after a flying visit to auckland, our old steam-roller staggered through a southerly buster into sydney heads on christmas eve, and it was then that i began to make acquaintance with the microbe of the black death.
we had got alongside the wharf at circular quay. on the other side of the jetty a white-painted messageries mail-boat was being moored. if sydney had only known the terrible cargo which she carried, sydney would have seen her sunk a thousand fathoms deep rather than let her touch australian soil. she was the pacifique, the ship i was to cross to new caledonia in, and the black death was a passenger on board her. it was many days more before i learnt the how and the why of this—after i had walked in the same streets, lived in the same houses, and sat at the same table[97] with the spectre. i had also seen his material reality. this was what it looked like.
a lot of little circular globules, flattened in the centre, some red and some white, were floating in a greyish-white liquid under the microscope. among them were some tiny dark, wriggling things swimming in the fluid and running their heads against the edges of the white globules. they were plague-microbes in blood-serum. if they got inside the white corpuscles the person to whom that blood belonged would have a very good chance of dying the black death. if not, he would be very ill, but would probably live, as i did.
the newspapers had come on board, and i was having a farewell cocktail in the doctor’s cabin, a cosy little snuggery, which by this time contained many pleasant memories for me.
“there’s bubonic plague at noumea,” said he; “and they seem to have it pretty bad, too. of course you won’t think of going while anything like that’s messing around?”
now i loved the doctor because, in addition to his social qualities and medical skill, he possessed the art of making a cocktail which was an entirely delightful antidote to his medicine.
[98]
i confess that i didn’t like the news, but i made bold to reply:
“of course i shall. do you suppose i’ve come fifteen thousand miles to get into that place to be scared by——? anyhow, i suppose it’s only among the kanakas?”
“my dear fellow, bubonic plague’s a mighty good thing to stop away from,” he said, with unwonted seriousness.
“and therefore all the more interesting.”
“well, if you will go, so-long, and don’t get it. if you do, in a place like that you’ll have about one chance in five of getting back.”
ten days afterwards i steamed into the lovely harbour of noumea, the malta of the pacific, which england lost by about three hours one morning nearly fifty years ago. but the adventures of h.m.s. dodderer will be a twist in another yarn.
even if we had not known that the terrible black death had come to noumea, the least observant of us would have asked:
“what is the matter with this place?”
a couple of dozen steamers and sailing-ships were laid up, and a ship out of work is about as forlorn a spectacle as a deserted workhouse.
[99]
the ships that were in work were all flying yellow jack—that spectre in bunting which followed me across the world till i bade it, i hope, a last farewell on the quay at marseilles. steam-launches, too, were flying it, dodging backwards and forwards between the ships and the shore. they were patrolling to stop all unauthorised communication. one of them ran alongside. other boats, containing friends of passengers, kept at a very respectful distance.
“five fresh cases to-day; two deaths, one a white man,” were almost the first words i heard at the gangway. then the doctor’s words came home to me in a somewhat chill fashion. at sydney it was only the news. this was the ugly reality. we began to look at each other, and especially at the people from the shore.
which of us would be first? you could see the unspoken question in every one’s eyes. people who had been friends on the passage didn’t care to shake hands now. we looked at the lovely landscape in front of us, the white-walled, grey-roofed town, nestling under tall, feathery palms, and the flamboyants blazing with crimson blossom, at the foot of the densely wooded mountains, and[100] it seemed strangely out of the order of things that this demon which has devastated the world for ages should have chosen so fair a spot from which to send that dread message forth to men and doctors:
“i am here, in spite of all your science. kill me if you can. meanwhile, pay me my toll of life.”
it was dark before we had passed the doctor and got ashore. the first visible sign of the terrible presence was a long wall of corrugated iron cutting off that portion of the town which lies along the wharves from the rest. there were openings in this, and each was guarded by a sentry with fixed bayonet, but more than twenty days before the spectre had slipped past the sentries and slain a white man. even now it was standing by the bedside of two white girls.
the kanakas and tonkinois didn’t seem to matter so much. but white people—that was a family matter to all of us. this seems uncharitable, but it is none the less true.
the plague area at noumea. offices of the messageries maritimes, with sentries in front.
when i found the place that i was to sleep in, i began to see, or, rather, to smell, the reason why the spectre had crossed the barriers. noumea has[101] a magnificent water-supply. fresh water flows constantly from the mountains down through the stone channels on each side of the streets; but its sanitation is about as rudimentary as that of a kaffir village.
when i went to bed i shut the long windows opening on to the balcony to keep the smell out. i also shut in the heat and some odd millions of mosquitos, any of which, according to popular belief, might have had thousands of microbes concealed about its person. as a matter of fact they hadn’t; but they got their own work in all the same.
i stood it for nearly an hour, and then i concluded that even the smell was preferable to suffocation, so i opened the windows and went out on the balcony to scratch and say things to the accompaniment of the song of many vocal insects. the next morning i went down into the yard to cool my wounds in a corrugated iron bathroom, which, with true french colonial forethought, had been built within two yards of an open cesspool. a shower-bath in tropical countries is usually a luxury as well as a necessity. in noumea it was only a necessity.
when i set out for my first stroll round noumea[102] the morning after my arrival the sun was shining out of a sky of unflecked blue. a delicious breeze was flowing down the mountain-sides. the scent of fruit and flowers was everywhere atoning for the stench of that backyard. i took in long breaths of the sweet, soft air, and began to wonder whether that black spectre really was haunting such a paradise as this.
