Oh, one got used to yaws, quoth Tom Butler.They were never really serious until they had eaten deep into the flesh.Then they attacked the walls of the arteries, the arteries burst, and there was a funeral.Several of the natives had recently died that way ashore.But what did it matter? If it wasn't yaws, it was something else in the Solomons.
I noticed that from this moment Martin displayed a swiftly increasing interest in his own yaws.Dosings with corrosive sublimate were more frequent, while, in conversation, he began to revert with growing enthusiasm to the clean climate of Kansas and all other things Kansan.Charmian and I thought that California was a little bit of all right.Henry swore by Rapa, and Tehei staked all on Bora Bora for his own blood's sake; while Wada and Nakata sang the sanitary paean of Japan.
One evening, as the Snark worked around the southern end of the island of Ugi, looking for a reputed anchorage, a Church of England missionary, a Mr.Drew, bound in his whaleboat for the coast of San Cristoval, came alongside and stopped for dinner.Martin, his legs swathed in Red Cross bandages till they looked like a mummy's, turned the conversation upon yaws.Yes, said Mr.Drew, they were quite common in the Solomons.All white men caught them.
"And have you had them?" Martin demanded, in the soul of him quite shocked that a Church of England missionary could possess so vulgar an affliction.
Mr.Drew nodded his head and added that not only had he had them, but at that moment he was doctoring several.
"What do you use on them?" Martin asked like a flash.
My heart almost stood still waiting the answer.By that answer my professional medical prestige stood or fell.Martin, I could see, was quite sure it was going to fall.And then the answer--O blessed answer!
"Corrosive sublimate," said Mr.Drew.
Martin gave in handsomely, I'll admit, and I am confident that at that moment, if I had asked permission to pull one of his teeth, he would not have denied me.
All white men in the Solomons catch yaws, and every cut or abrasion practically means another yaw.Every man I met had had them, and nine out of ten had active ones.There was but one exception, a young fellow who had been in the islands five months, who had come down with fever ten days after he arrived, and who had since then been down so often with fever that he had had neither time nor opportunity for yaws.
Every one on the Snark except Charmian came down with yaws.Hers was the same egotism that Japan and Kansas had displayed.She ascribed her immunity to the pureness of her blood, and as the days went by she ascribed it more often and more loudly to the pureness of her blood.Privately I ascribed her immunity to the fact that, being a woman, she escaped most of the cuts and abrasions to which we hard-working men were subject in the course of working the Snark around the world.I did not tell her so.You see, I did not wish to bruise her ego with brutal facts.Being an M.D., if only an ******* one, I knew more about the disease than she, and I knew that time was my ally.But alas, I abused my ally when it dealt a charming little yaw on the shin.So quickly did I apply antiseptic treatment, that the yaw was cured before she was convinced that she had one.Again, as an M.D., I was without honour on my own vessel;and, worse than that, I was charged with having tried to mislead her into the belief that she had had a yaw.The pureness of her blood was more rampant than ever, and I poked my nose into my navigation books and kept quiet.And then came the day.We were cruising along the coast of Malaita at the time.
"What's that abaft your ankle-bone?" said I.
"Nothing," said she.
"All right," said I; "but put some corrosive sublimate on it just the same.And some two or three weeks from now, when it is well and you have a scar that you will carry to your grave, just forget about the purity of your blood and your ancestral history and tell me what you think about yaws anyway."It was as large as a silver dollar, that yaw, and it took all of three weeks to heal.There were times when Charmian could not walk because of the hurt of it; and there were times upon times when she explained that abaft the ankle-bone was the most painful place to have a yaw.I explained, in turn, that, never having experienced a yaw in that locality, I was driven to conclude the hollow of the instep was the most painful place for yaw-culture.We left it to Martin, who disagreed with both of us and proclaimed passionately that the only truly painful place was the shin.No wonder horse-racing is so popular.
But yaws lose their novelty after a time.At the present moment of writing I have five yaws on my hands and three more on my shin.
Charmian has one on each side of her right instep.Tehei is frantic with his.Martin's latest shin-cultures have eclipsed his earlier ones.And Nakata has several score casually eating away at his tissue.But the history of the Snark in the Solomons has been the history of every ship since the early discoverers.From the "Sailing Directions" I quote the following:
"The crews of vessels remaining any considerable time in the Solomons find wounds and sores liable to change into malignant ulcers."Nor on the question of fever were the "Sailing Directions" any more encouraging, for in them I read:
"New arrivals are almost certain sooner or later to suffer from fever.The natives are also subject to it.The number of deaths among the whites in the year 1897 amounted to 9 among a population of 50."Some of these deaths, however, were accidental.
Nakata was the first to come down with fever.This occurred at Penduffryn.Wada and Henry followed him.Charmian surrendered next.I managed to escape for a couple of months; but when I was bowled over, Martin sympathetically joined me several days later.
Out of the seven of us all told Tehei is the only one who has escaped; but his sufferings from nostalgia are worse than fever.