and distrust. He slid himself along the bulwark till a few feet away,
then ran his eyes up along the mainmast.
At the peak, a yellow flag was smacking in the wind.
His eyes dropped to the boxes on the quay. They were coffins.
He understood. The cholera had crept upon the lorcha before it had left
Vigan, and all the way down the coast it had been doing its dread work
about him, plunged in the oblivion of his solitary orgy.
* * * * *
There had been seventy people on the lorcha when it had left Vigan; and
there were still a half-hundred. They were huddled forward, a squalid,
rancid, and coloured group, their eyes wistfully set upon a black pot
vibrating upon a fire of small sticks. They were from the famine
district of Vigan and had not eaten for a long time, but their attention
was not solely upon the vessel holding their handful of rice. At times
they threw black looks toward the quay. Fear was upon them; fear, not
of the impalpable Death hovering about them, but fear of the White Man's
Quarantine as represented by the big, passive policeman standing there
like a menace; the White Man's Quarantine, ready to clutch them at the
first sign of disease and tear them off to its den, to a fearful and
ever-mysterious fate.
Burke looked at them, then pointed at the boy at his feet, but they
seemed to see nothing. He sprang to the deck and he shouted. They turned
their heads, scowled indifferently at the little stretched body, then
their eyes returned to the black kettle quivering on the fire.
"Here, here, that won't do," cried Burke, all the maudlin softness out
of his face, as he marched upon the group. "Get up, you hound!" he
thundered, kicking the nearest man. "Get up, there! And you, too," he
added, cuffing another. "Get up and take care of the kid!"
He laid about him furiously for a moment, then his rage oozed out of him
and he stood silent and at loss. For the resistance offered him was
unlike any he had ever met. The men did not budge; they took the blows
like blocks of wood, remaining as they were, without a tremor, their
eyes glowing sullenly at the deck between their knees; and the
passiveness of that resistance was so monstrously powerful that Burke
felt his throat tighten in a rageful, childish impulse to break out
weeping.
On a box, a little apart from the crowd, there sat a fat, sleek,
pale-yellow personage. He observed the scene through his narrow eyes
with the arrogantly skeptical air of the Chino mestizo. His falsetto
voice now broke the silence.
"Porque no Usted?" he said, suavely, while his eyes narrowed to a line
with a gleam in it. "Why not you?"
Burke opened his mouth, left it open for a good second, then shut it
again with a grinding of teeth.
"By God, I'll do it," he muttered, as he turned away.
He went to the boy, made a movement as if to pick him up, hesitated,
stood irresolute for a moment, then, with a blinding flash of
resolution, such as in the past had carried him off into postures of
which others said resounding things and of which he himself was vaguely
ashamed, he stooped quickly and whisked up the little body into his
arms. He crossed the deck, and as he passed his old army blanket, lying
still open on the floor, he picked it up and wrapped it about the boy;
then he laid the whole burden down in a sheltered spot against the
cabin. A sudden, springy alertness had seized his body, and beneath the
pussy alcoholic flesh of his face had sprung tight ropy lines not yet
corroded. He tore off the light camisa and pantaloons and began rubbing
the stiffened limbs. He rubbed with an energy almost savage, and he felt
under his fingers the stark flesh loosen and warm up and live again. The
glazed eyes softened, the lids closed slowly, and they reopened with the
light of life beneath them.
And then it was worse. Burke sprang to his feet. His bloated face took
on the colour of his khaki jacket and beads of perspiration welled up
about his lips. Then his eyebrows snapped down in one black line, and
his lower jaw advanced till it almost crushed out the double chin. For
the next hour he worked with concentrated rage.
A thunder of wheels over the cobbles of the quay froze him into a
listening attitude. The noise stopped in a creaking of brakes, and Burke
rose slowly, stretching his body to full length. He walked to the
bulwarks and looked out. A big, black wagon was standing by. From it two
men alighted, putting on great rubber gloves. Burke came down the
gang-plank, bearing the boy in his arms. "Hurry up, he may pull
through," he said. They placed the little form in the wagon and rumbled
off to the heavy trot of the weary horses. The Met. carelessly took a
position between Burke and the street, but this was not necessary. Burke
looked down at the coffins, raised his head, took a big gulp of fresh
air, and walked back up the plank.
