PAINFUL EXPERIENCES. A Burial at Sea.

Te Aroha News, Volume IV, Issue 200, 23 April 1887, Page 5

PAINFUL EXPERIENCES. A Burial at Sea.

Asiatic cholera broke out in all its dread fury on board the steamship Manolo, fiom Southampton to Madras, just as wo were getting well out of the fearful heat of the Red Sea. Day alter day, some fresh ■victim was announced, and day after day kiw a brief burial service, and a fearsome object sewed in a sack, with a shot at the end, was slid off a plank into the black water, at nightfall. Not one of us knew whose turn it would be next to be seized with the awful spasms which prefaced the disease horn ■which only one in a hundred recovered. We went about in fear and trembling. Every man, woman, and child on board vcarried camphor in quantities, and all the men, and ninny of the women, had looouise to frequent inhalations of tobacco. For the Indian weed was> said to be an excellent. Antiseptic, and some believed it was an absolute preventive. The wind cholera was tabooed. No one dared use it. it conjured up Mich sensations of dieacl, such m.mop.s of fearful agony lhat, wuh tacit cor.- out, it w is expunged from the ship's vocabulary. All that. Mas needed to tell u^ that a fre^h case had oeeuned "wa-i the dioa'y l''uk on the harassed, haggard t.icc of the doctor when he entered" the saloon, or was- met upon deck alter a visit forward. 1 don't think that man had hi" clothes oil' for a week in all that dreadful climate, lie vvent among his patients night and day ; hi* only iv»t being taken when one of them was quieth d o\eiboaul, the dull splash, A\Mch told that the sea had lecehed its dead, beiny only a signal to him that lie was wantcu b\ 'mother, who^o tmn i 1 might be to-moj 1 ow . The wunr'cv is that he ne\er took the disease himself. He wan a lhing and piaetical proot ot the sayings that, doctois bear charmed lhe^ ; that theie is a special Providence w Inch "watches over the foi tunes of babie> . diunken men. and doctors. He insisted on e\ery pabsenger taking a dose ot quinine three time*; daily, but all his pieeautum- wcio of no . vail : one ai'tu another, passengers and tuwMcro stucken down hl.c luaec at a (leunan battue. The endi'tion of fear and nervousness into which we had all of us gradually sunk was excellently calculated to make us readily subject to any kind of intection, and no effort anyone could make was suih'cierit to rouse us from the sort of frightened torpor \\ hich had us. The serious face of the captain, who had passed through similar experiences before, and who knew the result, was enough in itself to chill our innermost souls. Prayer meetings were the order of the day, and a few of the more healthy passengers and some good women, w hose better natures always come t o the tore under distressing crrcumstances, were willing volunteers to the doctor's stall of nurses and dispensers. But all the prayers, all the goodne-s of the few, all the voluntary risk of others, could not di ive the cholera aw ay. I had joined the volunteer ambulance corps myself, for I was young and strong, and had no ties at home to make me fear death, or timid dreads to make me avoid danger. But, like the otheis, I was no more proof against infection than they. One afternoon, I felt the weary, oppressive feeling precursory to the griping spasm. 1 took a nip of brandy, and told the docto r I would lie down for a little while. But 1 could not sleep. A cold shivering seized my body, an ague shook my smallest bones. Then I grew feverish, and I could not collect my thoughts, and my whole frame became i acked w ith pain. I crawled, rather than walked, to the doctor's room, and strove to tell him what was the matter %\ ith me, but my forehead burned, and my tongue seemed to be swelled several size? too laigc for my mouth, and was hot, and dry, and parched, I could not command it<~ movements. The doctor knew what was the matter at once. He lifted me in his aims, a-, he would have done a child, and carried me to his berth, and gave me a dose. It was my only chance, I remember hearing him say. Then my thoughts wandered back to the days of my childhood. All the little escapades of my boyhood came before me, and I mixed them up incontinently with the business and the deeds of mj' riper years. I fought again my boj ish battles, only to find that my opponent was some man who, in business, had .wronged me. I made love to my little fellow schoolgirl, to find that she was some hideous Hindoo, or a North American Indian. Every thought that entered my weary, fevered brain seemed to take a wrong turning, and to come out face to face with some antagonistic thought, which met it in furious onslaught, and drove me crazy. At last I fell into a peaceful sleep, and I thought that, amid heavenly music, softvoiced angels were bearing me away in their arms, and soothing my fevered forehead •with their cool, gentle hands. How long I continued in this state I cannot say, but presently I became aware of the presence of the three persons near me, talking in lowered tones. One, which I instantly recognised as that of the doctor, said : " Poor fellow ; I didn't think it would take him so quickly. He's gone. He will never see Madras. You had oetter prepare his body." I was perfectly helpless. I could move neither hand nor foot, nor could I make known by a single sign that I still lived. The doctor left the cabin, for I heard him step up the passage, and walk slowly along the saloon, and then the two nurses {for I knew instinctively that they were two of the lady volunteers) proceeded to wash me, and lay me out decently. One of them — I knew her voice— a young lady, who was going out to Poonahas-a governess, leant over me and kissed my forehead softly. I almost experienced a shudder as her cool lips touched me. Then, when I had been carefully wrapped in a sheet - all the cere clothes that the vessel afforded— they once more left me to my thoughts. What these were I would rather leave untold. Imagine a young man— l was only six and-twenty, in the very prime of his strength and vigour knowing that he was only waiting for sundown to be calmly pitched into the sea, sewn up in a sack, with a heavy ehot tied to his feet, with no means of saving himself, and utterly unable, by cry or by movement, to tell his friends that he was still alive. That was the plight I was in. And ifc ivas the reverse of pleasant. ! A little later someone came in, - and gently insinuated my body, feet first, into the dreaded sack, and tied up the mouth. Then I distinctly felt the bag of shot- being fixed to the foot of the sack. And again I was left to my reflections. They were of the bitterest kind. Presently I felt myself being silently and gently lifted from my berth, and 1 knew

thai my hour was come. As my bearers softly marched in stop along the saloon, 1 mas even conscious of them turning out of the saloon door, mid carrying me up the companion ladder. I knew that they tui'iiod to the right, on the lcc-sido of the ship, and that tlioy slopped close amidships, u here there was an opening in the tallvail. Then T heard the captain's low, but distinct voico reading a portion of the burial seivice, and I knew that, unless some miiacle intervened, I had but very few minutes more to live. The doctor had spoken truly uhen he slid I should never reach Madras. A sort of fury teemed to soi/.e me as J thought of his words. T made a frantic t effort to disengage my hands from the fatal winding sheet, and, in my agony, I buiNt out with. "My (jod ! You won't bury me alive !" In an instant I was on the deck, and \\ illing hands had produced willing knives to cut open the sack which was to have been my coffin. Hut the shock had been too much for my enfeebled brain. I was taken back to my bed with brain fever. When lihe ship reached Madras I was sent, to hospital, and only came out in four months to be sent to the hills, where, thanks. l.r a good constitution, 1 entirely recovered