Chapter 3

Now the remarkable thing about this island is that, although it is so far removed from any other inhabited place, and although it is so small, the human occupants number many thousands. With the exception of the people above named, these thousands want nothing: neither the light of the the day or the warmth of the sun; neither food nor drink. They lie side by side under the rank grass, without headstones or even graves to mark their place, without a register or record of their departure, without even coffins! There they lie,--sailors, soldiers, coolies, negroes,--forgotten and lost as much as if they had never been born. And if their work lives after them, nobody knows what that work is. They belong to the vast army of the Anonymous. Poor Anonymous! They do all the work. They grow our corn and breed our sheep; they make and mend for us; they build up our lives for us. We never know them, nor thank them, nor think of them. All over the world, they work for their far-off brethren; and when one dies, we know not, because another takes his place. And at the last a mound of green grass, or even nothing but an undistinguished strip of ground!

Here lay, side by side, the Anonymous--thousands of them. Did I say they were forgotten? Not quite; they are remembered by the two or three Indian women, wives of the Indian servants, who live there. At sunset they and their children retreat to their huts, and stay in them till sunrise next morning. They dare not so much as look outside the door, because the place is crowded with white, shivering, sheeted ghosts! Speak to one of these women; she will point out to you, trembling, one, two, half a dozen ghosts. It is true that the dull eye of the Englishman can see nothing. She sees them--distinguishes them one from the other. She can see them every night; yet she can never overcome her terror. The governor, or captain, or commander-in-chief, for his part, sees nothing. He sleeps in his house quite alone, with his cat and dog, windows and doors wide open, and has no fear of any ghosts. If he felt any fear, of course he would be surrounded and pestered to death every night with multitudes of ghosts; but he fears nothing. He is a doctor, you see; and no doctor ever yet was afraid of ghosts.

How did they come here--this huge regiment of dead men? In several ways. Cholera accounts for most, yellow fever for some, other fevers for some, but for the most cholera has been the destroyer. Because, you see, this is Quarantine Island. If a ship has cholera or any other infectious disease on board, it cannot touch at the island close by, which is a great place for trade, and has every year a quantity of ships calling; the infected ship has to betake herself to Quarantine Island, where her people are landed, and where they stay until she has a clear bill; and that sometimes is not until the greater part of her people have changed their berths on board for permanent lodgings ashore. Now you understand. The place is a great cemetery. It lies under the hot sun of the tropics. The sky is always blue; the sun is always hot. It is girdled by the sea. It is always silent; for the Indian children do not laugh or shout, and the Indian women are too much awed by the presence of the dead to wrangle; always silent, save for the crying of the sea-birds on the rock. There are no letters, no newspapers, no friends, no duties--none save when a ship puts in; and then, for the doctor, farewell rest, farewell sleep, until the bill of health is clean. Once a fortnight or so, if the weather permits and if the communications are open,--that is, if there is no ship there,--a boat arrives from the big island with rations and letters and supplies. Sometimes a visitor comes, but not often, because, should an infected ship put in, he would have to stay as long as the ship. A quiet, peaceful, monotonous life for one who is weary of the world, or for a hermit; and as good as the top of a pillar for silence and for meditation.

