In ship and prison

It is impossible to give any adequate picture of the days which immediately followed. The horror of them is still upon me as I write. There are dangers which call out the best in man, which arouse all his faculties to face and overcome them; there are others that paralyze the arm and numb the brain and stupefy the soul. The danger before us was of this latter class. For an hour after I entered that room and learned the situation I sat dazed and stolid, and my men were in no better condition. We were hopeless.

It is said you can become accustomed to anything. Possibly that is why my companions at length began to stir and speak. It was their reproaches that aroused me. “Why had we not fought the enemy on the deck of the Martha, and ended our lives there, instead of foolishly surrendering her, and dying here in this foul pen?” they were saying. They did not hesitate to throw the blame on me. Stung to the quick, I sprang to my feet. I threw off the lethargy I was in, and I said resolutely:

“Comrades, do not be unreasonable. You know I acted for the best when I surrendered the Martha. I did as any other wise commander would have done under the same circumstances. Let us suppose we had fought; some of us would have survived the conflict and been thrust in here to meet the same foul conditions. Can we tell which of us it might have been? Would we have been any better prepared to face the situation than now? Here we are all well and strong. Let us arouse ourselves. Let us do for these suffering men around us all we can do. Not every one who has the smallpox dies with it. Let us face this foe as we would any other, and endeavor to conquer it; and if we do go down before it, let us die as we would on a ship’s deck—like men, doing our duty for ourselves and others.”

I did not have to make a second appeal. A ringing “Aye, aye, sir!” followed my speech, and then the lads crowded about me asking what they should do.

“First, we’ll find who these suffering men are and how we can help them,” I answered. “Then we’ll see if we cannot clean up this foul pen, and make it more habitable. The disease will not rage so severely where there is no filth, I’ve been told; and it may be I can prevail upon the prison authorities to furnish us with clean beds and proper medical attendance. Rest assured I’ll do all I can to bring about a better condition of things here.”

“That you will, sir,” they responded, and turned with me to attend to the sick ones about us.

As I had expected, we found them all Colonial prisoners. Some had been there for weeks, others like ourselves were newcomers. Two weeks before one of their number had come down with the smallpox, and the case had been promptly reported to the prison officials. The only thing that had been done by them, however, was to put a man in charge of the room who was an immune, and to bury the dead—for four of their number had already died from the disease.

I found the only thing we could do for the present was to place the suffering men in easier positions, and moisten their parched lips with the scanty supply of water at our command. But later, when the turnkey came—an old fellow, deaf and gruff and indifferent to our condition—I appealed to him to ask the superintendent of the jail to furnish us with implements for cleaning up the room, and with clean clothing for the sick, and with medical care.

He demurred, saying: “They won’t do nothin’ for ye. They’d rather ye’d die here like rats in a hole.”

Then I grew angry. “Tell him,” I exclaimed, “that there is an officer in here who is not going to die with the disease, and as sure as he lives the home government shall know. Yea, the whole civilized world shall know how he is treating men whose only fault is that they are prisoners.”

There must have been something in my looks or tones that startled him, for he shuffled away down the corridor, and going to the prison officials made known my demands, repeating word for word what I had said. The result was we were furnished with shovels, brooms, pails and water in abundance, and before night our quarters were clean.

A week passed, however, without any of my other demands being met. Six more men died, and were wrapped in their blankets, and carried away to their burial. Ten more of the men had come down with the contagion. The time was fast approaching when the disease might be expected to appear among my own crew. We needed everything—beds, clothing, better and more food, and medicine. In my desperation I grew cunning. From a piece of wire I found in the possession of one of the men I manufactured a key, with which I could unlock our door.

I knew it only allowed me to enter the outside corridor, but even that circumstance I believed I could use to our advantage. Our turnkey was in the habit of communicating with us by a small opening in the door. In fact, the door had been thrown wide open but once since we had entered the prison—the day we had cleaned the room, and then four soldiers, all immunes, had stood in the passageway with loaded muskets to prevent our escape. Usually, however, the attendant came to the door alone.

With this fact in mind, near the noon hour I unlocked the door and waited. As soon as I heard the footsteps of the old man outside, I suddenly threw the door open, and sprang out upon him. He was so surprised I had no difficulty in catching him by the shoulders.

“Now lead me to the office,” I demanded.

“But you mustn’t go there, sir,” he cried in alarm. “I’m told not so much as to let you into the corridor. You’ll give the disease to the officials and the other prisoners.”

“That is just what I propose to do,” I retorted, shaking him as a terrier would a rat. “If we are not given clean beds and clothing and medicine, we’ll tear this building down inch by inch; we’ll scatter the germs of the smallpox on the air. Some of us may die in the attempt, but not until we have infected the whole town. So lead on or I’ll throttle you!”

My loud voice and his equally loud remonstrances reached the ears of the superintendent, as I had intended they should, and he now peeped into the corridor to see what the trouble was. Catching enough of my words to comprehend both my demands and my threats, he called out:

“Don’t come down here, sir! Let the turnkey go, and I’ll do what you say. The things shall be sent you at once.”

I looked doubtfully at him. “I don’t know whether to believe you or not,” I then said slowly.