then i turned into the place des cocotiers, which is to noumea what the champs elysées are to paris—a broad square shaded by blazing flamboyants and flanked by rows of coco-palms. the next moment i saw a long, four-wheeled, white-curtained vehicle being driven rapidly through it. it was the ambulance, and inside it lay some stricken wretch. who—yes, who was it? a question of some significance to one who might have had to say “here!” to the dread summons before the next sun rose.
i went under the verandah of the hotel de france, which fronts the square, and ordered a limonade, so that i might ask the news. yes, it was the ambulance, and its occupant was one of the white girls. in three days she was to be the first white bride of the black death. it was rumoured[103] that there were six new cases that morning, but the sanitary commission very wisely only reported two “suspected” cases and one death. if they had told the truth for a few days more there would have been panic, and panic is the best—or worst—helpmeet of disease, especially in a place like noumea.
from the hotel i wandered along the shady sidewalks of the broad streets, and presently found myself in a quarter of the town which looked as if it had been bombarded. the houses were wrecked and roofless. some of them were smouldering still, and some were cold, skeleton ruins. it was here that the black death had found its first victims. they were only kanakas and tonkinois, so their families had been cleared out, and their houses and belongings burnt.
farther on up the hill leading to the military reservation i saw all that was left of what had once been a pretty villa standing in its own grounds, a garden such as one sees only in the tropics. this had been the house of the first white victim, a young fellow of splendid physique, who had fought the demon through three weeks of torture, dying by inches in multiplying horrors unspeakable.
[104]
later on the demon was more merciful, because he struck harder and killed quicker. in a few weeks it was to be a matter of hours rather than of days.
i learnt afterwards that, although the sanitary commission had burnt the house down, they had allowed the furniture to be sold by public auction. the same authority permitted the traveller by sea to take any sort of luggage he liked on board the steamer, but would not allow even a package of clean linen to be forwarded from one port to another unless it was in the possession of its owner. nail it up in a box and it could go, but as personal effects—no. later on the demon took his revenge for this foolishness. he laid his hands on the chief of the commission, and killed him in thirty-six hours.
that night i dined at the club, the cercle de noumea, an institution which is devoted to eating and drinking during the day, and to poker and baccarat during the night.
there was only one subject of conversation among the frenchmen round the long table—la peste.
during the plague-time in bombay it cost drinks[105] round to mention the word in white society, but in noumea every one, doctors and laymen alike, talked unrestrainedly of it. the doctors told of the new “cases,” enlarged on symptoms, and described experiments in detail which made the laymen mostly sick, and nearly all frightened. which is one point of difference between english and french ways of looking at ugly things.
a day or two after, when the name of the demon had become familiar to my ears, and had, therefore, lost some of its terrors—i suppose i really was quite as frightened as anybody else—i noticed that a man feeling furtively under his armpits was looked at with suspicion, and a man seen limping in the street was left to walk alone.
one morning i got up feeling rather seedy. it may have been the mosquitos, or the heat, or the last french cigar overnight. it is a true saying that a man who is his own lawyer has a fool for his client, and that a man who is his own doctor has a still bigger fool for a patient; but by this time i had heard enough of la peste in noumea to convince me that i had to take the latter risk into my own hands. if i had described my symptoms to a doctor i should have been “under[106] observation” in the hospital within an hour. after that the date of my coming out would have been a very uncertain one, so i smoked the mosquitos out of my bedroom, took some chlorodyne, and went to bed. it is bad to take opiates, but it is a great deal worse to lie awake in a plague-smitten town and wonder whether or not you’ve got it.
the next day i saw a coffin carried out of a house. that night the house was pulled down, and the ruins burnt, but the day after that, as though in mockery of every precaution taken, the demon showed himself in a new and deadlier form.
a great cleaning-up had been going on all this time, just as it was in sydney later on. the filth-accumulations of years were being cleared out. a white man, very much down on his luck, took a job with the kanakas and convicts who were cleaning out the basement of a store in which dead rats had been found. the others had their mouths and noses covered with cloths steeped in corrosive sublimate, but he wasn’t afraid of any blanked plague, and so he went in without.
he happened to stir up some dust out of which he disinterred the corpse of a rat. he inhaled[107] some of the dust. the little black wriggly thing that i had seen under the microscope got into his lungs, and assisted in the change of the venous into the arterial blood. in six hours that man was dead. the pulmonary form of the black death is perhaps the most swiftly killing of all diseases.
after this the corrugated iron fence round the wharves came down, and the sentries went back to barracks. the enemy had passed them, unseen and unchallenged. every gust of wind which raised a cloud of dust in the street might carry death, and sometimes did.
you might, for example, walk through one of these clouds on your way to dinner. your appetite would not be quite as good as usual. after dinner you would feel headachy and sick, and, being disinclined to walk home,—a very bad symptom, by the way,—you would call a cab and be driven there. the next day you would have a drive in the ambulance, after which your fate lay on the knees of the gods. in the particular case here referred to the matter was decided in four days.
it was little wonder that the microbe was thriving apace in this outwardly lovely place, for dirt,[108] disease, and death are a trinity found ever hand in hand. just en passant, i may say here that my excellent landlady who, i am sorry to say, died of the plague soon after i left her hospitable roof, subsequently confided to me that among her guests there were some who had not had a bath for three weeks. of course there was no law to make them wash, but i think that in a tropical country in which the black death has taken up its abode the penalty for not bathing, at least once a day, should be delivery to the tender mercies of the local fire brigade, with permission to squirt to taste.