The islet lay all night long in much the same silence which lapped and wrapped it all the day. The water washed musically upon the shore; the light in the lighthouse flashed at intervals; there was no other sign of life. Toward six o'clock in the morning the dark east grew gray; thin, long white rays shot out across the sky, and then the light began to spread. Before the gray turned to pink or the pink to crimson, before there was any corresponding glow in the western sky, the man who occupied the bungalow turned out of bed, and came forth to the veranda, clad in the silk pajamas and silk jacket which formed the evening or dress suit in which he slept. The increasing light showed that he was a young man still, perhaps about thirty--a young man with a strong and resolute face and a square forehead. He stood under the veranda watching, as he had done every day for two years or more, the break of day and the sunrise. He drank in the delicious breeze, cooled by a thousand miles and more of ocean. No one knows the freshness and sweetness of the air until he has so stood in the open and watched the dawn of a day in the tropics. He went back to the house, and came out again clad in a rough suit of tweeds and a helmet. His servant was waiting for him with his morning tea. He drank it, and sallied forth. By this time the short-lived splendour of the east was fast broadening to right and left, until it stretched from pole to pole. Suddenly the sun leaped up and the colours fled and the splendour vanished. The sky became all over a deep, clear blue, and round about the sun was a brightness which no eye but that of the sea-bird can face and live. The man in the helmet turned to the sea-shore, and walked briskly along the natural mound or sea-wall. Now and then he stepped down upon the white coral sand, picked up a shell, looked at it, and threw it away. When he came to the sea-birds' rock, he sat down and watched it. In the deep water below, sea-snakes, red and purple and green, were playing about; the bluefish, who are not in the least afraid of the snakes, rolled lazily round and round the rock; in the recesses lurked unseen the great conger-eel, which dreads nothing but the thing of long and horny tentacles, the ourite or squid: round and round the rock darted the humourous tazaar, which bites the bathers in shallow waters all for fun and mischief, and with no desire at all to eat their flesh; and besides these a thousand curious creatures, which this man, who had trained his eyes by days and days of watching, came here every day to look at. While he stood there the sea-birds took no manner of notice of him, flying close about him, lighting on the shore close at his feet. They were intelligent enough to know that he was only dangerous with a gun in his hand. Presently he got up and continued his walk. All round the sea-wall of the island measures about three miles. He took this walk every morning and every evening in the early cool and the late. The rest of the time he spent indoors.

When he got back it was nearly seven, and the day was growing hot. He took his towels, went down to the shore, to a place where the coral reef receded, leaving a channel out to the open. The channel swarmed with sharks, but he bathed there every morning, keeping in the shallow water while the creatures watched him from the depths beyond with longing eyes. He wore a pair of slippers on account of the laf, which is a very pretty little fish indeed to look at; but he lurks in dark places near the shore, and he is too lazy to get out of the way, and if you put your foot near him he sticks out his dorsal fin, which is prickly and poisoned; and when a man gets that into the sole of his foot he goes home and cuts his leg off, and has to pretend that he lost it in action.

When he had bathed, the doctor went back to his house, and performed some simple additions to his toilet. That is to say, he washed the salt water out of his hair and beard; not much else. As to collars, neckties, braces, waistcoats, black coats, rings, or any such gewgaws, they were not wanted on this island. Nor are watches and clocks; the residents go by the sun. The doctor got up at daybreak, and took his walk, as you have seen, and his bath. He was then ready for his breakfast, a solid meal, in which fresh fish, newly caught that morning, and curried chicken, with claret and water, formed the principal part. A cup of coffee came after, with a cigar and a book on the veranda. By this time the sun was high, and the glare of forenoon had succeeded the coolness of the dawn. After the cigar the doctor went indoors. The room was furnished with a few pictures, a large bookcase full of books, chiefly medical, a table covered with papers, and two or three chairs. No curtains, carpets, or blinds; the doors and windows wide open to the veranda on both sides.

He sat down and began writing; perhaps he was writing a novel. I think no one could think of a more secluded place for writing a novel. Perhaps he was doing something scientific. He continued writing till past midday. When he felt hungry, he went into the dining-room, took a biscuit or two, and a glass of vermuth. Then, because it was now the hour for repose, and because the air outside was hot, and the sea-breeze had dropped to a dead calm, and the sun was like a red-hot glaring furnace overhead, the doctor kicked off his boots, threw off his coat, lay down on a grass mat under the mosquito-curtain, and instantly fell fast asleep. About five o'clock he awoke and got up; the heat of the day was over. He took a long draught of cold tea, which is the most refreshing and the coolest drink in the world. The sun was now getting low, and the air was growing cool. He put on his helmet, and set off again to walk round his domain. This done, he bathed again. Then he went home as the sun sank, and night fell instantly without the intervention of twilight. They served him dinner, which was like his breakfast but for the addition of some cutlets. He took his coffee; he took a pipe--two pipes, slowly, with a book; he took a whisky-and-soda; and he went to bed. I have said that he had no watch; it hung idly on a nail; therefore he knew not the time, but it would very likely be about half-past nine. However that might be, he was the last person up in this ghostly Island of the Anonymous Dead.

