July 25, 2025 • 39 mins
Immerse yourself in the captivating tales of Jack and Charmian Londons adventurous journey across the Pacific between 1907 and 1909, detailed in The Cruise of the Snark. This memoir not only introduces and popularizes the royal sport of surf-riding but also vividly depicts the thrill and beauty of the Pacific. Experience the exhilarating rush of riding the crest of a breaker, the sensation of being flung landward by the powerful sea, and the challenge of trying to match the skill of a Kanaka on a surf-board. This striking narrative captures the essence of living life to the fullest, promising a reading experience as invigorating as the pounding surf.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Chapter seventeen of the Crews of the Snark. This is
a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain.
For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox dot org.
Recording by Todd Lennon The Cruise of the Snark by
Jack London, Chapter seventeen, The Amateur m d. When we
(00:26):
sailed from San Francisco on the Snark, I knew as
much about sickness as the Admiral of the Swiss Navy
knows about salt water. And here at the start, let
me advise any one who meditates going to out of
the way tropic places, go to a first class druggist,
the sort that have specialist on their salary list, who
know everything. Talk the matter over with such an one.
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Note carefully all that he says, have a list made
of all that he recommends, write out a check for
the total cost, and tear it up. I wish I
had done the same. I should have been far wiser,
I know now if I had bought one of those
ready made self acting, ful proof medicine chests, such as
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are favored by fourth rate shipmasters. In such a chest,
each bottle has a number. On the inside of the
lid is placed a simple table of directions number one,
toothache number two, small pox number three, stomach ache number four,
cholera number five, rheumatism, and so on through the list
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of human ills. And I might have used it, as
did a certain venerable skipper, who, when number three was empty,
mixed a dose from number one in number two, or
when number seven was all gone, dosed his crew with
four and three till three gave out. Then he used
five and two. So far, with the exception of corrosive sublimate,
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which was recommended as an antiseptic, and surgical operations in
which I have not yet used for that purpose, my
medicine chest has been useless. It has been worse than useless,
for it has occupied much space which I could have
used to advantage with my surgical instruments. It is different.
While I have not yet had serious use of them,
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I do not regret the space they occupy. The thought
of them makes me feel good. They are so much
life insurance, only fairer than that last grim game. One
is not supposed to die in order to win. Of course,
I don't know how to use them, and what I
don't know about surgery, would set up a dozen quacks
in prosperous practice. But needs must win. The devil drives,
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and we of the snark have no warning when the
devil may take it into his head to drive I
even a thousand miles from land and twenty days from
the nearest port, I did not know anything about dentistry,
but a friend fitted me out with forceps and similar weapons,
and in Honolulu I picked up a book upon teeth.
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Also in that subtropical city, I managed to get hold
of a skull from which I extracted the teeth swiftly
and painlessly. Thus equipped, I was ready, though not exactly eager,
to tackle any tooth that get in my way. It
was in Nukuheva, in the Marquesses, that my first case
presented itself in the shape of a little old Chinese.
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The first thing I did was to get the buck fever.
And I leave it to any fair minded person if
buck fever, with its attendant heart palpitations and arm tremblings,
is the right condition for a man to be in
who is endeavoring to pose as an old hand at
the business. I did not fool the aged chinaman. He
was as frightened as I, and a bit more shaky.
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I almost forgot to be frightened in the fear that
he would bolt. I swear if he had tried to that,
I would have tripped him up and sat on him
until the calmness and reason had returned. I wanted that
tooth also, Martin wanted a snap shot of me getting it. Likewise,
Charmian got her camera. Then the procession started. We were
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stopping at what had been the club house when Stevenson
was in the Marquesses on the casco, on the veranda
where he had passed so many pleasant hours. The light
was not good for snap shots. I mean. I led
on into the garden, a chair in one hand, the
other hand filled with forceps of various sorts, my knees
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knocking together disgracefully. The poor old chinaman came second, and
he was shaking two Charmian and Martin brought up the rear,
armed with kodaks. We dived under the avocado trees, threaded
our way through the cocoanut palms, and came on a
spot that satisfied Martin's photographic eye. I looked at the tooth,
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and then discovered that I could not remember anything about
the teeth I had pulled from the skull five months previously.
Did it have one prong, two prongs or three prongs?
What was left of the part that showed appeared very,
very crumbly, and I knew that I should have to
take hold of the tooth deep down in the gum.
It was very necessary that I should know how many
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prongs that tooth had. Back to the house, I went
for the book on teeth. The poor old victim looked
like photographs I had seen a fellow countrymen of his
criminals on their knees waiting the stroke of the beheading sword.
Don't let him get away, I cautioned Martin. I want
that tooth. I sure won't. He replied, with enthusiasm from
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behind his camera, I want that photograph. For the first time,
I felt sorry for the chinaman. Though the book did
not tell me anything about pulling teeth, it was all
right for on one page I found drawings of all
the teeth, including their prongs and how they were set
in the jaw. Then came the pursuit of the forceps.
I had seven pairs, but was in doubt as to
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which pair I should use. I did not want to
make any mistakes. As I turned the hardware over with
rattle and clang, the poor victim began to lose his
grip and to turn a greenish yellow around the gills.
He complained about the sun, but that was necessary for
the photograph, and he had to stand it. I fitted
the forceps around the tooth, and the patience shivered and
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began to wilt. Ready, I called to Martin. All ready,
he answered. I gave a pull, ye gotes. The tooth
was loose. Out it came on the instant. I was
jubilant as I held it aloft in the forceps. Put
it back, please, oh, put it back. Martin pleaded, you
are too quick for me. And the poor old chinaman
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sat there while I put the tooth back and pulled over.
Martin snapped the camera. The deed was done elation pride.
No hunter was ever prouder of his first pronged buck
than I was of that three pronged tooth. I did it.
I did it with my own hands and a pair
of forceps. I did it. To say nothing of the
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forgotten memories of the dead Man's skull. My next case
was a Tahitian sailor. He was a small man in
a state of collapse from long days and nights of
jumping toothache. I lanced the gums first. I didn't know
how to lance them, but I lanced them just the same.
It was a long pull and a strong pole. The
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man was a hero. He groaned and moaned, and I
thought he was going to faint. But he kept his
mouth open and let me pull. And then it came.
After that, I was ready to meet all comers, just
the proper state of mind for a waterloo, and it came.
Its name was Tomy. He was a strapping giant of
a heathen with a bad reputation. He was addicted to
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deeds of violence, among other things. He had beaten two
of his wives to death with his fist. His father
and mother had been naked cannibals. When he sat down
and I put the forceps into his mouth, he was
nearly as tall as I was standing up. Big men
prone to violence very often have a streak of fat
in their make up, so I was doubtful of him.
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Charmian grabbed one arm and Warren grabbed the other. Then
the tug of war began. The instant the forceps closed
down on the tooth. His jaws closed down on the
forceps alas both his hands flew up and gripped my
pulling hand. I held on, and he held on. Charmian
and Warren held on. We rustled all about the shop.
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It was three against one, and my hold on an
aching tooth was certainly a foul one. But in spite
of the handicap, he got away with us. The forceps
slipped off, banging and grinding along his upper teeth with
a nerve scraping sound out of his mouth, flew the forceps,
and he rose up in the air with a blood
curdling yell. The three of us fell back. We expected
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to be massacred, but that howling savage of sanguinary reputation
sank back in the chair. He held his head with
both of his hands and groaned and groaned and groaned.
Nor would he listen to reason I was a My
painless tooth extraction was a delusion and a snare and
a low advertising dodge. I was so anxious to get
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that tooth that I was almost ready to bribe him,
But that went against my professional pride, and I let
him depart with a tooth still intact, the only case
on record up to date of failure on my part
when once I had got a grip. Since then I
have never let a tooth go by me. Only the
other day I volunteered to beat up three days to
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Windward to pull a woman missionary's tooth. I expect, before
the voyage of the snark is finished, to be doing
bridge work in putting on gold crowns. I don't know
whether they are yaws or not. A physician in Fiji
told me they were, and a missionary in the Solomons
told me they were not. But at any rate I
can vouch for the fact that they are most uncomfortable.
