A West Indian Honeymoon.

Alexandra Herald and Central Otago Gazette, Issue 429, 11 August 1904, Page 7

A West Indian Honeymoon.

SHORT STORY.

£ SSiS^ 11 BOrtof a P laoe " Santos, S £fflm ?* ptaiß r l Mk 'd, partly V mSm because I really wanted to mow but partly also became the cabin of the steamer was stuffy and ccckroachy, and the sea rather rough, and I had juat been served with a liberal plateful of hot plum-pudding with cream sauce, which in the tropics is a dish that requires reflection. ' Santos I' said the long-limbed Yankee captain, with a humorous side-glance at my untouched plate, which showed he qnite understood the situation. ' Santos, sir, is hell upon earth when Yellow Jack is abroad, and not much better when he isn't*

'How bo V asked I, motioning furtively to the steward to remove my plate, and shifting my chair a little so as to get the benefit of the trade-wind through the open port. I waa on board a little tramp steamer, snaking the trip from Barbadoes to St. Lucia, at which latter island I had a few ;houraV Inspection-duty to fulfil, which would have entailed a wait of a for tnight had I gone by the regular maiL •Well, sir, if a this way. First and foremost, it's a big port and hundreds o! ahipe paflhto it. It is fr hot, dirty, damp, unhealthy place, with fifteen thousand inhabitants. And the fools have only built two-wharves to load and unload at j you 'must take your turn. Eight months, .1 have -known a barque lie at anchor-in the harbour waiting her chance.' My "faee-mustr have expressed incredulity, for my nautical friend here stopped his story to remark,' I guess you don't believe me, stranger. Steward, bring the officer another help of pudding.' I assured him that 1 believed him implicitly, and, indeed, I found afterwards that the information he had given me was perfectly correct. I also declined the pudding, and begged him to continue, which he did after smiling a grim smile. 'I was there in 1891; we put in on our way to New York. I though t there would be a good chance of picking up a few passengers whilst the fever was on, and so I did; but we paid dear for it You see, they had cholera there that year, as well as Yellow Jack, and the harbour was full of ships that couldn't get away, because they had no officers left to navigate them and no crews to man them. Saventj-nise captains and six or seven hundred Bailors had died when I got there, and I calculate many a naval action wouldn't have ccsfc as much. I'm not easily frightened mjself, but I can tell you I thought it was time to go when I went ashore one evening after dark, and the first thing I did waa to trip up over a body lying across the street, and fall with my face right in the waistcoat of another gentleman who had j uat died where he lay of Yellow Jack. The one I tripped over had died of oholera, as I could see when my mate brought up the lantern I' I stared at him in amazement, but the man was quite serious j he did not seem to think that he was narrating anything at all unusual, From what I have since heard of Santos, 1 do not suppose he was. 'Well, Bir, my first mate was with me, and he said he felt sick, and went and got some rum to keep hia pecker up. It is a bad thing to drink rum in Santos. Next morning he and six of our passengers were dead. I wanted to bury them decently on shore or in the harbour; but the fools that called themselves the government wonldnffc allow- it—as- if one dead body more or less mattered then; so I made the engineer get up steam, and we sewed the corpses up in sail-cloth, with plenty of scrap-iron, and laehed them out over the gunwales, and so we went out to sea. The niggers we passed in the fishing-boats howled that we were a dtath.&hip:* ' I should think you were I' said I. 'We were afterwards. When we got a mile or so from land I read a few prayers, the best I could think of, and then a man went round and cut the lashings, and'we laid our course for New York; but you bet we had a time of it before we got there. We took the fever with us, and we had no doctor on board; and it would not have mattered much if we had had, The crew went mad one after the other. It began with the firemen; they dropped down dsad with'the shovels in their hands. Then one man with the fever on him jumped overboard to get out of his misery. After that they all died. I put some of them in irons when they tried it, but they just died lagiujpmad in a few hours, so I gave it up. We only landed one man at New York, out of all the passengers we took on board it Santos, and but tor fine weather we would never have reached port at all, we were "so short-handed. Once we got out of the tropics we lost no more, though.' He thoughtfully expectorated into a spittoon it his feat, and I found it advisable to fo on-deck, whither he soon followed me.