This doctor, captain-general, and commandant of Quarantine Island was none other than the young man who began this history with a row royal and a kingly rage. You think, perhaps, that he had turned hermit in the bitterness of his wrath, and for the faults of one simple girl had resolved on the life of a solitary. Nothing of the kind. He was an army doctor, and he left the service in order to take this very eligible appointment, where one lived free, and could spend nothing except a little for claret. He proposed to stay there for a few years in order to make a little money by means of which he might become a specialist. This was his ambition. As for that love-business seven years past, he had clean forgotten it, girl and all. Perhaps there had been other tender passages. Shall a man, wasting in despair, die because a girl throws him over? Never! Let him straightway forget her. Let him tackle his work; let him put off the business of love--which can always wait--until he can approach it once more in the proper spirit of illusion, and once more fall to worshipping an angel.

Neither nature nor civilisation ever designed a man's life to be spent in monotony. Most of us have to work for our daily bread, which is always an episode, and sometimes a pretty dismal episode, to break and mark the day. One day there came such a break in the monotonous round of the doctor's life. It came in the shape of a ship. She was a large steamer, and she steamed slowly.

It was early in the morning, before breakfast. The doctor and one of the lighthouse men stood on the landing-place watching her.

"She's in quarantine, doctor, sure as sure," said the man. "I wonder what's she's got. Fever, for choice; cholera, more likely. Well, we take our chance."

"She's been in bad weather," said the doctor, looking at her through his glass. "Look; she's lost her mizzen, and her bows are stove in. I wonder what's the meaning of it. She's a transport." She drew nearer. "Troops! Well, I'd rather have soldiers than coolies."

She was a transport. She was full of soldiers, time-expired men and invalids going home. She was bound from Calcutta to Portsmouth. She had met with a cyclone; driven out of her course and battered, she was making for the nearest port when cholera broke out on board.

Before nightfall the island was dotted with white tents; a hospital was rigged up with the help of the ship's spars and canvas. The men were all ashore, and the quarantine doctor, with the ship's doctor, was hard at work among the cases, and the men were dropping in every direction.

Among the passengers were a dozen ladies and some children. The doctor gave up his house to them, and retired to a tent or to the lighthouse or anywhere to sleep. Much sleep could not be expected for some time to come. He saw the boat land with the ladies on board; he took off his hat as they walked past. There were old ladies, middle-aged ladies, young ladies. Well, there always is this combination. Then he went on with his work. But he had a curious sensation, as if something of the past had been revived in his mind. It is, however, not an uncommon feeling. And one of the ladies changed colour when she saw him.

Then began the struggle for life. No more monotony in Quarantine Island. Right and left, all day long, the men fell one after the other; day after day more men fell, more men died. The two doctors quickly organised their staff. The ship's officers became clinical clerks; some of the ladies became nurses. And the men, the rough soldiers, sat about in their tents with pale faces, expecting. Of those ladies who worked there was one who never seemed weary, never wanted rest, never asked for relief. She was at work all day and all night in the hospital; if she went out, it was only to cheer up the men outside. The doctor was but conscious of her work and of her presence; he never spoke to her. When he came to the hospital, another nurse received him; if he passed her, she seemed always to turn away. At a less troubled time he would have observed this. At times he felt again that odd sensation of a recovered past, but he regarded it not; he had other things to consider. There is no time more terrible for the courage of the stoutest man than a time of cholera on board ship or in a little place whence there is no escape; no time worse for a physician than one when his science is mocked and his skill avails nothing. Day after day the doctor fought from morning till night, and far on to the morning again; day after day new graves were dug; day after day the chaplain read over the new-made graves the service of the dead for the gallant lads who thus died, inglorious, for their country.

