Had I but known! I could have helped the child jump ship, deflect his destiny as the Channings did mine, or help him understand that no state of tyranny reigns forever.
The Prophetess has every inch of canvas aloft & is “sailing like a witch” (not for any benefit of mine, but because the cargo is rotting) & makes over 3º of latitude daily. I am terribly sick now & confined to my coffin. I suppose Boerhaave believes I am hiding from him. He is deceived, for the righteous vengeance I wish to visit upon his head is one of the few flames unextinguished by this dreadful torpor. Henry beseeches me write my journal to occupy my brain, but my pen grows unwieldy & heavy. We make Honolulu in three days. My loyal doctor promises to accompany me ashore, spare no expense to obtain powerful paregorics & remain at my bedside until my recovery is compleat, even if the Prophetess must leave for California without us. God bless this best of men. I can write no more today.
Sunday, 29th December—
I fare most ill.
Monday, 30th December—
The Worm is recrudescent. Its poison sacs have burst. I am racked with pain & bedsores & a dreadful thirst. Oahu is still two or three days to the north. Death is hours away. I cannot drink & do not recall when I ate last. I made Henry promise to deliver this journal to Bedford’s in Honolulu. From there it will reach my bereaved family. He swears I shall deliver it on my own two feet, but my hopes are blasted. Henry has done his valiant best, but my parasite is too virulent & I must entrust my soul to its Maker.
Jackson, when you are a grown man do not permit your profession to sunder you from loved ones. During my months away from home, I thought of you & your mother with constant fondness & should it come to pass [. . .]*
Sunday, 12th January—
The temptation to begin at the perfidious end is strong, but this diarist shall remain true to chronology. On New Year’s Day, my head pains were rolling so thunderously I was taking Goose’s medicine every hour. I could not stand against the ship’s roll, so I stayed abed in my coffin, vomiting into a sack though my guts were vacant & shivering with an icy, scalding fever. My Ailment could no longer be concealed from the crew & my coffin was placed under quarantine. Goose had told Cpt. Molyneux that my Parasite was contagious, thereby appearing the very paragon of selfless courage. (The complicity of Cpt. Molyneux & Boerhaave in the subsequent malfeasance cannot be proven or disproven. Boerhaave wished evil on me, but I am forced to admit it unlikely he was party to the crime described below.)
I recall surfacing from feverish shallows. Goose was an inch away. His voice sank to a loving whisper. “Dearest Ewing, your Worm is in its death throes & expelling every last drop of its poison! You must drink this purgative to expel its calcified remains. It will send you to sleep, but when you awake, the Worm that has so tormented you shall be out! The end of your suffering is at hand. Open your mouth, one last time, handsomely does it, dearest of fellows . . . here, ’tis bitter & foul a flavor, it’s the myrrh, but down with it, for Tilda & Jackson . . .”
A glass touched my lips & Goose’s hand cradled my head. I tried to thank him. The potion tasted of bilgewater & almond. Goose raised my head & stroked my Adam’s apple until I swallowed the liquid. Time passed, I know not how long. The creaking of my bones & the ship’s timbers were one.
Somebody knocked. Light softened my coffin’s darkness & I heard Goose’s voice from the corridor. “Yes, much, much better, Mr. Green! Yes, the worst is over. I was very worried, I confess, but Mr. Ewing’s color is returning & his pulse strong. Only one hour? Excellent news. No, no, he’s asleep now. Tell the captain we’ll be going ashore tonight—if he could send word to arrange lodgings, I know Mr. Ewing’s father-in-law will remember the kindness.”
Goose’s face floated into my vision again. “Adam?”
Another fist knocked at the door. Goose uttered an oath & swam away. I could no longer move my head but heard Autua demanding, “I see Missa Ewing!” Goose bade him begone, but the tenacious Indian was not to be faced down so easily. “No! Missa Green say he better! Missa Ewing save my life! He my duty!” Goose then told Autua this:—that I saw in Autua a carrier of disease & a rogue planning to exploit my present infirmity to rob me even of the buttons from my waistcoat. I had begged Goose, so he claimed, to “keep that d——d nigger away from me!” adding that I regretted ever saving his worthless neck. With that, Goose slammed & bolted my coffin door.
Why had Goose lied so? Why was he so determined no one else should see me? The answer raised the latch on a door of deception & an horrific truth kicked that same door in. To wit, the doctor was a poisoner & I his prey. Since the commencement of my “Treatment,” the doctor had been killing me by degrees with his “cure.”
My Worm? A fiction, implanted by the doctor’s power of suggestion! Goose, a doctor? No, an itinerant, murdering confidence trickster!
I fought to rise, but the evil liquid my succubus had lately fed me had enfeebled my limbs so wholly I could not so much as twitch my extremities. I tried to shout for aid, but my lungs did not inflate. I heard Autua’s footsteps retreat up the companionway & prayed for God to guide him back, but his intentions were otherwise. Goose clambered up the hawser to my bunk. He saw my eyes. Seeing my fear, the demon removed his mask.
“What’s that you’re saying, Ewing? How shall I comprehend if you drool & dribble so?” I emitted a frail whine. “Let me guess what you’re trying to tell me—‘Oh, Henry, we were friends, Henry, how could you do this to me?’ [He mimicked my hoarse, dying whisper.] Am I on the nose?” Goose cut the key from my neck & spoke as he worked at uncovering my trunk. “Surgeons are a singular brotherhood, Adam. To us, people aren’t sacred beings crafted in the Almighty’s image, no, people are joints of meat; diseased, leathery meat, yes, but meat ready for the skewer & the spit.” He mimicked my usual voice, very well. “ ‘But why me, Henry, are we not friends?’ Well, Adam, even friends are made of meat. ’Tis absurdly simple. I need money & in your trunk, I am told, is an entire estate, so I have killed you for it. Where is the mystery? ‘But, Henry, this is wicked!’ But, Adam, the world is wicked. Maoris prey on Moriori, Whites prey on darker-hued cousins, fleas prey on mice, cats prey on rats, Christians on infidels, first mates on cabin boys, Death on the Living. ‘The weak are meat, the strong do eat.’ ”
Goose checked my eyes for sentience & kissed my lips. “Your turn to be eaten, dear Adam. You were no more gullible than any other of my patrons.” My trunk lid swung open. Goose counted through my pocketbook, sneered, found the emerald from von Weiss & examined it through an eyepiece. He was unimpressed. The fiend untied the bundles of documents relating to the Busby estate & tore open the sealed envelopes in search of banknotes. I heard him count my modest supply. He tapped my trunk for secret compartments, but he found none, for there are none. Lastly, he snipped the buttons from my waistcoat.
Goose addressed me through my delirium, as one might address an unsatisfactory tool. “Frankly, I am disappointed. I have known Irish navvies with more pounds to their name. Your cache scarcely covers my arsenick & opiate. If Mrs. Horrox had not donated her hoard of black pearls to my worthy cause, poor Goose’s goose would be basted & cooked! Well, it is time for us to part. You will be dead within the hour & for me, ’tis hey, ho! for the open road.”
Here my father’s handwriting slips into spasmodic illegibility.—J.E.