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It was my luck to ship into Heiti a French
sailor who, when we got to sea, proved to be
afflicted with a vile skin disease. The snark was too
small and too much of a family party to permit
retaining him on board, but perforce, until we could reach
land and discharge him, it was up to me to
doctor him. I read up the books and proceeded to
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treat him, taking care afterwards always to use a thorough
antiseptic wash. When we reached too to Ela far from
getting rid of him. The port doctor declared a quarantine
against him and refused to allow him ashore. But in Apia, Samoa,
I managed to ship him off on a steamer to
New Zealand. Here at Apia, my ankles were badly bitten
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by mosquitoes, and I confessed to having scratched the bites
as I had a thousand times before. By the time
I reached the island of Savaye, a small sore had
developed on the hollow of my instep. I thought it
was due to chafe and to acid fumes from the
hot lava over which I tramped. An application of salve
would cure it, So I thought the salve did heal
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it over, whereupon an astonishing inflammation set in. The new
skin came off and a larger sore was exposed. This
was repeated many times. Each time new skin formed, an
inflammation followed, and the circumference of the sore increased. I
was puzzled and frightened. All my life. My skin had
been famous for its healing powers, yet here was something
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that would not heal. Instead, it was daily eating up
more skin. While it had eaten down clear through the
skin and was eating up the mussel itself. By this time,
the snark was at sea on her way to Fiji.
I remembered the French sailor and for the first time
became seriously alarmed. Four other similar sores had appeared, or
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ulcers rather, and the pain of them kept me awake
at night. All my plans were made to lay up
the snark in Fiji and get away on the first
steamer to Australia and professional m ds. In the meantime,
in my amateur m D way, I did my best.
I read through all the medical works on board. Not
a line nor a word could I find descriptive of
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my affliction. I brought common horse sense to bear on
the problem. Here were malignant and excessively active ulcers that
were eating me up. There was an organic and corroding
poison at work. Two things I concluded must be done. First,
some agent must be found to destroy the poison. Secondly,
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the ulcers could not possibly heal from the outside end.
They must heal from the inside out. I decided to
fight the poison with corrosive sublimate. The very name of
it struck me as vicious, talk of fighting fire with fire.
I was being consumed by a corrosive poison, and it
appealed to my fancy to fight it with another corrosive poison.
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After several days, I alternated dressings of corrosive sublimate with
dressings of peroxide of hydrogen, and behold, by the time
we reached Fiji, four of the five ulcers were healed,
while the remaining one was no bigger than a pee.
Now I felt fully qualified to treat yaws Likewise, I
had a wholesome respect for them. Not so the rest
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of the crew of the Snark, in their case, seeing
was not believing one and all. They had seen my
dreadful predicament, and all of them, I'm convinced, had a
subconscious certitude that their own superb constitutions and glorious personalities
would never allow lodgment of so vile a poison in
their carcasses, as my anemic constitution and mediocre personality had
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allowed to lodge in mine. At port resolution, in the
new Hebrides, Martin elected to walk barefooted in the bush
and returned on board with many cuts and abrasions, especially
on his shins. You'd better be careful, I warned him.
I'll mix up some corrosive sublimate for you, and wash
those cuts with an ounce of prevention, you know. But
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Martin smiled a superior smile, though he did not say so.
I nevertheless was given to understand that he was not
as other men. I was the only man he could
possibly have had reference to, and that in a couple
of days his cuts would be healed. He also read
me a dissertation upon the peculiar purity of his blood
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and his remarkable healing powers. I felt quite humble when
he was done with me. Evidently I was different from
other men in so far as purity of blood was concerned. Nakatah,
the cabin boy, while ironing one day, mistook the calf
of his leg for the ironing block and accumulated a
burn three inches in length and half an inch wide.
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He too smiled the superior smile when I offered him
corrosive sublimate and reminded him of my own cruel experience.
I was given to understand, with all due suavity and courtesy,
that no matter what was the matter with my blood,
his number one Japanese port Arthur blood was all right
and scornful of the festive MicroB Wada, the cook took
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part in a desire mastrous landing of the launch, when
he had had to leap overboard and fend the launch
off the beach in a smashing surf by means of
shells and coral. He cut his legs and feed up beautifully.
I offered him the corrosive sublimate bottle. Once again I
suffered the superior smile, and was given to understand that
his blood was the same blood that had licked Russia
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and was going to lick the United States some day,
and that if his blood wasn't able to cure a
few trifling cuts, he'd commit Harry Carey in sheer disgrace.
From all of which I concluded that an amateur MD
is without honor on his own vessel, even if he
has cured himself. The rest of the crew had begun
to look upon me as a sort of mild monomaniac
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on the question of sores and sublimate. Just because my
blood was impure was no reason that I should think
everybody else's was. I made no more overtures. Time and
microbes were with me, and all I had to do
was wait, I think there's dirt in these cuts, Martin said, tentatively.
After several days, I'll wash them out and then they'll
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be all right, he added, after I had refused to
rise to the bait. Two more days passed, but the
cuts did not pass, and I caught Martin soaking his
feet and legs in a pail of hot water. Nothing
like hot water, he proclaimed, enthusiastically. It beats all the
dope the doctors have ever put up. These sores will
be all right in the morning. But in the morning
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he wore a troubled look, and I knew that the
hour of my triumph approached. I think I will try
some of that medicine, he announced later on in the day.
Not that I think it'll do much good, he qualified,
but I'll just give it a try anyway. Next came
the proud blood of Japan to beg medicine for its
illustrious sores. While I heaped coals of fire on all
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their houses by explaining in minute and sympathetic detail the
treatment that should be given, Nakatah followed instructions implicitly, and
day by day his sores grew smaller. Watta was apathetic
and cured less readily, but Martin still doubted, and because
he did not cure. Immediately, he developed the theory that
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while doctor's dope was all right, it did not follow
that the same kind of dope was efficacious with everybody.
As for himself, corrosive sublimate had no effect. Besides, how
did I know that it was the right stuff? I
had had no experience. Just because I happened to get
well while using it was not proof that it had
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played any part in the cure. There were such things
as coincidences. Without doubt there was a dope that would
cure the sores, and when he ran across a real doctor,
he would find what that dope was and get some
of it. About this time we arrived in the Solomon Islands.
No physician would ever recommend the group for invalids or sanatoriums.
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I spent but little time there. Ere I really and
for the first time in my life, comprehend how frail
and unstable is human tissue. Our first anchor ridge was
Port Mary, on the island of Santa Anna. The one
lone white man, a trader, came alongside Tom Butler was
his name, and he was a beautiful example of what
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the Solomons can do to a strong man. He lay
in his whale boat with the helplessness of a dying man.
No smile and little intelligence illumined his face. He was
a somber death's head, too far gone to grin. He
too had yaws, big ones. We were compelled to drag
him over the rail of the snark. He said that
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his health was good, that he had not had the
fever for some time, and that with the exception of
his arm, he was all right and trim. His arm
appeared to be paralyzed. Paralysis, he rejected with scorn. He
had had it before and recovered. It was a common
native disease on Santa Anna, he said, as he was
helped down the companion ladder, his dead arm dropping bump
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bump from step to step. He was certainly the ghastliest
guest we have ever entertained, and we had not a
few lepers in Elephantias's victims on board. Martin inquired about
the yaws, for here was a man who ought to know.