Ten minutes later a light buggy drove up. An officer with a brass cross
on the collar of his khaki jacket sprang out and walked aboard.
Burke went to his feet and his hand rose to his hat in military salute.
"Good-morning, sir," he said.
The officer's eyes wandered over the boat, taking in all the details
swiftly, then came back to the man standing there at attention. He
looked at the bloated face, with its ruins of strength beneath; at the
blood-shot eyes, with their remnant of calm, blue light; at the great,
corroded body, with its something yet elastic.
"Jerry Burke!" he said.
"Glad you remember me," said the man, with a slight sarcasm in his
voice.
The officer looked at him again, with a long, sweeping glance that took
in the bloated face, the blood-shot eyes, the twisted mouth, the dirty,
ragged collar, the greasy jacket, the trembling, clutching hands, the
corkscrewed trousers, the heelless shoes--the whole abject picture of
human degradation there before him.
"And that's what you have become," he said, at length.
Jerry did not answer.
"Why the devil didn't you go home with the Volunteers?" asked the
officer, angrily.
Jerry's lips trembled.
"It had got too bad by that time," he answered, at length.
"And now?"
"You can see."
The officer paced the deck.
"Who took care of that boy?" he asked, suddenly, turning upon Jerry with
a snarl.
"I did," answered the latter, surprised into acknowledgment.
The officer went back to his pacing. At the tenth turn he stopped short,
pivoted on his heel, and faced Burke.
"You were a man once, weren't you?" he asked.
"I suppose so," answered Jerry, hanging his head. "At least, you ought
to know," he added, a little bitterly.
"Well, do you want to be a man again?"
Jerry was looking at the deck. He raised his eyes slowly till they
plunged into the surgeon's.
"Can you do it?" he asked, steadily. "I can't!"
The officer's manner softened.
"Well, here's the matter. I'm short of Health men. I need somebody on
this derelict. You are the man; you're in quarantine, anyway."
Jerry waited for more.
"This afternoon the lorcha will be towed behind the breakwater. She'll
be in strict quarantine. You'll be in charge. I'll give you
disinfectants and medicines. You'll keep the boat clean, and you'll
attend the sick. Whenever somebody tumbles over, run up the yellow flag
and we'll come after him as soon as we can. Every morning I'll come
around and see how you are getting along."
"How long will it last?" asked Jerry.
"Don't know. Till they're all gone, perhaps. There must be five days'
quarantine after each case. If they die close together, it will be
short. If they go five days apart, it may last six months. Six months to
make a man of you, Jerry; will you do it?"
"It will be hell," said Jerry, with a tense smile.
"It will be hell," acquiesced the surgeon. "You must work, Jerry."
"I'll do it," said Jerry.
* * * * *
That afternoon the lorcha was towed behind the breakwater, and at sunset
a woman who was lighting the fire for the evening meal whirled on her
heels and slapped the deck with the whole length of her body. Jerry ran
up the yellow flag, but the night had dropped like a thunderbolt, and it
was not seen from shore; so he cared for her till morning. She was old
and knotted and decrepit; her teeth were gone, and she was loathesomely
unclean, but he worked over her with rigid patience, not ceasing for a
moment, for the Demon was already clutching at him. At dawn a boat
pulled up and the woman was lowered into it, still alive.
Then the sun rose, blinding hot, and Jerry paced the deck furiously. The
groups of sleepers on deck were disentangling beneath the stinging
announcement of the new day, and they scattered in awe before the
strange Americano, tugging among them with great steps that were almost
leaps. At last a little steamer appeared at the mouth of the river; it
slid along on the other side of the breakwater, turned at the end, and
chugged alongside the lorcha. It was the doctor's launch.
Burke stepped to the bulwarks and looked down at the boat wallowing in
the cross-seas. Huntington was standing on the rail, his right hand
against the side of the lorcha, his body giving easily to every shock;
and Burke gazed hungry-eyed at his cool, alert demeanour.
"Well, how goes it?" asked the surgeon.
"One case," said Burke, calmly.
"That means five days more. What is it?"
"A woman; she's at the hospital now," he answered, in the same rigid,
subdued tone.
"And you?" asked the surgeon.
"For God's sake," cried Burke, his voice breaking into frenzy, "give me
something to do, something to do!"
