The Story of Paul Jones. Alfred Henry Lewis
in sangaree at the time—that a fleet of just such sea-trinkets as the King George’s Packet, so far as he has experimented with the marital condition, constitutes the one redeeming feature of wedlock.
“And so,” concludes the excellent Sir Holman, “you’re to go home with the rum, guest of the ship itself; and the thing I could weep over is that I cannot send my kit aboard and sail with you.”
Two days go by, and the King George’s Packet is sighted off Port Royal; twenty-four hours later its master, Captain Macadam—-a Solway man—is drinking Sir Holman’s sangaree. Making good his word, Sir Holman sends for first mate Jack Paul, and that business of going passenger to Whitehaven is adjusted.
“True!” observes Captain Macadam, when he understands—“true, the George isn’t fitted up for passengers. But”—turning to first mate Jack Paul—“you’ll no mind; bein’ a seaman yours eh?”
“More than that, Captain,” breaks in Sir Holman, “since the port is reeling full of yellow jack, some of your people might take it to sea with them. Should aught go wrong, now, why here is your passenger, a finished sailorman, to give you a lift.”
Captain Macadam’s face has been tanned like leather. None the less, as he hears the above the mahogany hue thereof lapses into a pasty, piecrust color. Plainly that word yellow jack fills his soul with fear. He mentions the wearisome fact to first mate Jack Paul, as he and that young gentleman, after their cigars and sangaree with Sir Holman, are making a midnight wake for the change house whereat they have bespoken beds.
“It’s no kindly,” complains Captain Macadam, “for Sir Holman to let me run my brig blindfold into sic a snare. But then he has a fourth share in the tea, and another in the rum; and so, for his profit like, he lets me tak’ my chances. He’d stude better wi’ God on high I’m thinkin’, if he’d let his profit gone by, and just had a pilot boat standin’ off and on at Port Royal, to gi’ me the wink to go wide. I could ha’ taken the tea to New York weel enou’. But bein’ I’m here,” concludes the disturbed Captain, appealing to first mate Jack Paul, “what would ye advise?”
“To get your tea ashore and your rum aboard as fast as you may.”
“Ay! that’ll about be the weesdom of it!”
Captain Macadam can talk of nothing but yellow jack all the way to the change house.
“It’s the first time I was ever in these watters,” he explains apologetically, “and now I can smell fever in the air! Ay! the hond o’ death is on these islands! Be ye no afeard, mon?”
First mate Jack Paul says that he is not. Also he is a trifle irritated at the alarm of the timorous Captain Macadam.
“That’ll just be your youth now!” observes the timorous one. “Ye’re no old enou’ to grasp the responsibeelities.”
At four in the morning Captain Macadam comes into first mate Jack Paul’s room at the change house. He is clad in his linen sleeping suit, and his teeth are chattering a little.
“It’s the bein’ ashore makes my teeth drum,” he vouchsafes. “But what I wushed to ask ye, lad, is d’ye believe in fortunes? No? Weel, then, neither do I; only I remembered like that lang syne a wierd warlock sort o’ body tells me in the port o’ Leith, that I’m to meet my death in the West Injies. It’s the first time, as I was tellin’ ye, that ever I comes pokin’ my snout amang these islands; and losh! I believe that warlock chiel was right. I’ve come for my death sure.”
Captain Macadam promises his crew’ double grog and double wages, and works night and day lightering his tea ashore, and getting his rum casks into the King George’s Packet. Then he calls a pilot, and, with a four-knot breeze behind him, worms his way along the narrow, corkscrew channel, until he finds himself in open water.
Then the pilot goes over the side, and Captain Macadam takes the brig. He casts an anxious eye astern at Port Royal, four miles away.
“I’ll no feel safe,” says he, “while yon Satan’s nest is under my quarter. And afterward I’ll no feel safe neither. How many days, mon, is a victeem to stand by and look for symptoms?”
First mate Jack Paul, to whom the query is put, gives it as his opinion that, if they have yellow fever aboard, it will make its appearance within the week.
“Weel that’s a mercy ony way!” says Captain Macadam with a sigh.
There are, besides first mate Jack Paul, and the Captain with his two officers, twelve seamen and the cook—seventeen souls in all—aboard the King George’s Packet as, north by east, it crawls away from Port Royal. For four days the winds hold light but fair. Then come head winds, and the brig finds itself making long tacks to and fro in the Windward Passage, somewhere between Cape Mazie and the Mole St. Nicholas.
“D’ye see, mon!” cries Captain Macadam, whose fears have increased, not diminished, since he last saw the Jamaica lights. “The vera weather seeks to keep us in this trap! I’ll no be feelin’ ower weel neither, let me tell ye!”
First mate Jack Paul informs the alarmed Captain that to fear the fever is to invite it.
“I’m no afeard, mon,” returns Captain Macadam, with a groan, “I’m just impressed.”
The timidities of the Captain creep among the mates and crew; forward and aft the feeling is one of terror. The King George’s Packet becomes a vessel of gloom. There are no songs, no whistling for a wind. Even the cook’s fiddle is silent, and the galley grows as melancholy as the forecastle.
It is eight bells in the afternoon of the fourth day, when the man at the wheel calls to Captain Macadam. He tosses his thumb astern.
“Look there!” says he.
Captain Macadam peers over the rail, and counts eleven huge sharks. The monsters are following the brig. Also, they seem in an ugly mood, since ever and anon they dash at one another ferociously.
“It’ll be a sign!” whispers Captain Macadam. Then he counts them. “There’ll be ‘leven o’ them,” says he; “and that means we’re ‘leven to die!” After this he dives below, and takes to the bottle.
Bleared of eye, shaken of hand, Captain Macadam on the fifth morning finds first mate Jack Paul on the after deck. The eleven sharks are still sculling sullenly along in the slow wake of the wind-bound brig.
“Be they there yet?” asks Captain Macadam, looking over the stern with a ghastly grin. Then answering his own query: “Ay! they’ll be there—the ‘leven of ‘em!”
First mate Jack Paul, observing their daunting effect on the over-harrowed nerves of Captain Macadam, is for having up his pistols to take a shot at the sharks; but he is stayed by the other.
“They’ll be sent,” says Captain Macadam; “it’ll no do to slay ‘em, mon! But losh! ain’t a sherk a fearfu’ feesli?” Then, seeing his hand shake on the brig’s rail: “It’s the rum. And that’s no gude omen, me takin’ to the rum; for I’m not preeceesely what you’d ca’ a drinkin’ body.”
Two hours later Captain Macadam issues from his cabin and seeks first mate Jack Paul, where the latter is sitting in the shade of the main sail.
“Mon, look at me!” he cries. “D’ye no see? I tell ye, Death has found me oot on the deep watters!”
The single glance assures first mate Jack Paul that Captain Macadam is right. His eyes are congested and ferrety; his face is flushed. Even while first mate Jack Paul looks, he sees the skin turn yellow as a lemon. He thumbs the sick man’s wrist; the pulse is thumping like a trip-hammer. Also, the dry, fevered skin shows an abnormal temperature.
“Your tongue!” says first mate Jack Paul; for he has a working knowledge of yellow jack.
It is but piling evidence upon evidence; the tongue is the color