Rows of columns supported
rows of columns, order was piled upon order, and, as it arose,
Babel-like, to the skies, it extended in width as it increased in
height; and there, in this strange edifice, I saw the lofty, the
winding, the interminable staircase, the wide and marble-paved courts;
nor was there wanting the majestic and splashing fountain, whose cool
waters were mocking my scorched-up lips; and there were also the long
range of beautiful statues. The structure continued multiplying itself
until all the heavens were full of it, extending nearly to the horizon
all around.
Under this superincumbent weight I had long struggled to stand. It kept
bearing down more and more heavily upon the root of my brain: the
anguish became insufferable, but I still nobly essayed to keep my
footing, with a defiance and a pride that savoured of impious
presumption. At length I felt completely overcome, and exclaimed, "God
of mercy, relieve me! the burthen is more than I can bear." Then
commenced the havoc in this temple, that was my head, and was not; there
were the toppling down of the vast columns, the crushing of the several
architraves, the grinding together of the rich entablatures; the
breaking up, with noise louder than ever thunder was heard by man, of
the marble pavements; the ruins crushed together in one awful confusion
above me;--nature could do no more, and my dream slept.
The sun was at its meridian height when I awoke the next day in health,
with every sensation renewed, and that, too, in the so sweet a feeling
that makes the mere act of living delightful. I found nothing
remarkable, but that I had been subjected to a profuse perspiration.
Miss Bellarosa met me at breakfast all triumph, and I was all gratitude.
I was very hungry, and as playful as a schoolboy who had just procured
a holiday.
"Eh! Massa Ralph, suppose no marry me to-day--what for you say no yes
to dat?"
"Because, dear Bella, you wouldn't have me."
"Try--you ask me," said she, looking at me with a fondness not quite so
maternal as I could wish.
"Bella, dearest, will you marry me?"
"For true?"
"For true."
"Tanky, Massa Rattlin, dear, tanky; you make me very happy; but, for
true, no. Were you older more fifteen year, or me more fifteen year
younger, perhaps--but tank ye much for de comblement. Now go, and tell
buckra doctor."
So, as I could not reward my kind physician with my hand, which,
by-the-by, I should not have offered had I not been certain of refusal,
I was obliged to force upon her as splendid a trinket as I could
purchase, for a keepsake, and gave my sable nurses a handful of bits
each. Bits of what? say the uninitiated.
I don't know whether I have described this fever case very
nosologically, but, very truly I know I have.