"All right, old man," answered Huntington, showing no surprise. "Throw
us a rope."
Burke threw a rope. A case was tied to it and hauled on deck.
"Chlorodyne," announced the surgeon.
The rope was thrown back. A demijohn was hauled up, then another, and
another.
"Carbolic," shouted Huntington. "Disinfect the boat."
"All right; good-by," said Burke.
The doctor waved his hand, and the launch churned away.
The day was heavy with heat. The wind had died, the sea was glazed, and
the tin roofs of Manila glistened white. A torpor fell from the brazen
heavens, and all day Burke struggled beneath it in a frenzy of toil.
When he had cleaned the boat thoroughly, he arranged the little cabin
into a hospital. Almost immediately it had its occupant. A boy was down.
Jerry laid him on his cot, pried his teeth open with his knife, and
poured some chlorodyne between them; then walked to the mainmast, and
soon to the watchers on shore the leprous banner rose against the gory
hues of the setting sun. The boat came and took the child away.
When the launch came, in the morning, Burke was standing at the head of
the ladder. All the traces of a fearful night were in his face, and yet
Huntington's scrutiny found something satisfactory in the man. The old
khaki suit had been washed, and hung, still damp, upon his frame.
More medicines and disinfectants, a supply of food and distilled water,
several objects, very vulgar and very grim, were passed up, and then the
doctor asked:
"Anything you need, old man?"
Burke shook his head in indecisive negative.
"I have you on the pay-roll," added the officer, casually; "assistant
inspector; three-and-a-half a day."
Burke dropped his eyes to the deck. Then he blurted out:
"Yes, two khakis."
"All right," said Huntington, rapidly measuring with his eye the frame
before him. "Anything else?"
Again an embarrassed silence, then another burst:
"A razor."
"I'll send the things this afternoon," said Huntington, gladder than his
voice implied.
Burke went back to his work. After disinfecting his little hospital he
executed, with the aid of Tionko, the Chino mestizo, whose oily good
will and linguistic ability were fast becoming indispensable, a plot
hatched during the sleeplessness of the night. First the men, then the
women, were filed into a bath house made of sails and forced to bathe in
warm, carbolised water, while their clothes boiled in cauldrons outside.
By sunset the passenger list of the _Bonita_ was clean, at least
externally.
Then the usual commotion forward told Burke that his work had begun
again. This time it was a child-mother, a pitiful, little black-eyed
thing, with a squalling whitish baby at her breast. It was too late for
the shore boat, so he cared for them. At midnight the baby died and, two
hours later, the mother; they lay side by side and, of the two, it was
the mother's face that looked the child's, and the baby's the withered
old. At daybreak the boat took them away.
* * * * *
Weeks followed, filled with the same stagnancy of horror. The work had
settled down to flat routine and life became a fearful monotony as day
after day poured its brazen heat upon the empested boat. The only
element of excitement lay in the ebb and flow of disease. On some days
two or three, once even five, fell, and Burke's hospital over-filled and
poured out its burden upon the deck; at other times there would be
periods of three or four days without a case, and once the expiration of
the mystical five days which was to free the lorcha from its
imprisonment was almost reached when two men were suddenly felled as if
by the same thunderbolt. Burke's worst periods were when the hospital
was empty. On such days the routine of his duties took him only a little
past noon, and then would come the full bitterness of the struggle. He
found something to do and worked with teeth set, but his hands trembled,
his nerves were tortured, and his eyes felt as if being pulled out of
their sockets.
Then in the maddening monotony of this life there crept another element.
Before lying down to his snatch of horror-broken sleep, Jerry was
accustomed to take a plunge over the side, although the waters of the
bay were full of sharks. One night, as he was preparing to climb back
upon the lorcha, he reached in vain for the rope that he had left
dangling for the purpose. It had been pulled up just out of his grasp.
Treading water by the black hull, Burke shouted repeatedly, but a sleep
deep as the night that wrapped the vessel seemed to have its
inhabitants, and his cries got no response.
"Listen," finally said Burke, talking calmly in the silence. "Listen.
You know how I can swim. If that rope does not come down in ten seconds,
I'll swim to the big army boat to the right there. I'll come back with
fifty soldiers, and we'll hang you all to the mast. Remember, the sharks
do not touch me."
