By that answer my
professional medical prestige stood or fell. Martin, I could see,
was quite sure it was going to fall. And then the answer - O blessed
answer!
"Corrosive sublimate," said Mr. Drew.
Martin gave in handsomely, I'll admit, and I am confident that at
that moment, if I had asked permission to pull one of his teeth, he
would not have denied me.
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 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 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.