There came a time, at last, when the conqueror seemed tired of conquest; he ceased to strike. The fury of the disease spent itself; the cases happened singly, one or two a day instead of ten or twenty. The sick began to recover; they began to look about them. The single cases ceased; the pestilence was stayed; and they sat down to count the cost. There had been on board the transport three hundred and seventy-five men, thirty-two officers, a dozen ladies, a few children, and the ship's crew. Twelve officers, two of the ladies, and a hundred men had perished when the plague abated.

"One of your nurses is ill, doctor."

"Not cholera, I do hope."

"No; I believe a kind of collapse. She is at the bungalow. I told them I would send you over."

"I will go at once."

He left a few directions, and walked over to the house. It was, he found, the nurse who had been of all the most useful and the most active. She was now lying hot and feverish, her mind wandering, inclined to ramble in her talk. He laid his hand upon her temples; he felt her pulse; he looked upon her face; the odd feeling of something familiar struck him again. "I don't think it is very much," he said. "A little fever. She may have been in the sun; she has been working too hard; her strength has given way." He still held her wrist.

"Claude," murmured the sick girl, "you are very cruel. I didn't know--and a girl cannot always have her own way."

Then he recognised her.

"Good heavens!" he cried, "it is Florence!"

"Not always have her own way," she repeated. "If I could have had my own way, do you think I would--"

"Florence!" he said again; "and I did not even recognise her. Strange!"

Another of the ladies, the colonel's wife, was standing beside him.

"You know her, doctor?"

"I knew her a long time ago--some years ago--before she married."

"Married? Florence is not married. You must be thinking of some one else."

"No. This is Florence Vernon, is it not? Yes. Then she was formerly engaged to marry a certain Sir William Duport."

"Oh, I believe there was some talk about an old man who wanted to marry her. But she wouldn't have him. It was just before her mother died. Did you know her mother?"

"I knew her mother a little when they were living at Eastbourne. So she refused the old man, did she? and has remained unmarried. Curious! I had almost forgotten her. The sight of her brings back the old days. Well, after she has pulled so gallantly through the cholera, we cannot have her beaten by a little fever. Refused the old man, did she?"

In the dead of night he sat watching by the bedside, the colonel's wife with him.

"I had almost forgotten," whispered the lady, "that story of the old baronet. She told me about it once. Her mother was ill, and anxious about her daughter because she had next to nothing except an annuity. The old man offered; he was an unpleasant old man, but there was a fine house and everything. It was all arranged. The girl was quite a child, and understood nothing. She was to be sold, in fact, to this old person, who ought to have been thinking of his latter end instead of a pretty girl. Then the mother died suddenly, and the girl broke it off. She was a clever girl, and she has been teaching. For the last three years she has been in India; now she is going home under my charge. She is a brave girl, doctor, and a good girl. She has received half a dozen offers, but she has refused them all; so I think there must be somebody at home."

"Claude," murmured the girl, wandering, "I never thought you would care so much. If I had thought so, I would not have encouraged you. Indeed, indeed, I would not. I thought we were only amusing ourselves."

"Claude is a pretty name. What is your own Christian name, doctor?" asked the colonel's wife, curiously.

"It is--in fact--it is Claude," he replied, blushing; but there was not enough light to see his blushes.

"Dear me!" said the colonel's wife.

A few days later the patient, able to sit for a while in the shade of the veranda, was lying in a long cane chair. Beside her sat the colonel's wife who had nursed her through the attack. She was reading aloud to her. Suddenly she stopped. "Here comes the doctor," she said; "and, Florence, my dear, his name, you know, is Claude. I think you have got something to talk about with Claude besides the symptoms." With these words she laughed, nodded her head, and ran into the salon.

