“How long have you been at sea, Elias?” I asked, stopping to peer after him as he ducked under a low platform that held enormous loops of a huge, evil-smelling chain, each link more than twice the size of my fist. The anchor chain? I wondered, touching it curiously. It looked strong enough to moor the Queen Elizabeth, which seemed a comforting thought.
“Since I was seven, ma’am,” he said, working his way out backward, dragging a large chest. He stood up puffing slightly from the exertion, and wiped his round, ingenuous face. “My uncle’s commander in Triton, so he was able to get me a berth in her. I come to join the Porpoise just this voyage, though, out of Edinburgh.” He flipped open the chest, revealing an assortment of rust-smeared surgical implements—at least I hoped it was rust—and a jumbled collection of stoppered bottles and jugs. One of the jars had cracked, and a fine white dust like plaster of Paris lay over everything in the chest.
“This is what Mr. Hunter, the surgeon, had with him, ma’am,” he said. “Will you have use for it?”
“God knows,” I said, peering into the chest. “But I’ll have a look. Have someone else fetch it up to the sickbay, though, Elias. I need you to come and speak firmly to the cook.”
* * *
As I oversaw the scrubbing of the tween-decks with boiling seawater, my mind was occupied with several distinct trains of thought.
First, I was mentally charting the necessary steps to take in combating the disease. Two men, far gone from dehydration and malaise, had died during the removal from the tween-decks, and now lay at the far end of the afterdeck, where the sailmaker was industriously stitching them into their hammocks for burial, a pair of round shot sewn in at their feet. Four more weren’t going to make it through the night. The remaining forty-five had chances ranging from excellent to slim; with luck and skill, I might save most of them. But how many new cases were brewing, undetected, among the remaining crew?
Huge quantities of water were boiling in the galley at my order; hot seawater for cleansing, boiled fresh water for drinking. I made another tick on my mental list; I must see Mrs. Johansen, she of the milch goats, and arrange for the milk to be sterilized as well.
I must interview the galley hands about their duties; if a single source of infection could be found and isolated, it would do a lot to halt the spread of the disease. Tick.
All of the available alcohol on the ship was being gathered in the sickbay, to the profound horror of Mr. Overholt. It could be used in its present form, but it would be better to have purified alcohol. Could a means be found of distilling it? Check with the purser. Tick.
All the hammocks must be boiled and dried before the healthy hands slept in them. That would have to be done quickly, before the next watch went to its rest. Send Elias for a crew of swabbers and sweepers; laundry duty seemed most in their line. Tick.
Under the growing mental list of necessities were vague but continuing thoughts of the mysterious Tompkins and his unknown information. Whatever it was, it had not resulted in our changing course to return to the Artemis. Either Captain Leonard had not taken it seriously, or he was simply too eager to get to Jamaica to allow anything to hinder his progress.
I had paused for a moment by the rail, to organize my thoughts. I pushed back the hair from my forehead, and lifted my face to the cleansing wind, letting it blow away the stench of sickness. Puffs of ill-smelling steam rose from the nearby hatchway, from the hot-water cleansing going on below. It would be better down there when they had finished, but a long way from fresh air.
I looked out over the rail, hoping vainly for the glimpse of a sail, but the Porpoise was alone, the Artemis—and Jamie—left far behind.
I pushed away the sudden rush of loneliness and panic. I must speak soon with Captain Leonard. Answers to two, at least, of the problems that concerned me lay with him; the possible source of the typhoid outbreak—and the role of the unknown Mr. Tompkins in Jamie’s affairs. But for the moment, there were more pressing matters.
“Elias!” I called, knowing he would be somewhere within reach of my voice. “Take me to Mrs. Johansen and the goats, please.”
47
PLAGUE SHIP
Two days later, I had still not found time to speak to Captain Leonard. Twice, I had gone to his cabin, but found the young Captain gone or unavailable—taking position, I was told, or consulting charts, or otherwise engaged in some bit of sailing arcana.
Mr. Overholt had taken to avoiding me and my insatiable demands, locking himself in his cabin with a pomander of dried sage and hyssop tied round his neck to ward off plague. The able-bodied crewmen assigned to the work of cleaning and shifting had been lethargic and dubious at first, but I had chivvied and scolded, glared and shouted, stamped my foot and shrieked, and got them gradually moving. I felt more like a sheepdog than a doctor—snapping and growling at their heels, and hoarse now with the effort.
It was working, though; there was a new feeling of hope and purpose among the crew—I could feel it. Four new deaths today, and ten new cases reporting, but the sounds of groaning distress from the tween-decks were much less, and the faces of the still-healthy showed the relief that comes of doing something—anything. I had so far failed to find the source of the contagion. If I could do that, and prevent any fresh outbreaks, I might—just possibly—halt the devastation within a week, while the Porpoise still had hands enough to sail her.
A quick canvass of the surviving crew had turned up two men pressed from a county gaol where they had been imprisoned for brewing illicit liquor. I had seized on these gratefully and put them to work building a still in which—to the horror of the crew—half the ship’s store of rum was being distilled into pure alcohol for disinfection.
I had posted one of the surviving midshipmen by the entrance to the sickbay and another by the galley, each armed with a basin of pure alcohol and instructions to see that no one went in or came out without dipping their hands. Beside each midshipman stood a marine with his rifle, charged with the duty of seeing that no one should drink the grimy contents of the barrel into which the used alcohol was emptied when it became too filthy to be used any longer.
In Mrs. Johansen, the gunner’s wife, I had found an unexpected ally. An intelligent woman in her thirties, she had understood—despite her having only a few words of broken English, and my having no Swedish at all—what I wanted done, and had done it.
If Elias was my right hand, Annekje Johansen was the left. She had single-handedly taken over the responsibility of scalding the goats’ milk, patiently pounding hard biscuit—removing the weevils as she did so—to be mixed with it, and feeding the resulting mixture to those hands strong enough to digest it.
Her own husband, the chief gunner, was one of the victims of the typhoid, but he fortunately seemed one of the lighter cases, and I had every hope that he might recover—as much because of his wife’s devoted nursing as because of his own hardy constitution.
“Ma’am, Ruthven says as somebody’s been a-drinking of the pure alcohol again.” Elias Pound popped up at my elbow, his round pink face looking drawn and wan, substantially thinned by the pressures of the last few days.
I said something extremely bad, and his brown eyes widened.