Carlisle Bay, with its shipping, and the low bills of Barbadoes were fast disappearing behind us as the little tramp, . with the" strong trade-wind behind her, plunged ahead through the sparkling waveeV brae tourmaline colour in their depths, shading off to the green of an aquamarine where their tops grew thin and transparent. Our bows were pointed straight towards the setting sun, and a black cloud of smoke poured from the funnel, showing that the engineer was • firing up. He had dined with üb, and I wondered what he felt Kke in the engineroom, and how a temperature, of one hundred degrees or so would agree with that cream sauce. 'We will be off Castries about four o'clock to-morrow morning,'said the cap- «?!'" tain. *I am not going to stop there. The harbour-master will take you ashore in his boat, but you will not find it easy to pass away the time till daylight. Your folks are all up on the Morse Fortunes, and yon can't get up there in the dark. There, is a sort of hotel in Castries where yen might be able to knock somebody up, r but I doubt it* •* 'On, never mind,'said 1 1 'loan rough it. It will not be like Santos anyhow.' 'You're right there, sir. I've seen curious things happen in these waters too. I dare say. now, you hare been on Pelican Island ?' * The quarantine station P* said I. 'Oh yes, I have seen it Uninteresting little place it is too.' ' Well now, 111 tell you a story about ■* -.. that, that I'll venture to say you have never heard before. It happened years a jo, and 1 do not think there ever were many who knew the rights of it Light your pipe if you litee, sir. Nol Well, maybe you're right. I should not feel I had had my dinner if I didn't get a smoke after it

'There was a young fellow who came out to Barbadoee to take a post as manager in ose of the firm that trade in Bridgetown. They promised him a good salary, Tor be belonged to their London honJa; iad-I nppose he was a smart bniiaew man. Hi knew he would have a lonely timo of it out here, and he could well aSotd a wife, ao ha brought one out with him—a little English girl. I have heard from those who aaw hj« that she waa real fond of him and he of her, and they mm wonderfully taken with the Btr*sy*a«s fiffl the nawneu of every.

MAJOB T. PRESTON BATTERSBY.

thing they saw. Ton see, when one first ccmes ont to the tropics one's health is good, and yon have the cold climate's energy in yon, and if yon do not take an interest in things then—why, yon never will. 'Now, about that time a barque had come in from Santos, forty-three days ont, with a clean bill of health for the voyage, and bo she had not been quarantined. When they began to unload the ballast to fill np with sugar, one ef the men fell ill, and then another; so the captain took them np to the town hospital, and there they died of yellow fever, and were buried in a great hurry, and nothing said about it, for fear people should be frightened. ' The health officer went on board the barque, and he soon found what was the matter. The ballast was all Santos earth —full of fever no doubt. He had the hatohes of the hold battened down and sealed, and then he telegraphed to the owners asking for power to hire a schooner and put the well men on board of her, whilst the barque was taken ont to sea and the bailaßt jettisoned. Bat the owners sent word back that it was no business of theirs, and the colony might do what it liked; they had no money to waste in hiring schooners because a lot of sailors were afraid of yellow fever. ' By this time a lot of the man were ill, co the government bought a couple of marquees from the military and pitched them on Pelican Island—one for the sick men and one for the well ones; and the] sent a doctor to lire with them, and to see that no one left the island to carry the infection elsewhere.

'Now, tho whole matter being kept very dark, as I said before, asd this young man and his wife being only just landed, and their heads full of each other and of the wonderful things around them, it is easy enough to Bee that they would scarcely hear of what was going on; and one evening nothing would suit the pair but to hire a boat and go sailing in Carlisle Bay to get away from the mosquitoes on shore; for, as they were newcomers, the mosquitoes plagued them greatly, aa I dare say they did you, sir, when you first came out. ' Well, the silly couple started for their Eail, and he took a revolver to Bhoot sharks with—though he might as well have taken a popgun—not to mention that there are no sharks in Carlisle Bay now; they are frightened of the s te me rs. 'After they had sailed about for a while, as ill-luck would have it, the girl saw the white tents on Pelican Island, and nothing would do for her but to go and explore it, and see who was having a picnic there. And the poor young fellow knew no better than to take her at her word. He was London bred, and I don't suppose had ever heard of quarantine in his life.