He certainly did know, if we could judge by his
scarred arms and legs, and by the live ulcers that
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corroded in the midst of the scars. Oh one got
used to yaws quoth Tim Butler, they were never really
serious until they had eaten deep into the flesh. Then
they attacked the walls of the arteries, and the arteries burst,
and there was a funeral. Several of the natives had
recently died that way ashore. But what did it matter
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if it wasn't yaws, it was something else in the solomons.
I noticed that from this moment, Martin displayed a swiftly
increasing interest in his own yaws. Dosings with corrosive sublimate
were more frequent, while in conversation he began to revert
with growing enthusiasm to the clean climate of Kansas and
all other things Canson Charmian, and I thought that California
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was a little bit of all Henry swore by. Rappa
and Tahai staked all on Boro Bora for his own
blood's sake, while Wada and Nakata sang the sanitary pan
of Japan. One evening, as the Snark worked around the
southern end of the island of Oogie looking for a
reputed anchorage, a Church of England missionary, a Mister Drew
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bound in his whale boat for the coast of San
Cristobal came alongside and stopped for dinner. Martin, his legs
swathed in red cross bandages till they looked like a mummy's,
turned the conversation upon yaws. Yes, said mister Drew. They
were quite common in the Solomons. All white men caught them.
And have you had them? Martin demanded in the soul
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of him, quite shocked that a Church of England missionary
could possess so vulgar an affliction. Mister Drew nodded his
head and added that not only had he had them,
but at that moment he was doctoring several. What do
you use on them? Martin asked, like a flash, My
heart almost stood still waiting the answer. By that answer,
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my professional medical prestige stood or fell. Martin, I could
see was quite sure it was going to fall. And
then the answer, Oh, blessed answer, corrosive sublimate, said mister Drew.
Martin gave in handsomely. I'll admit, and I'm confident that
at that moment, if I had asked permission to pull
one of his teeth, he would not have denied me.
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All white men in the Solomons catch yaws, and every
cut or abrasion practically means another yaw. Every man I
met had had them, and nine out of ten had
active ones. There was but one exception, a young fellow
who had been in the islands five months, who had
come down with fever ten days after he arrived, and
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who had since then been down so often with fever
that he had had neither time nor opportunity for yaws.
Every one on the Snark, except Charmian, came down with yaws.
Hers was the same egotism that Japan and Kansas had displayed.
She ascribed her immunity to the pureness of her blood,
and as the days went by, she ascribed it more
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often and more loudly to the pureness of her blood. Privately,
I ascribed her immunity to the fact that, being a woman,
she escaped most of the cuts and abrasions to which
we hard working men were subject in the course of
working the Snark around the world. I did not tell her, so,
you see, I did not wish to bruise her ego
with brutal facts. Being an m D, if only an
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amateur one, I knew more about the disease than she,
and I knew that time was my ally but alas
I abused my ally when it dealt a charming little
yaw on the skin. So quickly did I apply antiseptic
treatment that the yaw was cured before she was convinced
that she had one again. As an m D. I
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was without honor on my own vessel, and worse than that,
I was charged with heaving tried to mislead her into
the belief that she had had a yaw. The puereness
of her blood was more rapiant than ever. And I
poked my nose into my navigation books and kept quiet.
And then came the day we were cruising along the
coast of mala Ita at the time. What's that abaft
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your ankle bone? Said I? Nothing, said she all right,
said I. But put some caresses sublimate on it, just
the same, And some two or three weeks from now,
when it is well and you have a scar that
you will carry to your grave, just forget about the
purity of your blood and your ancestral history, and tell
me what you think about yaws. Anyway, it was as
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large as a silver dollar, that yaw, and it took
all of three weeks to heal. There were times when
Charmen would not walk because of the hurt of it,
and there were times upon times when she explained that
abaft the ankle bone was the most painful place to
have a yaw. I explained in turn that, never having
experienced a yaw in that locale, I was driven to
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conclude the hollow of the n step was the most
painful place for yall culture. We left it to Martin,
who disagreed with both of us and proclaimed passionately that
the only truly painful place was the shin. No wonder
horse racing is so popular, but yaws lose their novelty
after a time. At the present moment of riding, I
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have five yaws on my hands and three more on
my shin. Charmian has one on each side of her
right end step. Tahai is frantic with his Martin's latest
shin cultures have eclipsed his earlier ones, and Nakatah has
several score casually eating away at his tissue. But the
history of the snark in the Solomons has been the
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history of every ship since the early discoverers. From the
sailing directions, I quote the following the crews of vessels
remaining any considerable time in the Solomons find wounds and
sores liable to change into malignant ulcers, nor on the
uestion of fevers. Were the sailing directions any more encouraging,
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for in them I read new arrivals are almost certain
sooner or later to suffer from fever. The natives are
also subject to it. The number of deaths among the
whites in the year eighteen ninety seven mounted to nine
among a population of fifty. Some of these deaths, however,
were accidental. Nakatah was the first to come down with fever.
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This occurred at pendufren Wada, and Henry followed him. Charmian
surrendered next. I managed to escape for a couple of months,
but when I was bowled over, Martin sympathetically joined me
several days later. Out of the seven of us, all told,
Tahayi was the only one who escaped, but his sufferings
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from nostalgia were worse than fever. Nakatah, as usual, followed
instructions faithfully, so that by the end of his third
attack he could take a two hour sweat, consume thirty
or forty grains of quinine, and be weak. But all
right at the end of twenty four hours. Wada and Henry, however,
were tougher patients with which to deal. In the first place,
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Wada got in a bad funk. He was of the
firm conviction that his star had set and that the
Solomons would receive his bones. He saw that life about
him was cheap at pendufren, he saw the ravages of dysentery,
and unfortunately for him, he saw one victim carried out
on a strip of galvanized sheet iron and dumped without
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coffin or funeral, into a hole in the ground. Everybody
had fever, everybody had dysentery, everybody had everything. Death was
common here to day and gone tomorrow. And Wada forgot
all about to day, and made up his mind that
tomorrow had come. He was careless of his ulcers, neglected
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to sublimate them, and by uncontrolled scratching, spread them all
over his body. Nor would he follow instructions with fever,
and as a result would be down five days at
a time when a day would have been sufficient. Henry,
who was a strapping giant of a man, was just
as bad. He refused point blank to take quinine on
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the ground that years before he had had a fever,
and that the pills the doctor gave him were of
different size and color from the quinine tablets I offered him.
So Henry joined Wata. But I fooled the pair of
them and dosed them with their own medicine, which was
faith cure. They had faith in their funk that they
were going to die. I slammed a lot of quinine
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down their throats and took their temperature. It was the
first time that I had used my medicine chest thermometer,
and I quickly discovered that it was worthless, that it
had been produced for profit and not for service. If
I had led on to my two patients that the
thermometer did not work, there would have been two funerals
in short order. Their temperature, I swear was one hundred
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and five degrees. I solemnly made one and then the
other smoked the thermometer, allowed an expression of satisfaction to
irradiate MY countenance, and joyfully told them that their temperature
was ninety four degrees. Then I slammed more quinine down
their throats and told them that any sickness or weakness
they might experience would be due to the quinine and
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left them to get well, and they did get well. Wada,
in spite of himself, if a man can die through misapprehension,
is there any immorality in making him live through misapprehension?
Commend me the white race when it comes to grit
and surviving one of our two Japanese. In both our
Tahitians funked and had to be slapped on the back
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and cheered up and dragged along by main strength toward life.