“I’ll keep my word. I’ll send men at once with the things, and they’ll bring your old ones away, and burn them. Only go back into your room and stay there.”

“I’ll try you this once,” I finally decided, releasing the turnkey. “But mark you, if you fail me, there’ll be the hottest time in this old jail you ever saw. We can get out of the room when we please, and as I said, we may die in the attempt, but it will not be until we have exposed lots of you to the foul disease from which we are suffering,” and I went back into the room.

He kept his word in part. The clean beds and clothing were brought, but we received no medical care or supplies, and so the next morning I repeated that part of my demand.

“The superintendent told me to tell you that he was trying to find a physician for you,” the attendant said tremblingly, “but so far every one in town has refused to come here.”

Another week passed. Eight more of the lads had ended their sufferings, and seven new cases of the disease had developed—among them three of my own men: Midshipman LeMoyne, Quartermaster Mohyes, and Elias Bowden, an old sailor.

Of the original prisoners—those in the room at our coming—there were only six surviving, so terrible had been the ravages of the scourge among them. Would there be as great a loss among my crew? I feared it, and though at that time of my life I was not much given to prayer, I now prayed:

“O, Lord, spare my men. Send us help in some way. We are in sore need.”

Over and over again I repeated the words, and in some way they gave me great comfort. I felt the help was coming, but I acknowledge it came in a way I little expected. The next morning there were hurried feet along our corridor, then the door suddenly swung back, and the funniest little Frenchman I ever saw popped in.

Short and fat, and dressed in the height of fashion, he bowed repeatedly first to one, then to another of us, all the while talking in a strange mixture of good French and poor English. Between it all we made out that he was Doctor Jean Vignor, who had landed in the town the previous day. Learning by the merest accident of our situation, he had deemed it a great privilege to volunteer his services for our relief. The prison authorities had consented, and there he was to take the cases in hand.

“The leetlepox is nothing,” he declared with a majestic wave of the hand. “I have the remedy to cure, and the remedy to stop it;” and then he began to examine his patients.

He went from one to the other, nodding his head approvingly to some, and shaking his head seriously at others, and administering medicine to all. When the round was made, he came to me, whom he seemed to recognize as chief, saying:

“I cure him, and him, and him, and him,” pointing out the men as he spoke; “him and him and him I no cure.”

With a heavy heart I noticed that the three whom he had designated as beyond the reach of his healing powers were my own comrades. He now did what seemed to me a strange thing. He made every well man among us march up before him, and lancing a place in the arm he rubbed in a thick fluid which he took from a small vial in his case.

“You have not the pox now, or else have it light,” he explained. “My friend Doctor Jenner of London is what you call experimenting with it. Some day it will make him famous. He calls it vaccine.”

I now know he had vaccinated us—a common thing today, and a discovery which, as the Frenchman predicted, has made Doctor Jenner’s name well known the world over—but we had never heard of the process before, and could not appreciate its value then as we did a little later.

So droll was our new friend that he cheered our hearts; so well did he seem to understand the dread disease with which he battled that he inspired our confidence; so strong was his influence with the prison authorities that he secured from them whatever he felt his patients needed; so completely did he transform our prison life that it seemed as though the sun had come out from the thick clouds and was sending its healing beams upon us. The only sadness that came to me while he was with us was the death of the three comrades whose cases he had at the very outset pronounced incurable. Even then he did all he could to comfort me, and obtained permission from the officials for me to accompany them to and mark their graves.

Of the remainder of our crew three did not have the smallpox at all—William Goss, Richard Webber, and myself—due, Doctor Vignor said, to the great sores which formed upon our arms. The others had the disease, but so lightly they were scarcely indisposed.

“It’s the vaccine,” declared the physician.

“Then you should proclaim your remedy to the world,” I insisted.

He shook his head. “That is my friend’s work,” he explained. “He told me of this, and I will not steal his honor. In due time he will give it to the world.”[A]

In a month the last case of the disease had disappeared, and our room had been thoroughly cleansed and fumigated.

“It’s time for me to go,” our good friend now announced, “and I wish I could take you all with me.” Then lowering his voice he added:

“I go to your country to be a surgeon in your army. I’ll tell them of you, and have them arrange an exchange.”

About the first of June I thought he had accomplished his desire, for a British officer came to our room, and looking us all over, asked our names, and the station in which we had served. Then he said:

“Arthur Dunn, William Goss, and Richard Webber are to come with me.”

“Are you sure that is all who are to go?” I questioned, reluctant to leave a single man behind.

“It is all who are to go now,” he replied curtly. “The others may be sent for later.”

Thus reassured we, the fortunate three as we thought, bade our comrades good-bye, and with exultant hearts followed the officer from the room. Once in the street, he led us down to the wharf where a yawl was in waiting.

“Get in,” he commanded, and, still thinking that we were to be taken to some vessel where our exchange was to be effected, we obeyed with alacrity.

The men at the oars pulled us off towards a large frigate well out in the harbor. Soon we were where I could obtain a good view of her.

“The Saint George!” I exclaimed, recognizing the frigate on which I had served as a midshipman before the war with the colonies. Then, too, like a flash it dawned upon me that my comrades and myself were not to be exchanged; but were to be pressed into the English naval service.