As mysteriously as it had been raised, the rope dropped softly till its
end touched the water. When Burke, dripping, sprang on deck, a heavy
silence was upon the boat, broken only by the hoarse breathing of the
sleepers, spread about in limp attitudes like the dead upon the
battlefield.
A few days later, as he took up the demijohn in which he kept his
drinking water, brought distilled from shore, he found the cork askew.
He was always careful to shut the vessel hermetically, and a sudden
suspicion made him turn the demijohn over and pour its contents out upon
the deck. The water gurgled out, and when the vessel was empty Jerry
found a little piece of cloth sticking to the inside of the gullet. He
drew it out, and an icy shiver ran up his spine. He held in his hand a
little square of red and yellow calico. The last cholera victim of the
_Bonita_, a woman, had worn a sarong of red and yellow calico.
He threw the demijohn overboard, and when he had obtained a new one from
shore he slept against it at night.
Burke began to observe his crew, and this gave him little satisfaction.
Beneath the oriental passiveness, malevolence was boiling. His orders,
it is true, were obeyed; but it was with heaviness of movement and
dulness of eye; and in the periods of rest, sullen, squatting groups
formed, that broke out in whisperings and oblique looks, to be scattered
usually by the bowing, smirking, oily Chino, Tionko. And of all the
ominous signs, there was none that displeased Burke more than the
behaviour of the Chino--this evident eagerness to save the face of
things, to glaze over the dark working beneath with a serene surface.
They were on one of these periods of immunity from disease which drew
all nerves tense. Three days had passed, then four; they entered upon
the fifth. Twenty-four hours more would set the _Bonita_ free from the
iron clutches of the quarantine. That day was a bad one. The solidarity
in misfortune that had bound the unfortunates of the lorcha broke into a
ferocious individualism. All work ceased that morning. The population of
the _Bonita_ divided into groups; these segregated more and more as the
day advanced, till finally each man was squatting alone, with glaring
threat in his eyeballs. God help the one who should come down; the
execration of the whole boat was already focussed upon him.
At last the brazen day melted into the purple evening and night came,
with a trembling crescent of moon in the sky and a horizon vibrating in
sheet lightning. Burke prepared himself for what was likely to be his
last night of vigil. He lit a lantern and began pacing to and fro to
keep awake, usually an easy thing for him to do. Toward midnight, he
stopped and leaned against the mainmast, gazing at the weird flashing of
light at the horizon. Insensibly he went asleep. His head fell on his
breast, his legs sagged beneath him, and he slid softly down till he sat
upon the deck, his back against the mast.
Suddenly he found himself sitting bolt upright, all his faculties
stiffened in alarm. The turbulent fancies of his slumber had merged into
something tense and sharp as reality, and his ears still rang with low
moans, a scurry of feet, and a strangled cry. Now that he was fully
awake, however, the night was heavy with silence, only the tide bubbling
and tinkling and crooning along the flanks of the boat. He lay back a
moment, but his senses had been too acutely wrung, and, picking up the
lantern, he walked forward.
Everything was quiet. Indistinct forms were stretched about the deck,
and the breathing of the sleepers rhythmed the silence. Near the anchor,
Burke recognised Tionko. The Chino's chest was rising and falling in
deep, regular movement; he moaned inarticulately as Burke bent over him
with his lantern.
Burke was turning away when, in the movement, the light of the lantern
fell upon the rope up which he had clambered on the night of the first
mysterious attack against him. Although not used any more, it had been
left hanging over the side, and now, as Burke's eyes fell upon it, in
the glare of the light, it was all a-tremble and a-thrill, like a live
thing. Mumbling sleepily about the strength of the tide, Burke gave it a
pull. A resistance met him, as that of a line with a fish hooked at the
end. Puzzled, he went over the side, holding to the bulwark and bending
down as far as he could, and then, as he gave another tug, two thin arms
clutching the rope, and then a livid face, bobbed up slowly into the
pale moonlight.
Burke let himself down, his feet against the side, his left hand
grasping the rope. He bent down, his right hand caught a handful of
hair, and he drew up on it. Taking the loose end of the rope, he passed
it beneath both limp arms, then, holding it between his teeth, he
clambered back to the deck and pulled the whole body up. He sent the
rays of his lantern into the face, and recognised it as that of a young
boy of the lorcha.