Charmin and Martin took their afflictions cheerfully, made the least
of them, and moved with calm certitude along the way
of life. When Wada and Henry were convinced that they
were going to die, the funeral atmosphere was too much
for Tahai, who prayed dolorously and cried for hours at
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a time. Martin, on the other hand, cursed and got well,
and Charmian groaned and made plans for what she was
going to do when she got well again. Charmian had
been raised a vegetarian and a sanitarian. Her aunt Netta,
who brought her up and who lived in a healthful climate,
did not believe in drugs. Neither did charmian. Besides drugs
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disagreed with her. Their effects were worse than the ills
they were supposed to alleviate. But she listened to the
argument in favor of quinine, accepted it as the lesser evil,
and in consequence had shorter, less painful, and less frequent
attacks of fever. We encountered to mister Caulfield, a missionary
whose two predecessors had died after less than six months
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residence in the Solomons. Like them, he had been a
firm believer in homeopathy until after his first fever, whereupon,
unlike them, he made a grand slide back to allopathy
and quinine, catching fever and carrying on his gospel work.
But poor Wada, the straw that broke the cook's back
(30:04):
was when Charmin and I took him along on a
cruise to the cannibal island of Malaita in a small
yacht on the deck of which the captain had been
murdered half a year before. Kayi kai means to eat,
and Wada was sure he was going to be Kai kaite.
We went about heavily armed, our vigilance was unremitting, and
(30:26):
when we went for a bath in the mouth of
a fresh water stream. Black boys armed with rifles did
sentry duty about us. We encountered English war vessels burning
and shelling villages and punishment for murders. Natives with prices
on their heads sought shelter on board of us. Murders
stalked abroad in the land and out of the way places.
(30:49):
We received warnings from friendly savages of impending attacks. Our
vessel owed two heads to Malaita, which were liable to
be collected at any time into Capitol. We were wrecked
on a reef, and with rifles in one hand, warned
the canoes of wreckers off, while with the other hand
we toiled to save the ship, all of which was
(31:11):
too much for water. Who went duffy and who finally
quitted the snark on the island of Isabelle, going ashore
for good in a driving rainstorm, between two attacks of fever,
while threatened with pneumonia. If he escapes being kai kaid,
and if he can survive sores and fever which are
riotous ashore, he can expect, if he is reasonably lucky,
(31:33):
to get away from that place to the adjacent island
of anywhere from six to eight weeks he never did
think much of my medicine, despite the fact that I
successfully and at the first trial, pulled two aching teeth
for him. The snark has been a hospital for months,
and I confess that we are getting used to it.
At Maringuey Lagoon, where we careened and cleaned the Snark's copper,
(31:56):
there were times when only one man of us was
able to go into the water, while the three white
men on the plantation ashore were all down with a fever.
At the moment of writing this, we are lost at sea,
somewhere northeast of Isabel, and trying vainly to find to
Lord how Island, which is an atoll that cannot be
sighted unless one is on top of it. The chronometer
(32:18):
has gone wrong. The sun does not shine anyway, nor
can I get a star observation at night. And we
have had nothing but squalls and rain for days and days.
The cook is gone, Nakatah, who has been trying to
be both cook and cabin boy, is down on his
back with fever. Martin is just up from fever and
going down again. Charmian, whose fever has become periodical, is
(32:43):
looking up at her date book to find when the
next attack will be Henry has begun to eat quinine
in an expectant mood, and since my attacks hit me
with the suddenness of bludgeon blows, I do not know
from moment to moment when I shall be brought down
by a mistake. We gave our last flower away to
some white men who did not have any flour. We
(33:05):
don't know when we'll make land. Our solomon sores are
worse than ever and more numerous. The corrosive sublimate was
accidentally left ashore at Pendufrin. The peroxide of hydrogen is exhausted,
and I'm experimenting with boric acid, lysol and antiphlogistine. At
any rate. If I fail in becoming a reputable m D,
(33:26):
it won't be from lack of practice. P. S. It
is now two weeks since the foregoing was written, and
to Haye, the only immune on board, has been down
ten days with far severer fever than any of us,
and is still down. His temperature has been repeatedly as
high as one hundred and four and his pulse one
(33:48):
hundred and fifteen p s at C. Between tasmin Atoll
and Manning Straits to Hayes's attack developed into blackwater fever,
the severest form of malarial fever, which the doctor book
assures me is due to some outside infection as well.
Having pulled him through his fever, I am now at
(34:11):
my wits end, for he has lost his wits altogether.
I am rather recent in practice to take up the
cure of insanity. This makes the second lunacy case on
this short voyage. P s some day I shall write
a book for the profession and entitle it around the world.
On the hospital ship's snark, even our pets have not escaped.
(34:35):
We sailed from Meringuey Lagoon with two an Irish terrier
and a white cockatoo. The terrier fell down the cabin
companionway and lamed its nigh hind leg, then repeated the
maneuver and lamed its off fore leg. At the present
moment it has but two legs to walk on. Fortunately
(34:56):
they are on opposite sides and ends, so that she
can still dot and care too. The cockatoo was crushed
under the cabin skylight and had to be killed. This
was our first funeral, though for that matter, the several
chickens we had and which would have made welcome broth
for the convalescence, flew overboard and were drowned. Only the
(35:17):
cockroaches flourish. Neither illness nor accident ever befalls them, and
they grow larger and more carnivorous, day by day, gnawing
our finger nails and toe nails while we sleep. P. S.
Charmian is having another bout with fever. Martin, in despair,
has taken to horse doctoring his jaws with blue stone
(35:39):
and to blessing the solomons. As for me, in addition
to navigating, doctoring and writing short stories, I am far
from well. With the exception of the insanity cases, I'm
the worst off on board. I shall catch the next
steamer to Australia and go on the operating table. Among
my minor afflictions I may mentioned a new and mysterious one.
(36:02):
For the past week, my hands have been swelling as
with dropsy. It is only by a painful effort that
I can close them. A pull on a rope is excruciating.
The sensations are like those that accompany severe chill blames. Also,
the skin is peeling off both hands at an alarming rate.
Besides which the new skin underneath is growing hard and thick.
(36:25):
The doctor book fails to mention this disease. Nobody knows
what it is. P s well, anyway, I've cured the chronometer.
After knocking about the sea for eight squally rainy days,
most of the time hove too, I succeeded in catching
a partial observation of the sun at midday. From this,
(36:47):
I worked up my latitude, then headed by log to
the latitude of Lord Howe, and ran both that latitude
and the island down together. Here I tested the chronometer
by longitude sites and found it so some thing like three
minutes out. Since each minute is equivalent to fifteen miles,
the total error can be appreciated by repeated observations. At
(37:09):
Lord Howe. I rated the chronometer, finding it to have
a daily losing error of seven tenths of a second.
Now it happens that a year ago, when we sailed
from Hawaii, that self same chronometer had that self same
losing error of seven tenths of a second. Since that
error was faithfully added every day, and since that error,
(37:30):
as proved by my observations at Lord Howe, has not changed,
then what under the sun made that chronometer all of
a sudden accelerate and catch up with itself three minutes.
Can such things be expert? Watchmakers say no? But I
say that they have never done any expert watchmaking and
(37:50):
watch rating in the Solomons. That it is the climate
is my only diagnosis. At any rate. I have successfully
docted the chronometer, even if I have failed with the
lunacy cases and with Martin's jaws p s. Martin has
just tried burnt allam and is blessing the Solomons more
fervently than ever. P S. Between Manning Straits and Pavuvu Islands,
(38:18):
Henry has developed rheumatism in his back. Ten skins have
peeled off my hands, and the eleventh is now peeling.
While to Hai is more lunatic than ever, and day
and night praise God not to kill him. Also, Nakatah
and I are slashing away at fever again and finally
up to date. Nakatah last evening had an attack of
(38:39):
tomaine poisoning, and we went half the night pulling him through.
End of chapter seventeen, Recorded by Todd Lennon, Albuquerque, New Mexico,
February eighth, two thousand nine,
Chapter seventeen of the Crews of the Snark. This is
a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain.
For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox dot org.
