‘Was it known before they came on board?’
‘Not suspected for an instant. But within a week after leaving they began (the stewardess said) to suffer from great depression and strange, unaccountable sensations. Dull pains, accompanied by semi-delirious conditions, supervened, gradually becoming more acute and distressing. The doctor prescribed medicines which gave temporary relief, but did not explain his suspicions, and advised confinement to their cabins; occasionally, as the boat neared Sydney, sobs and wailing cries were heard by the attendants. As little as possible was said, and the facts of the case did not find their way into the papers.’
‘I never heard of anything so dreadful in my life,’ said the listener; ‘I feel like a man in a dream. But what became of them?’
‘The elder lady died, mercifully, within the year, after which the younger became insane, and was taken to an asylum, where she may be lingering yet for all I know. Better dead, perhaps.’
‘Of course the seizures are one in a thousand compared with the ratio of people killed by typhoid fever or smallpox—but what an awful possibility! One shudders at the thought not only of pain unceasing—almost unendurable, but of becoming loathsome to one’s fellow-creatures, even to one’s nearest and dearest. Why such a sacrifice of all things held dear to humanity should be permitted, shakes one’s belief in the Divine interposition in mundane affairs.’
‘Which leads into the domain of the unknowable, where the paths are dubious. Thank Heaven at least for the power of action! _That_ at least is left to us. “So to bed,” as the late Mr. Pepys hath it.’
Carteret left for the coast on the following day. His next letter was from Honolulu, whence he had formulated a plan, and taken the first steps towards the fulfilment of a long-devised scheme of relief. The ‘hour had come,’ he wrote, and, what was of more importance, ‘the man.’
Plentiful, and easy to be secured for adequate pay, as were the sailors of fortune on or around the beaches of Ponapé and Ocean Island, there were difficulties in the way.
They were bold sea-rovers, brave to recklessness, seasoned to all manner of tragedies—mutinies, wrecks, ‘cuttings out’ by savage islanders, what not. But they were short of the wherewithal with which to begin a campaign. They had neither cash nor credit,—proverbially without the first requisite, while the second indispensable was absolutely nil.