He was still alive, but cholera had him. Burke understood, but it was no
time for punishment. He carried the stiffened form to the hospital and
for an hour fought with Death; but the shock had been too much for the
disease-racked body. When there was nothing left to do, Burke turned
back the blanket over the rigid face, then stood still, his eyes cast
down at the deck.
"Tionko," he finally said, as if giving the answer to some problem.
He picked up an iron belaying-pin, bared his arms, and started toward
the bow. As he reached the foremast, however, three shadows sprang at
him from the darkness ahead. With a sidewise leap he evaded them, then
waited, crouched low, with one hand upon the deck. The men scattered in
a circle surrounding him, but before they could close in he sprang at
one, felled him with the shock of his body, and darted behind the mast,
where he stood, waiting.
There was a moment of hesitation among the bravos, and they retreated
toward the bow. Burke left the mast to peer into the darkness; a knife
whizzed by his head, and he sprang back to his shelter.
They came forward again, and they were four this time. Burke saw that
the defensive would be useless. With one leap he was among them,
whacking to right and left with his belaying-pin. A hatchet was raised
above his head, but the belaying-pin cracked the wrist that held it and
it clattered to the deck. A streak of fire scorched his shoulder, but
the badly-aimed dagger dropped as the belaying-pin came down upon its
owner's cranium.
And all this time, while he laid about him with instinctive parry and
thrust, his eyes were riveted on an indistinct form in the shadow
behind, a form from which came a running sound of encouragement,
suggestion, command. Suddenly he sprang back, then to one side, then
forward--and he had passed the four struggling men. He took two running
steps forward, then his body left the deck and shot through the air.
With a thud it struck the man in the shadow and crushed him down. Like a
cat, Burke was on his feet again. He picked up the body by the waist,
held it off at arm's length, brought it back close to him long enough to
see Tionko's face in a grin of horror, then his arms distended like
great springs and Tionko shot over the bulwarks.
He turned to the others, but they had slunk away in the darkness, and he
knew that, the Chino gone, there was no more to fear.
He peered out into the water, and the phosphorescence showed him an
indistinct form swimming slowly away. Then it turned back, splashing
painfully, and a cracked falsetto voice whined in beggar-like
modulations.
"Senor, for the love of Christ, let me on!"
Burke hesitated, and suddenly the thing was settled for him. From the
right a phosphorescent flash cut the water in a streak. Swift and
luminous as a rocket it came, straight toward the splashing form; it
struck it, and then the spot burst out in a great bubble of light, in
which Burke caught a flash of the Chino, his arms raised to heaven, his
mouth distended in abominable fear. There was a hoarse croak, a gurgle,
and then the phosphorescence sank slowly and went out in the depths
below. A gentle ripple undulated over the darkened surface of the water
and broke softly against the flanks of the lorcha.
Burke, dizzied, walked forward. The limp, scattered sleepers were still
there as before, but in one corner a man was choking in his breathing,
and near the anchor another was vibrating in his sleep in one long,
continuous shudder.
* * * * *
There came another period of suspense. One day passed, two days passed,
with no cases. The third day came, and Burke's Demon was clutching him.
He had found in the hold some rude native varnish, redolent of crude
alcohol, and had brought it up to polish the crude furniture of his
hospital; and now he dared not come near it. The bucket stood by the
hatch, and Burke was pacing to and fro along the deck like a wild beast.
Each time he passed the bucket the pungent odour stung his face, filling
his mind with the memory of one of his worst periods of degradation and
his whole physical being with a madness to wallow back into it.
He fought hard. He knew that he must throw that bucket overboard, so he
forced his thoughts upon the act.
"I'll walk twenty times the length of the deck with my mind on that," he
muttered to himself.
So, concentrating his brain upon the necessary deed, he began pacing up
and down. At the twentieth turn he walked toward the bucket and stopped
suddenly, livid as death, his eyes fixed stupidly upon his hands.
In his right hand he held a stick, a little, pliable bamboo stick.
He tried to remember picking it up; he could not. The act had been not
of the will, of the will that was fighting for mastery; it had been
forced by that other Power, that Power which possessed his nerves, his
bones, his flesh, the Power he was seeking to kill.
"I will begin again," he muttered.
At the tenth turn he stopped short, and a cold sweat welled up upon his
body. He had another stick in his hand.