Recording by Todd Lennon The Cruise of the Snark by
Jack London, Chapter seventeen, The Amateur m d. When we
(00:26):
sailed from San Francisco on the Snark, I knew as
much about sickness as the Admiral of the Swiss Navy
knows about salt water. And here at the start, let
me advise any one who meditates going to out of
the way tropic places, go to a first class druggist,
the sort that have specialist on their salary list, who
know everything. Talk the matter over with such an one.
(00:50):
Note carefully all that he says, have a list made
of all that he recommends, write out a check for
the total cost, and tear it up. I wish I
had done the same. I should have been far wiser,
I know now if I had bought one of those
ready made self acting, ful proof medicine chests, such as
(01:10):
are favored by fourth rate shipmasters. In such a chest,
each bottle has a number. On the inside of the
lid is placed a simple table of directions number one,
toothache number two, small pox number three, stomach ache number four,
cholera number five, rheumatism, and so on through the list
(01:32):
of human ills. And I might have used it, as
did a certain venerable skipper, who, when number three was empty,
mixed a dose from number one in number two, or
when number seven was all gone, dosed his crew with
four and three till three gave out. Then he used
five and two. So far, with the exception of corrosive sublimate,
(01:53):
which was recommended as an antiseptic, and surgical operations in
which I have not yet used for that purpose, my
medicine chest has been useless. It has been worse than useless,
for it has occupied much space which I could have
used to advantage with my surgical instruments. It is different.
While I have not yet had serious use of them,
(02:14):
I do not regret the space they occupy. The thought
of them makes me feel good. They are so much
life insurance, only fairer than that last grim game. One
is not supposed to die in order to win. Of course,
I don't know how to use them, and what I
don't know about surgery, would set up a dozen quacks
in prosperous practice. But needs must win. The devil drives,
(02:36):
and we of the snark have no warning when the
devil may take it into his head to drive I
even a thousand miles from land and twenty days from
the nearest port, I did not know anything about dentistry,
but a friend fitted me out with forceps and similar weapons,
and in Honolulu I picked up a book upon teeth.
(02:58):
Also in that subtropical city, I managed to get hold
of a skull from which I extracted the teeth swiftly
and painlessly. Thus equipped, I was ready, though not exactly eager,
to tackle any tooth that get in my way. It
was in Nukuheva, in the Marquesses, that my first case
presented itself in the shape of a little old Chinese.
(03:21):
The first thing I did was to get the buck fever.
And I leave it to any fair minded person if
buck fever, with its attendant heart palpitations and arm tremblings,
is the right condition for a man to be in
who is endeavoring to pose as an old hand at
the business. I did not fool the aged chinaman. He
was as frightened as I, and a bit more shaky.
(03:43):
I almost forgot to be frightened in the fear that
he would bolt. I swear if he had tried to that,
I would have tripped him up and sat on him
until the calmness and reason had returned. I wanted that
tooth also, Martin wanted a snap shot of me getting it. Likewise,
Charmian got her camera. Then the procession started. We were
(04:05):
stopping at what had been the club house when Stevenson
was in the Marquesses on the casco, on the veranda
where he had passed so many pleasant hours. The light
was not good for snap shots. I mean. I led
on into the garden, a chair in one hand, the
other hand filled with forceps of various sorts, my knees
(04:26):
knocking together disgracefully. The poor old chinaman came second, and
he was shaking two Charmian and Martin brought up the rear,
armed with kodaks. We dived under the avocado trees, threaded
our way through the cocoanut palms, and came on a
spot that satisfied Martin's photographic eye. I looked at the tooth,
(04:46):
and then discovered that I could not remember anything about
the teeth I had pulled from the skull five months previously.
Did it have one prong, two prongs or three prongs?
What was left of the part that showed appeared very,
very crumbly, and I knew that I should have to
take hold of the tooth deep down in the gum.
It was very necessary that I should know how many
(05:08):
prongs that tooth had. Back to the house, I went
for the book on teeth. The poor old victim looked
like photographs I had seen a fellow countrymen of his
criminals on their knees waiting the stroke of the beheading sword.
Don't let him get away, I cautioned Martin. I want
that tooth. I sure won't. He replied, with enthusiasm from
(05:29):
behind his camera, I want that photograph. For the first time,
I felt sorry for the chinaman. Though the book did
not tell me anything about pulling teeth, it was all
right for on one page I found drawings of all
the teeth, including their prongs and how they were set
in the jaw. Then came the pursuit of the forceps.
I had seven pairs, but was in doubt as to
(05:51):
which pair I should use. I did not want to
make any mistakes. As I turned the hardware over with
rattle and clang, the poor victim began to lose his
grip and to turn a greenish yellow around the gills.
He complained about the sun, but that was necessary for
the photograph, and he had to stand it. I fitted
the forceps around the tooth, and the patience shivered and
(06:12):
began to wilt. Ready, I called to Martin. All ready,
he answered. I gave a pull, ye gotes. The tooth
was loose. Out it came on the instant. I was
jubilant as I held it aloft in the forceps. Put
it back, please, oh, put it back. Martin pleaded, you
are too quick for me. And the poor old chinaman
(06:34):
sat there while I put the tooth back and pulled over.
Martin snapped the camera. The deed was done elation pride.
No hunter was ever prouder of his first pronged buck
than I was of that three pronged tooth. I did it.
I did it with my own hands and a pair
of forceps. I did it. To say nothing of the
(06:55):
forgotten memories of the dead Man's skull. My next case
was a Tahitian sailor. He was a small man in
a state of collapse from long days and nights of
jumping toothache. I lanced the gums first. I didn't know
how to lance them, but I lanced them just the same.
It was a long pull and a strong pole. The
(07:16):
man was a hero. He groaned and moaned, and I
thought he was going to faint. But he kept his
mouth open and let me pull. And then it came.
After that, I was ready to meet all comers, just
the proper state of mind for a waterloo, and it came.
Its name was Tomy. He was a strapping giant of
a heathen with a bad reputation. He was addicted to
(07:39):
deeds of violence, among other things. He had beaten two
of his wives to death with his fist. His father
and mother had been naked cannibals. When he sat down
and I put the forceps into his mouth, he was
nearly as tall as I was standing up. Big men
prone to violence very often have a streak of fat
in their make up, so I was doubtful of him.
(08:01):
Charmian grabbed one arm and Warren grabbed the other. Then
the tug of war began. The instant the forceps closed
down on the tooth. His jaws closed down on the
forceps alas both his hands flew up and gripped my
pulling hand. I held on, and he held on. Charmian
and Warren held on. We rustled all about the shop.
(08:23):
It was three against one, and my hold on an
aching tooth was certainly a foul one. But in spite
of the handicap, he got away with us. The forceps
slipped off, banging and grinding along his upper teeth with
a nerve scraping sound out of his mouth, flew the forceps,
and he rose up in the air with a blood
curdling yell. The three of us fell back. We expected
(08:46):
to be massacred, but that howling savage of sanguinary reputation
sank back in the chair. He held his head with
both of his hands and groaned and groaned and groaned.
Nor would he listen to reason I was a My
painless tooth extraction was a delusion and a snare and
a low advertising dodge. I was so anxious to get
(09:08):
that tooth that I was almost ready to bribe him,
But that went against my professional pride, and I let
him depart with a tooth still intact, the only case
on record up to date of failure on my part
when once I had got a grip. Since then I
have never let a tooth go by me. Only the
other day I volunteered to beat up three days to
(09:28):
Windward to pull a woman missionary's tooth. I expect, before
the voyage of the snark is finished, to be doing
bridge work in putting on gold crowns. I don't know
whether they are yaws or not. A physician in Fiji
told me they were, and a missionary in the Solomons
told me they were not. But at any rate I
can vouch for the fact that they are most uncomfortable.
