“There’s bad air aboard,” Boggs told them. “Some feverish vapor trapped below. Tropic land gives off sickening ethers at night as it cools; you’ve seen the mists. Ventilate immediately. We must pump our bilges, flush ’em clean, and scour with vinegar below decks.”
They rigged wind scoops. They pumped the sea below through the wash-deck pumps until the chain pumps brought nothing from the bilges but bright seawater. They scoured every surface with vinegar. The acting quartermaster died. Gunner’s mate Bright died. Two gunners came down with the fever, moaning and shivering. One of the little West Indian ship’s boys went sick, as did Lord Cantner’s manservant.
“We must smoke the ship to drive the bad air out,” Boggs prescribed, and they took plug and leaf tobacco and burned it in tubs, waving smouldering faggots of the stuff in every compartment and nook and cranny, like shamans ministering to an aboriginal sufferer. But the old topman, the forecastle captain, and the ship’s boy died, and had to be interred to the mercy of the ocean, and one could feel the jittery tension in the air like a palpable force.
By evening Docken the warrant gunner had fallen ill, as had five more hands and the cook’s native assistant.
“We must keep all the sick on deck in fresh air in a patch of shade, and give them all the water and small beer they can drink,” Boggs said. “Cut down the grog ration, and stop issuing acid fruits that bring on biliousness. Thin soups and gruels instead of fresh or salt-meat.”
The two gunners died. Lord Cantner’s manservant died. During the night, six more hands began to stagger and sweat, complaining of raging, blinding headaches. Those already stricken turned shocking yellow and began to throw up a black bile.
Vómito Negro, the Spaniards called it: Yellow Jack.
Boggs and Leonard made a project of inspecting the galley and rations on the chance the native cook’s dirty habits might be to blame, but could find nothing they could fault in cleanliness.
By dawn Lady Cantner’s maid dropped in a swoon and cried in terror as she realized she was afflicted. Everyone began to walk the decks cutty-eyed, wary of being too close to another person, and one could smell a miasma of sweaty fear amid the odors of the sickness.
They threw the island animals overboard on the suspicion that they might have carried the fever aboard, along with their coops and pens, and the manger was hosed out, and scrubbed with vinegar or wine.
The wind veered dead foul, forcing them to face a long board to the suth’rd, which would take them closer to the French island of Martinique. Regretfully they had to tack and stand nor’east as close to the wind as possible for Anguilla, the nearest British settlement.
Boggs was by now half-drunk most of the time in sheer panic at the thought of dying and his inability to do any good for anyone. He made up bags of assafoetida for everyone to wear, and the crew eagerly seized their bags of “Devil’s Dung” like a talismens.
Docken died. The acting bosun died, along with three more men. Two of the youngest victims seemed to recover, though they were weak as kittens and all their hair had fallen out, so there was some hope.
“We are seven days from Anguilla,” Kenyon told them aft on the tiny poop by the taffrail. “Lewrie, we must have the starboard guns run out and the larboard guns hauled back to the centerline to ease her heel. It will make her faster through the water.”
“Aye aye, sir.”
“Mister Claghorne, we must drive this ship like Jehu for the nearest port. Nevis or St. Kitts, if Anguilla will not serve. It is our only hope that we reach a friendly port with medical facilities greater than our own.” Kenyon seemed foursquare and dependable amid all the suppressed hysteria, but Lewrie could see the tension around his eyes, the desperate glance as he realized just how powerless any man was in the face of the unknown—Yellow Jack.
* * *
On the third day in late afternoon they spied a merchant ship. They hoisted their colors and recognition signal. When she was close enough to hail they discovered she was a packet brig, the Black Friars, bound for Kingston.
“Have you a doctor on board?” Kenyon yelled across the surging water that separated them.
“Yes. Have you no surgeon?” the master called back.
“We have many sick aboard.”
“What is it?” the man asked warily.
“We have fever,” Kenyon had to admit.
“I cannot help you,” the master said as Black Friars sped out of reach on an opposite course.
“Goddamn you,” Kenyon shouted. “Bring to, or I will fire into you!”
Lewrie sprang to one of the after swivels and hastily loaded it. He placed a pound ball right in her transom, but Black Friars did not stop for them, but began to loose t’gallants for more speed. Lieutenant Kenyon looked ready to weep as he watched a possible salvation tearing down to leeward, but he could do nothing. No one would turn a hand for them … for fear of the Yellow Jack …
Leonard went down sick. Boggs decocted a foul-tasting brew of quinine bark and forced the hands to drink it, but no one had faith in his cures. The maidservant died at sundown.
It made no sense. Kenyon, Mooney, Claghorne and Lewrie and Purnell discussed it aft, avoiding Boggs, who by then could not raise a cup to his own lips, much less offer help to the sick.
Men had sickened who had not gone ashore into the tropical miasma. They should have been safe. Men who had spent the night ashore did not get sick, but members of the gig’s crew who had only been to the boat landing in broad daylight had sickened and died. All ate the same rations, drank the same grog and Black Strap and small beer, breathed the same air ashore, on deck at anchor or below decks.
Had it been the whores? Mooney wondered, something you could get from native women? Yet hardly any of the West Indians in the crew had gotten it, and only one of them had died of it. They were on the mend, or immune somehow. When questioned, most admitted to having the Vómito Negro when they were very young, and surviving.
“The salt rations?” Lewrie said, wondering out loud. “Sir, we were ashore and we ate fresh food and drank clean drink. We have not been stricken with it. But the crew on salt rations and biscuit for the most part have.”
“Then how do you explain the maid, or the manservant?” Kenyon asked.
“He was much older, and the woman’s constitution is not a man’s, sir,” Lewrie said, making rationalizations for his own funk … I don’t have to die, he told himself grimly, aware of the sour reek of fear on his body and in his clothes. Some of the hands are getting better, the younger ones. Mostly, it’s the old and the weak that are dying. Oh God, why not in battle, but not like this. I swear to You I’ll offer You anything You want, but don’t let me die …
Purnell’s breathing made him turn his head. Tad was all covered in sweat, his neckcloth and shirt already soaked with it, and his hands on the tabletop trembled like a fresh-killed cock.
“I am all right,” Purnell rasped. “Really, I am…”
“Oh God … take Mister Purnell to the surgeon,” Kenyon ordered.
Around midnight Leonard, the captain’s clerk, died. When they held his burial at dawn after Quarters one could hear the hands weeping and snuffling, but it was not any affection for the departed acting purser; it was pity for themselves in the face of the Yellow Jack.
Lewrie was on deck in full uniform to enforce orders, also armed with a pair of pistols and his dirk. The crew was trembling on the edge of panic, and if the officers lost control the men would run wild, get to the rum and spirits, and destroy any chance they might have had to work their way into a friendly port.
Lord and Lady Cantner stood nearby, holding their small bags of Devil’s Dung to their noses to allay the stench. Lewrie went to them.