' They tied their boat up to the pier, and the firßt the doctor knew of their being in the island was when he saw them standing inside the door of the marquee where he was helping the nigger attendant to lay out a seaman who had just died of the fever, whilst two other poor chaps who had an hoar or so longer to live looked on ' Well, sir, you may imagine the doctor was angry. He jumped up and pushed them both out of the tent, and then he got hold of the young manager and shook him, and asked him what he meant by bringing a young woman fresh from home (as he could see by her colour) to that place; and did he know it meant certain death if she took the fever ? and so on, and so on. And then he told them they could not leave the island now they had got on to it, and it was his bounden duty to keep them in it. And all the time the young man never answered a word, but got whiter and whiter. At last he cried out to his wife to run down to the boat and he would follow her. She did what she was told, sadly frightened no doubt, poor thing. The doctor called out his nigger from the tent, and was for running after her, but the manager whipped out his revolver and Bwore a great oath that he would shoot him if he did not stop. The nigger ran away, but the doctor was a good-plucky one. 'l'lldie doing my dutyl' he siid. With that the young man put the revolver back in his pocket, and ran at the doctor and knocked him down, and then rushed down to the boat, where his wife was, and jumped in. He cut the painter and hoisted the Bail. But a lookout man on shore had seen their craft touch at the island, and by this time two white tenoared boats were coming from Bridgetown as fast as the men could row, to see what was the matter. They were between him and the shore, and he couldn't doubt what their object was, as they altered their course to cut him cff.

' Now, sir, I won't go into details; but a man dying of yellow fever is not a pleasant eight to look at, and I make no doubt that if I had been on board that boat myself, and knew that I and my wife wets likely to be brought back to Pelican Island and left there, for months mnjba, I would have done as the manager did—put up my helm, slacked off the aheet, and run away. The trade-wind was blowing strong, and he could easily outsail the oars. I suppose he thought, on that course, he was bound to make some of the islands, as they all lay to leeward.' The captain paused a while and looked over the stern at the foaming track of the screw. We were light in the water. 'Well/ asked I, * what happened next f' II don't know, air; I don't know. It is every landsman who can steer a boat running before the trades with a following sea; perhaps she was pooped, or he may have let her broach-to. Either way she wo ild be pretty certain to fill and sink, and I hope that was what happened> Sometimes at night, when I am on deck, I think of those two poor things in an open boat, with no food or water, and no prospects before them, even if they got safe to land—for of course he could never go. back to Birbadoea. He .had his revolver, you see! Next day a gunboat came into Carlisle Bay, and she was sent to look for the lost craft, but she never found her. 80 the few who knew the rights of the story agreed to hash it up, and most people thought the boat had been blown out of the harbour, and so swamped. After all, there was no one to blame 5 but it was a Bad pity—a Bad pity 1 The short tropical twilight was changing rapidly to the darkness of night. The captain walked forward to see that the port and starboard lights were burning properly, and I went below to try to get Borne sleep before reaching Castries. I saw no more of him till I said good-bye as I stepped into the harbour-master's boat in the warm, velvety blaokness of the early morning. Aa I Bhook hands I asked him how he happened to know the Btory himself. ' I was the skipper of the barque,' he said shortly. * I was on Pelican island.' Half-an-hour later, as I was fighting the mosquitoes and trying vainly to get to sleep in a chair in the odorous bar-room

of the Castries hotel, I remembered several other questions that I should have liked to ask him j but I never saw him again. The little tramp steamer was sunk whilst running the blockade at Cuba yish a cargo of arms and ammunition for the in-

surgents. I have always felt that the captain did not tell me quite the whole of that story.