(09:51):
It was my luck to ship into Heiti a French
sailor who, when we got to sea, proved to be
afflicted with a vile skin disease. The snark was too
small and too much of a family party to permit
retaining him on board, but perforce, until we could reach
land and discharge him, it was up to me to
doctor him. I read up the books and proceeded to
(10:13):
treat him, taking care afterwards always to use a thorough
antiseptic wash. When we reached too to Ela far from
getting rid of him. The port doctor declared a quarantine
against him and refused to allow him ashore. But in Apia, Samoa,
I managed to ship him off on a steamer to
New Zealand. Here at Apia, my ankles were badly bitten
(10:35):
by mosquitoes, and I confessed to having scratched the bites
as I had a thousand times before. By the time
I reached the island of Savaye, a small sore had
developed on the hollow of my instep. I thought it
was due to chafe and to acid fumes from the
hot lava over which I tramped. An application of salve
would cure it, So I thought the salve did heal
(10:58):
it over, whereupon an astonishing inflammation set in. The new
skin came off and a larger sore was exposed. This
was repeated many times. Each time new skin formed, an
inflammation followed, and the circumference of the sore increased. I
was puzzled and frightened. All my life. My skin had
been famous for its healing powers, yet here was something
(11:21):
that would not heal. Instead, it was daily eating up
more skin. While it had eaten down clear through the
skin and was eating up the mussel itself. By this time,
the snark was at sea on her way to Fiji.
I remembered the French sailor and for the first time
became seriously alarmed. Four other similar sores had appeared, or
(11:43):
ulcers rather, and the pain of them kept me awake
at night. All my plans were made to lay up
the snark in Fiji and get away on the first
steamer to Australia and professional m ds. In the meantime,
in my amateur m D way, I did my best.
I read through all the medical works on board. Not
a line nor a word could I find descriptive of
(12:05):
my affliction. I brought common horse sense to bear on
the problem. Here were malignant and excessively active ulcers that
were eating me up. There was an organic and corroding
poison at work. Two things I concluded must be done. First,
some agent must be found to destroy the poison. Secondly,
(12:25):
the ulcers could not possibly heal from the outside end.
They must heal from the inside out. I decided to
fight the poison with corrosive sublimate. The very name of
it struck me as vicious, talk of fighting fire with fire.
I was being consumed by a corrosive poison, and it
appealed to my fancy to fight it with another corrosive poison.
(12:47):
After several days, I alternated dressings of corrosive sublimate with
dressings of peroxide of hydrogen, and behold, by the time
we reached Fiji, four of the five ulcers were healed,
while the remaining one was no bigger than a pee.
Now I felt fully qualified to treat yaws Likewise, I
had a wholesome respect for them. Not so the rest
(13:09):
of the crew of the Snark, in their case, seeing
was not believing one and all. They had seen my
dreadful predicament, and all of them, I'm convinced, had a
subconscious certitude that their own superb constitutions and glorious personalities
would never allow lodgment of so vile a poison in
their carcasses, as my anemic constitution and mediocre personality had
(13:31):
allowed to lodge in mine. At port resolution, in the
new Hebrides, Martin elected to walk barefooted in the bush
and returned on board with many cuts and abrasions, especially
on his shins. You'd better be careful, I warned him.
I'll mix up some corrosive sublimate for you, and wash
those cuts with an ounce of prevention, you know. But
(13:53):
Martin smiled a superior smile, though he did not say so.
I nevertheless was given to understand that he was not
as other men. I was the only man he could
possibly have had reference to, and that in a couple
of days his cuts would be healed. He also read
me a dissertation upon the peculiar purity of his blood
(14:13):
and his remarkable healing powers. I felt quite humble when
he was done with me. Evidently I was different from
other men in so far as purity of blood was concerned. Nakatah,
the cabin boy, while ironing one day, mistook the calf
of his leg for the ironing block and accumulated a
burn three inches in length and half an inch wide.
(14:35):
He too smiled the superior smile when I offered him
corrosive sublimate and reminded him of my own cruel experience.
I was given to understand, with all due suavity and courtesy,
that no matter what was the matter with my blood,
his number one Japanese port Arthur blood was all right
and scornful of the festive MicroB Wada, the cook took
(14:59):
part in a desire mastrous landing of the launch, when
he had had to leap overboard and fend the launch
off the beach in a smashing surf by means of
shells and coral. He cut his legs and feed up beautifully.
I offered him the corrosive sublimate bottle. Once again I
suffered the superior smile, and was given to understand that
his blood was the same blood that had licked Russia
(15:21):
and was going to lick the United States some day,
and that if his blood wasn't able to cure a
few trifling cuts, he'd commit Harry Carey in sheer disgrace.
From all of which I concluded that an amateur MD
is without honor on his own vessel, even if he
has cured himself. The rest of the crew had begun
to look upon me as a sort of mild monomaniac
(15:43):
on the question of sores and sublimate. Just because my
blood was impure was no reason that I should think
everybody else's was. I made no more overtures. Time and
microbes were with me, and all I had to do
was wait, I think there's dirt in these cuts, Martin said, tentatively.
After several days, I'll wash them out and then they'll
(16:05):
be all right, he added, after I had refused to
rise to the bait. Two more days passed, but the
cuts did not pass, and I caught Martin soaking his
feet and legs in a pail of hot water. Nothing
like hot water, he proclaimed, enthusiastically. It beats all the
dope the doctors have ever put up. These sores will
be all right in the morning. But in the morning
(16:27):
he wore a troubled look, and I knew that the
hour of my triumph approached. I think I will try
some of that medicine, he announced later on in the day.
Not that I think it'll do much good, he qualified,
but I'll just give it a try anyway. Next came
the proud blood of Japan to beg medicine for its
illustrious sores. While I heaped coals of fire on all
(16:48):
their houses by explaining in minute and sympathetic detail the
treatment that should be given, Nakatah followed instructions implicitly, and
day by day his sores grew smaller. Watta was apathetic
and cured less readily, but Martin still doubted, and because
he did not cure. Immediately, he developed the theory that
(17:09):
while doctor's dope was all right, it did not follow
that the same kind of dope was efficacious with everybody.
As for himself, corrosive sublimate had no effect. Besides, how
did I know that it was the right stuff? I
had had no experience. Just because I happened to get
well while using it was not proof that it had
(17:29):
played any part in the cure. There were such things
as coincidences. Without doubt there was a dope that would
cure the sores, and when he ran across a real doctor,
he would find what that dope was and get some
of it. About this time we arrived in the Solomon Islands.
No physician would ever recommend the group for invalids or sanatoriums.
(17:51):
I spent but little time there. Ere I really and
for the first time in my life, comprehend how frail
and unstable is human tissue. Our first anchor ridge was
Port Mary, on the island of Santa Anna. The one
lone white man, a trader, came alongside Tom Butler was
his name, and he was a beautiful example of what
(18:11):
the Solomons can do to a strong man. He lay
in his whale boat with the helplessness of a dying man.
No smile and little intelligence illumined his face. He was
a somber death's head, too far gone to grin. He
too had yaws, big ones. We were compelled to drag
him over the rail of the snark. He said that
(18:32):
his health was good, that he had not had the
fever for some time, and that with the exception of
his arm, he was all right and trim. His arm
appeared to be paralyzed. Paralysis, he rejected with scorn. He
had had it before and recovered. It was a common
native disease on Santa Anna, he said, as he was
helped down the companion ladder, his dead arm dropping bump
(18:55):
bump from step to step. He was certainly the ghastliest
guest we have ever entertained, and we had not a
few lepers in Elephantias's victims on board. Martin inquired about
the yaws, for here was a man who ought to know.
He certainly did know, if we could judge by his
scarred arms and legs, and by the live ulcers that
(19:15):
corroded in the midst of the scars. Oh one got
used to yaws quoth Tim Butler, they were never really
serious until they had eaten deep into the flesh. Then
they attacked the walls of the arteries, and the arteries burst,
and there was a funeral. Several of the natives had
recently died that way ashore. But what did it matter
(19:36):
if it wasn't yaws, it was something else in the solomons.
