The Men Assured Me That
The Most Fatal Symptom Was Violent Bleeding From The Nose; In Such Cases
No One Had Been Known To Recover.
One of the boatmen, who had been
ailing for some days, suddenly went to the side of the vessel and hung
his head over the river; his nose was bleeding!
Another of my men, Yaseen, was ill; his uncle, my vakeel, came to me
with a report that "his nose was bleeding violently!" Several other men
fell ill; they lay helplessly about the deck in low muttering delirium,
their eyes as yellow as orange-peel. In two or three days the vessel was
so horribly offensive as to be unbearable. THE PLAGUE HAD BROKEN OUT! We
floated past the river Sobat junction; the wind was fair from the south,
thus fortunately we in the stern were to windward of the crew. Yaseen
died; he was one who had bled at the nose. We stopped to bury him. The
funeral hastily arranged, we again set sail. Mahommed died; he had bled
at the nose. Another burial. Once more we set sail and hurried down the
Nile. Several men were ill, but the dreaded symptom had not appeared. I
had given each man a strong dose of calomel at the commencement of the
disease; I could do nothing more, as my medicines were exhausted. All
night we could hear the sick muttering and raving in delirium, but from
years of association with disagreeables we had no fear of the infection.
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