PAGE 5
The Grain Ship
by
“The dog was a spirited little fellow, and used to sit on the skipper’s shoulder when we were going about, or wearing ship, or handling canvas, and he would bark and yelp and swear at us, bossing each job as though he knew all about it. It kept the men good-humored, and we all liked the little beast. But from the time of the licking he moped, and finally grew sick, slinking around the deck in a dispirited fashion, refusing any attention, and unwilling to remain a minute in one place. We felt rather sore at the skipper, who seemed ashamed now and anxious to make friends with the dog, for the little bite in his thumb had healed up. This went on for a few days, and then we woke up to what really ailed that dog. He was racing around decks one morning with his tongue hanging out, froth dropping from his mouth, and agonized yelps and whines coming from him.
“‘My God!’ cried the skipper, ‘Now I know. He was bitten in ‘Frisco. He is mad, and he has bitten me. Keep away from him everybody. Don’t let him get near you.’
“I’ll always count that in the skipper’s favor. Bitten and doomed himself, he thought of others.
“We dodged the little brute until he had dropped in sheer exhaustion and gone into a spasm. Then we picked him up with a couple of shovels and threw him overboard. But this didn’t end it, for the skipper was bitten. He studied up some books on medicine he had below, but found no comfort. I heard him tell the mate that there was nothing in the medicine chest to meet such an emergency.
“‘In fact,’ he said, mournfully, ‘even on shore, with the best of medical skill, there is no hope for a man bitten by a mad dog. The period of incubation is from ten days to a year. I will navigate the ship until I lose my head, Mr. Barnes; then, for fear of harm to yourselves, you must shoot me dead. I am doomed, anyway.’
“We tried to reassure him, but his mind was made up and nothing would change it. Whether or not he had hydrophobia we could not tell at the time, but we knew that strong and intense thinking about it would bring on symptoms. In the light of after happenings, however, there was no doubt of it. He got sick after we’d rounded the Horn, fidgety, nervous, and excitable, and, like the dog, he couldn’t stay long in one place; but he wouldn’t admit that the disease had developed in him until the little scar on his thumb grew inflamed and painful and he experienced difficulty in drinking. Then he gave up, but he certainly showed courage and character.
“‘I am against suicide on principle,’ he said to Mr. Barnes and me, ‘so I must not kill myself. But I am not against killing a wild beast that menaces the lives of human beings. I am to be such a wild beast. Kill me in time before I injure you.’
“But we didn’t. We had the same compunctions about killing a sick man that he had about suicide. We strapped him down when he got violent, and after three days of frightful physical and mental agony he died. We buried him with the usual ceremonies, and Mr. Barnes took command.
“He and I had a consultation. We were well up toward the river Plate, and he was for putting into Montevideo and cabling the owners for orders. As he was a competent navigator I advised keeping on; and in this, perhaps, is where I earned my punishment. He took my advice, and we had reached up into the doldrums on the line, when a man turned out at eight bells of the middle watch–midnight, you know–and swore that a big rat had bitten him as he lay asleep. We laughed at him, even though he showed four bloody little holes in his wrist. But, three weeks later, that man was raving around the deck, going into periodic convulsions, frothing at the mouth, and showing every symptom that had preceded the death of the skipper. He died in the same horrible agony, and we realized that not only the skipper, but the rat bitten by the dog had been inoculated with the virus, and that the rat could inoculate other rats. We buried the man, and from that time on slept in our boots, with mittens on, and our heads covered, even in the hot weather of the tropics. It was no use. Mad rats appeared on deck, frenzied with pain, frothing at the mouth, fearless of all living things, a few at first and after dark, then in larger numbers night and day. We killed them as we could, but they increased. They filled the cabin and forecastles, and we found them in coils of rope up aloft in the tops, the crosstrees, and the doublings of the masts. They climbed everywhere, up or down, on a sail or its leach, a single rope or a backstay. The mate and myself, with the steward, could shut the doors of our rooms and keep them out until they chose to gnaw through, but the poor devils forward had no such refuge. Their forecastles and the galley and carpenter shop were wide open. Man after man was nipped, awake or asleep, on deck or below, or up aloft in the dark, when, reaching for another hold on a shroud or a backstay, he would touch something soft and furry, and feel the teeth and hear the squeak that spelled death for him.