I noticed that from this moment, Martin displayed a swiftly
increasing interest in his own yaws. Dosings with corrosive sublimate
were more frequent, while in conversation he began to revert
with growing enthusiasm to the clean climate of Kansas and
all other things Canson Charmian, and I thought that California
(19:59):
was a little bit of all Henry swore by. Rappa
and Tahai staked all on Boro Bora for his own
blood's sake, while Wada and Nakata sang the sanitary pan
of Japan. One evening, as the Snark worked around the
southern end of the island of Oogie looking for a
reputed anchorage, a Church of England missionary, a Mister Drew
(20:23):
bound in his whale boat for the coast of San
Cristobal came alongside and stopped for dinner. Martin, his legs
swathed in red cross bandages till they looked like a mummy's,
turned the conversation upon yaws. Yes, said mister Drew. They
were quite common in the Solomons. All white men caught them.
And have you had them? Martin demanded in the soul
(20:45):
of him, quite shocked that a Church of England missionary
could possess so vulgar an affliction. Mister Drew nodded his
head and added that not only had he had them,
but at that moment he was doctoring several. What do
you use on them? Martin asked, like a flash, My
heart almost stood still waiting the answer. By that answer,
(21:05):
my professional medical prestige stood or fell. Martin, I could
see was quite sure it was going to fall. And
then the answer, Oh, blessed answer, corrosive sublimate, said mister Drew.
Martin gave in handsomely. I'll admit, and I'm confident that
at that moment, if I had asked permission to pull
one of his teeth, he would not have denied me.
(21:29):
All white men in the Solomons catch yaws, and every
cut or abrasion practically means another yaw. Every man I
met had had them, and nine out of ten had
active ones. There was but one exception, a young fellow
who had been in the islands five months, who had
come down with fever ten days after he arrived, and
(21:49):
who had since then been down so often with fever
that he had had neither time nor opportunity for yaws.
Every one on the Snark, except Charmian, came down with yaws.
Hers was the same egotism that Japan and Kansas had displayed.
She ascribed her immunity to the pureness of her blood,
and as the days went by, she ascribed it more
(22:11):
often and more loudly to the pureness of her blood. Privately,
I ascribed her immunity to the fact that, being a woman,
she escaped most of the cuts and abrasions to which
we hard working men were subject in the course of
working the Snark around the world. I did not tell her, so,
you see, I did not wish to bruise her ego
with brutal facts. Being an m D, if only an
(22:34):
amateur one, I knew more about the disease than she,
and I knew that time was my ally but alas
I abused my ally when it dealt a charming little
yaw on the skin. So quickly did I apply antiseptic
treatment that the yaw was cured before she was convinced
that she had one again. As an m D. I
(22:55):
was without honor on my own vessel, and worse than that,
I was charged with heaving tried to mislead her into
the belief that she had had a yaw. The puereness
of her blood was more rapiant than ever. And I
poked my nose into my navigation books and kept quiet.
And then came the day we were cruising along the
coast of mala Ita at the time. What's that abaft
(23:18):
your ankle bone? Said I? Nothing, said she all right,
said I. But put some caresses sublimate on it, just
the same, And some two or three weeks from now,
when it is well and you have a scar that
you will carry to your grave, just forget about the
purity of your blood and your ancestral history, and tell
me what you think about yaws. Anyway, it was as
(23:39):
large as a silver dollar, that yaw, and it took
all of three weeks to heal. There were times when
Charmen would not walk because of the hurt of it,
and there were times upon times when she explained that
abaft the ankle bone was the most painful place to
have a yaw. I explained in turn that, never having
experienced a yaw in that locale, I was driven to
(24:01):
conclude the hollow of the n step was the most
painful place for yall culture. We left it to Martin,
who disagreed with both of us and proclaimed passionately that
the only truly painful place was the shin. No wonder
horse racing is so popular, but yaws lose their novelty
after a time. At the present moment of riding, I
(24:22):
have five yaws on my hands and three more on
my shin. Charmian has one on each side of her
right end step. Tahai is frantic with his Martin's latest
shin cultures have eclipsed his earlier ones, and Nakatah has
several score casually eating away at his tissue. But the
history of the snark in the Solomons has been the
(24:43):
history of every ship since the early discoverers. From the
sailing directions, I quote the following the crews of vessels
remaining any considerable time in the Solomons find wounds and
sores liable to change into malignant ulcers, nor on the
uestion of fevers. Were the sailing directions any more encouraging,
(25:03):
for in them I read new arrivals are almost certain
sooner or later to suffer from fever. The natives are
also subject to it. The number of deaths among the
whites in the year eighteen ninety seven mounted to nine
among a population of fifty. Some of these deaths, however,
were accidental. Nakatah was the first to come down with fever.
(25:25):
This occurred at pendufren Wada, and Henry followed him. Charmian
surrendered next. I managed to escape for a couple of months,
but when I was bowled over, Martin sympathetically joined me
several days later. Out of the seven of us, all told,
Tahayi was the only one who escaped, but his sufferings
(25:46):
from nostalgia were worse than fever. Nakatah, as usual, followed
instructions faithfully, so that by the end of his third
attack he could take a two hour sweat, consume thirty
or forty grains of quinine, and be weak. But all
right at the end of twenty four hours. Wada and Henry, however,
were tougher patients with which to deal. In the first place,
(26:09):
Wada got in a bad funk. He was of the
firm conviction that his star had set and that the
Solomons would receive his bones. He saw that life about
him was cheap at pendufren, he saw the ravages of dysentery,
and unfortunately for him, he saw one victim carried out
on a strip of galvanized sheet iron and dumped without
(26:30):
coffin or funeral, into a hole in the ground. Everybody
had fever, everybody had dysentery, everybody had everything. Death was
common here to day and gone tomorrow. And Wada forgot
all about to day, and made up his mind that
tomorrow had come. He was careless of his ulcers, neglected
(26:51):
to sublimate them, and by uncontrolled scratching, spread them all
over his body. Nor would he follow instructions with fever,
and as a result would be down five days at
a time when a day would have been sufficient. Henry,
who was a strapping giant of a man, was just
as bad. He refused point blank to take quinine on
(27:12):
the ground that years before he had had a fever,
and that the pills the doctor gave him were of
different size and color from the quinine tablets I offered him.
So Henry joined Wata. But I fooled the pair of
them and dosed them with their own medicine, which was
faith cure. They had faith in their funk that they
were going to die. I slammed a lot of quinine
(27:34):
down their throats and took their temperature. It was the
first time that I had used my medicine chest thermometer,
and I quickly discovered that it was worthless, that it
had been produced for profit and not for service. If
I had led on to my two patients that the
thermometer did not work, there would have been two funerals
in short order. Their temperature, I swear was one hundred
(27:54):
and five degrees. I solemnly made one and then the
other smoked the thermometer, allowed an expression of satisfaction to
irradiate MY countenance, and joyfully told them that their temperature
was ninety four degrees. Then I slammed more quinine down
their throats and told them that any sickness or weakness
they might experience would be due to the quinine and
(28:16):
left them to get well, and they did get well. Wada,
in spite of himself, if a man can die through misapprehension,
is there any immorality in making him live through misapprehension?
Commend me the white race when it comes to grit
and surviving one of our two Japanese. In both our
Tahitians funked and had to be slapped on the back
(28:37):
and cheered up and dragged along by main strength toward life.
