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
writing I have five yaws on my hands and three more on my shin.
Charmian has one on each side of her right instep. Tehei is frantic
with his. Martin's latest shin-cultures have eclipsed his earlier
ones. And Nakata has several score casually eating away at his
tissue. But the history of the Snark in the Solomons has been the
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 question of fever were the "Sailing Directions" any more
encouraging, 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 1897 amounted to 9 among a population
of 50."
Some of these deaths, however, were accidental.
Nakata was the first to come down with fever. This occurred at
Penduffryn. 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 Tehei is the only one who has
escaped; but his sufferings from nostalgia are worse than fever.
Nakata, as usual, followed instructions faithfully, so that by the
end of his third attack he could take a two hours' 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, 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 Penduffryn 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 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 to-morrow - and Wada forgot all about
to-day and made up his mind that to-morrow had come.