The veranda, with its green blinds of cane hanging down, and its matting on the floor, and its easy-chairs and tables, made a pretty room to look at. In the twilight, the fragile figure, pale, thin, dressed in white, would have lent interest even to a stranger. To the doctor, I suppose, it was only a "case." He pushed the blinds aside and stepped in, strong, big, masterful. "You are much better," he said; "you will very soon be able to walk about. Only be careful for a few days. It was lucky that the attack came when it did, and not a little earlier when we were in the thick of the trouble. Well, you won't want me much longer, I believe."

"No, thank you," she murmured, without raising her eyes.

"I have had no opportunity," he said, standing over her, "of explaining that I really did not know who you were, Miss Vernon. Somehow I didn't see your face, or I was thinking of other things. I suppose you had forgotten me. Anyhow, it was not until the other day, when I was called in, that I remembered. But I dare say you have forgotten me."

"No; I have not forgotten."

"I thought that long ago you had become Lady Duport."

"No; that did not take place."

"I hear that you have been teaching since your mother's death. Do you like it?"

"Yes; I like it."

"Do you remember the last time we met--on the sea-shore? Do you remember, Florence?" His voice softened suddenly. "We had a quarrel about that old villain; do you remember?"

"I thought you had forgotten such a little thing as that long ago, and the girl you quarrelled with."

"The point is rather whether you remember. That is of much more importance."

"I remember that you swore that you would never forgive a worthless girl who had ruined your life. Did I ruin your life, Dr. Fernie?"

He laughed. He could not honestly say that she had. In fact, his life, so far as concerned his work, had gone on much about the same. But then, such a man does not allow love to interfere with his career.

"And then you went and threw over the old man. Florence, why didn't you tell me that you were going to do that? You might have told me."

She shook her head. "Until you fell into such a rage, and called me such dreadful names, I did not understand."

"Why didn't you tell me, Florence?" he repeated.

She shook her head again.

"You were only a little innocent, ignorant child then," he said; "of course you could not understand. I was an ass and a brute and a fool not to know."

"You said you would never forgive me. You said you would never shake hands with me again."

He held out his hand. "Since," he said, "you are not going to marry the old man, and since you are not engaged to anybody else, why--then--in that case--the old state of things is still going on; and--and--Florence--but if you give me your hand, I shall keep it, mind."

"Dear me!" said the colonel's wife, standing in the doorway. "Do quarantine doctors always kiss their patients? But you told me, doctor dear, that your Christian name was Claude; didn't you? That explains everything."

The ship, with those of her company whom the plague had spared, presently steamed away, and, after being repaired, made her way to Portsmouth dockyard. But one of her company stayed behind, and is now queen or empress of the island of which her husband is king, captain, commandant, and governor-general, and also resident quarantine doctor.

THE ROCK SCORPIONS

(ANONYMOUS)

The screw steamer Jenny Jones was lying alongside a coal-hulk at Gibraltar one October afternoon. By three o'clock her bunkers were nearly filled, and the captain was getting ready for casting off, when one of the natives came on board. Captain Hindhaugh looked about for something to throw at the visitor, and only the difficulty of selecting an efficient missile from a large and varied assortment prevented him from letting fly at once.

The "Scorpion" said, "Ah, no, no, Capeetan! No been throw nothin' at myself. Beesiness! I'se been com' for beesiness. Big thing, Capeetan!"

The last phrase was spoken with such a profound wink that Hindhaugh held his hand, and, addressing the man as one would an ill-conditioned dog, said, "Don't keep bowing and scraping there, you tastrel! Get it out sharp!"

The Scorpion whispered, "No been talk up here. Keep ship one hour, two hour, three hour. You'se been com' with me, and I speak you somethin' myself."