Charmin and Martin took their afflictions cheerfully, made the least
of them, and moved with calm certitude along the way
of life. When Wada and Henry were convinced that they
were going to die, the funeral atmosphere was too much
for Tahai, who prayed dolorously and cried for hours at
(28:58):
a time. Martin, on the other hand, cursed and got well,
and Charmian groaned and made plans for what she was
going to do when she got well again. Charmian had
been raised a vegetarian and a sanitarian. Her aunt Netta,
who brought her up and who lived in a healthful climate,
did not believe in drugs. Neither did charmian. Besides drugs
(29:21):
disagreed with her. Their effects were worse than the ills
they were supposed to alleviate. But she listened to the
argument in favor of quinine, accepted it as the lesser evil,
and in consequence had shorter, less painful, and less frequent
attacks of fever. We encountered to mister Caulfield, a missionary
whose two predecessors had died after less than six months
(29:43):
residence in the Solomons. Like them, he had been a
firm believer in homeopathy until after his first fever, whereupon,
unlike them, he made a grand slide back to allopathy
and quinine, catching fever and carrying on his gospel work.
But poor Wada, the straw that broke the cook's back
(30:04):
was when Charmin and I took him along on a
cruise to the cannibal island of Malaita in a small
yacht on the deck of which the captain had been
murdered half a year before. Kayi kai means to eat,
and Wada was sure he was going to be Kai kaite.
We went about heavily armed, our vigilance was unremitting, and
(30:26):
when we went for a bath in the mouth of
a fresh water stream. Black boys armed with rifles did
sentry duty about us. We encountered English war vessels burning
and shelling villages and punishment for murders. Natives with prices
on their heads sought shelter on board of us. Murders
stalked abroad in the land and out of the way places.
(30:49):
We received warnings from friendly savages of impending attacks. Our
vessel owed two heads to Malaita, which were liable to
be collected at any time into Capitol. We were wrecked
on a reef, and with rifles in one hand, warned
the canoes of wreckers off, while with the other hand
we toiled to save the ship, all of which was
(31:11):
too much for water. Who went duffy and who finally
quitted the snark on the island of Isabelle, going ashore
for good in a driving rainstorm, between two attacks of fever,
while threatened with pneumonia. If he escapes being kai kaid,
and if he can survive sores and fever which are
riotous ashore, he can expect, if he is reasonably lucky,
(31:33):
to get away from that place to the adjacent island
of anywhere from six to eight weeks he never did
think much of my medicine, despite the fact that I
successfully and at the first trial, pulled two aching teeth
for him. The snark has been a hospital for months,
and I confess that we are getting used to it.
At Maringuey Lagoon, where we careened and cleaned the Snark's copper,
(31:56):
there were times when only one man of us was
able to go into the water, while the three white
men on the plantation ashore were all down with a fever.
At the moment of writing this, we are lost at sea,
somewhere northeast of Isabel, and trying vainly to find to
Lord how Island, which is an atoll that cannot be
sighted unless one is on top of it. The chronometer
(32:18):
has gone wrong. The sun does not shine anyway, nor
can I get a star observation at night. And we
have had nothing but squalls and rain for days and days.
The cook is gone, Nakatah, who has been trying to
be both cook and cabin boy, is down on his
back with fever. Martin is just up from fever and
going down again. Charmian, whose fever has become periodical, is
(32:43):
looking up at her date book to find when the
next attack will be Henry has begun to eat quinine
in an expectant mood, and since my attacks hit me
with the suddenness of bludgeon blows, I do not know
from moment to moment when I shall be brought down
by a mistake. We gave our last flower away to
some white men who did not have any flour. We
(33:05):
don't know when we'll make land. Our solomon sores are
worse than ever and more numerous. The corrosive sublimate was
accidentally left ashore at Pendufrin. The peroxide of hydrogen is exhausted,
and I'm experimenting with boric acid, lysol and antiphlogistine. At
any rate. If I fail in becoming a reputable m D,
(33:26):
it won't be from lack of practice. P. S. It
is now two weeks since the foregoing was written, and
to Haye, the only immune on board, has been down
ten days with far severer fever than any of us,
and is still down. His temperature has been repeatedly as
high as one hundred and four and his pulse one
(33:48):
hundred and fifteen p s at C. Between tasmin Atoll
and Manning Straits to Hayes's attack developed into blackwater fever,
the severest form of malarial fever, which the doctor book
assures me is due to some outside infection as well.
Having pulled him through his fever, I am now at
(34:11):
my wits end, for he has lost his wits altogether.
I am rather recent in practice to take up the
cure of insanity. This makes the second lunacy case on
this short voyage. P s some day I shall write
a book for the profession and entitle it around the world.
On the hospital ship's snark, even our pets have not escaped.
(34:35):
We sailed from Meringuey Lagoon with two an Irish terrier
and a white cockatoo. The terrier fell down the cabin
companionway and lamed its nigh hind leg, then repeated the
maneuver and lamed its off fore leg. At the present
moment it has but two legs to walk on. Fortunately
(34:56):
they are on opposite sides and ends, so that she
can still dot and care too. The cockatoo was crushed
under the cabin skylight and had to be killed. This
was our first funeral, though for that matter, the several
chickens we had and which would have made welcome broth
for the convalescence, flew overboard and were drowned. Only the
(35:17):
cockroaches flourish. Neither illness nor accident ever befalls them, and
they grow larger and more carnivorous, day by day, gnawing
our finger nails and toe nails while we sleep. P. S.
Charmian is having another bout with fever. Martin, in despair,
has taken to horse doctoring his jaws with blue stone
(35:39):
and to blessing the solomons. As for me, in addition
to navigating, doctoring and writing short stories, I am far
from well. With the exception of the insanity cases, I'm
the worst off on board. I shall catch the next
steamer to Australia and go on the operating table. Among
my minor afflictions I may mentioned a new and mysterious one.
(36:02):
For the past week, my hands have been swelling as
with dropsy. It is only by a painful effort that
I can close them. A pull on a rope is excruciating.
The sensations are like those that accompany severe chill blames. Also,
the skin is peeling off both hands at an alarming rate.
Besides which the new skin underneath is growing hard and thick.
(36:25):
The doctor book fails to mention this disease. Nobody knows
what it is. P s well, anyway, I've cured the chronometer.
After knocking about the sea for eight squally rainy days,
most of the time hove too, I succeeded in catching
a partial observation of the sun at midday. From this,
(36:47):
I worked up my latitude, then headed by log to
the latitude of Lord Howe, and ran both that latitude
and the island down together. Here I tested the chronometer
by longitude sites and found it so some thing like three
minutes out. Since each minute is equivalent to fifteen miles,
the total error can be appreciated by repeated observations. At
(37:09):
Lord Howe. I rated the chronometer, finding it to have
a daily losing error of seven tenths of a second.
Now it happens that a year ago, when we sailed
from Hawaii, that self same chronometer had that self same
losing error of seven tenths of a second. Since that
error was faithfully added every day, and since that error,
(37:30):
as proved by my observations at Lord Howe, has not changed,
then what under the sun made that chronometer all of
a sudden accelerate and catch up with itself three minutes.
Can such things be expert? Watchmakers say no? But I
say that they have never done any expert watchmaking and
(37:50):
watch rating in the Solomons. That it is the climate
is my only diagnosis. At any rate. I have successfully
docted the chronometer, even if I have failed with the
lunacy cases and with Martin's jaws p s. Martin has
just tried burnt allam and is blessing the Solomons more
fervently than ever. P S. Between Manning Straits and Pavuvu Islands,
(38:18):
Henry has developed rheumatism in his back. Ten skins have
peeled off my hands, and the eleventh is now peeling.
While to Hai is more lunatic than ever, and day
and night praise God not to kill him. Also, Nakatah
and I are slashing away at fever again and finally
up to date. Nakatah last evening had an attack of
(38:39):
tomaine poisoning, and we went half the night pulling him through.
End of chapter seventeen, Recorded by Todd Lennon, Albuquerque, New Mexico,
February eighth, two thousand nine,
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