One evening, as the Snark worked around the southern end of the
island of Ugi, looking for a reputed anchorage, a Church of England
missionary, a Mr. Drew, bound in his whaleboat for the coast of San
Cristoval, 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 Mr. Drew, they were
quite common in the Solomons. All white men caught them.
"And have you had them?" Martin demanded, in the soul of him quite
shocked that a Church of England missionary could possess so vulgar
an affliction.
Mr. 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 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. 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
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 shin. 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 was without honour on my own vessel;
and, worse than that, I was charged with having tried to mislead her
into the belief that she had had a yaw. The pureness of her blood
was more rampant 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 Malaita at the time.
"What's that abaft your ankle-bone?" said I.
"Nothing," said she.
"All right," said I; "but put some corrosive 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 large as a silver dollar, that yaw, and it took all of
three weeks to heal. There were times when Charmian could 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 locality, I was driven to conclude the hollow of the
instep was the most painful place for yaw-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
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.
