Hideous incidents filled the days and nights as the convict ship sailed southward with her burden of disease and death. The mortality among the convicts was frightful. Weakened and depressed by the long drought, the continuous heat, and the poisonous atmosphere, they succumbed to the fever in its first stages.
The dead were laid in a row on the port side, as they were carried from the hold. Relays of sailors worked at the shrouding and burial. The bodies were wrapped in sail-cloth with a cannon ball tied at the feet. As each corpse was hastily shrouded, it was passed forward, and the ghastly roll was committed to the deep.
There was no time for ceremony; but Mr. Haggett, as often as he could be spared from the hold, stood beside the opening in the rail, where the bodies were launched, and followed each dull plunge with a word of prayer.
"Mr. Sheridan," said Mr. Wyville, as he came from Captain Draper's room on the first night of his illness, "will you take command of the ship until the captain's recovery?"
Sheridan assented; and Mr. Wyville, calling the ship's officers to the poop, instructed them to obey Captain Sheridan as the commander of the vessel.
As soon as Sheridan took command, he spread every inch of canvas the ship could carry, and held her before the wind.
"We shall shake off this fever when we clear the Southern tropics," he said to Mr. Wyville. "The cold wind round the Cape will kill it in an hour."
Captain Draper lay in his stateroom, half comatose, muttering incoherent words in the low delirium of the fever. By his side sat Mr. Wyville, giving him now and again the medicines prescribed.
The sick man's face was a ghastly sight. The offensiveness of the protruding, eyes and cracked lips was hideously exaggerated. And as he lay smouldering in the slow fire of the sickness, he muttered things even more repulsive than his physical appearance.
The female hospital of the ship was filled with sufferers, indeed, the entire hold of the vessel was at once an hospital and charnel-house. There were no regular attendants among the male convicts, those who bad not been attacked waited on those who had, till their own turn came.
In the female compartment, which was separated from the regular hospital, Alice Walmsley had entire charge. Her healthy life enabled her to bear an extraordinary strain; day and night she was ministering to the stricken, and they blessed her with words and looks as she passed from sufferer to sufferer.
The door leading thence to the hospital Sister Cecilia kept locked, and she herself carried the key.
Sister Cecilia stood one day within the hospital, at the door of a small room. Kneeling before her, on the floor, with streaming eyes and upraised hands, as if praying for a life, was a woman, in the grey dress of a convict.
"O, for God's sake let me tend them! O, don't deny me—let me go and wait on the poor sufferers. My heart is breaking when I think that I might be doing some good. Don't refuse—O, don't refuse me. I feel that God would pardon me if I could work out my life caring for others."
It was Harriet Draper who supplicated the nun, and who had besought her for days with the same ceaseless cry. Sister Cecilia would gladly have allowed her to work for the sick, but she feared that Alice would see her. She had been compelled for days to refuse the heartrending petition.
"You shall have your wish," said the nun, this day, with a kind look at Harriet, "but not in the hospital."
"Anywhere, anywhere!" cried Harriet, rising with a wistful face; "only let me tend someone who is sick. I want to do some good."
"Harriet," said Sister Cecilia, "you have told me your unhappy story, and I am sure you wish to be a good woman!"
"I do—God knows I do!" interrupted the unfortunate one.
"As you hope to be forgiven, you must forgive—you must forgive even your husband."
Poor Harriet covered her face in her hands, and made no answer, only moved her head from side to side, as if in pain.
"Harriet, if your husband were on board this ship, sick and dying of the fever, would you not tend him and forgive him before he died?"
Wild-eyed, the woman stared at Sister Cecilia, as if she had not understood the question.
"He is on board—he is dying of the fever—will you not take care of him?"
"Oh—oh!" wailed Harriet, in a long cry, sinking on her knees and clasping Sister Cecilia's dress. "He would drive me away—he would not let me stay there—he does not love me!"
"But you love him—you will tend him, and you will forgive him. Will you not?"
"Yes, I will—I will wait on him day and night, and he shall recover with my nursing."
She dried her weeping eyes, to show the Sister her immediate readiness and calmness.
"Take me to him," she said, with only quivering lips; "let me begin now."
"Come, then" said Sister Cecilia; and she led Harriet Draper to the hatch, and aft to the captain's quarters.
Mr. Wyville rose as Sister Cecilia entered, followed by Harriet. As he did so, the sick man moved, and muttered something, with upraised feeble arm.
With a low sob or cry, Harriet darted past Sister Cecilia, and sank beside the bed. She took the upraised arm and drew it to her breast, and covered the feverish hand with tearful kisses. At the touch, the sick man ceased to wander, and turning his head, seemed to fall at once into a peaceful sleep.
Harriet, seeing this, after her first emotion, turned to Mr. Wyville and Sister Cecilia with a smile of Joy, and, still holding, her husband's arm to her breast, pointed to his restful sleep. They smiled at her in return, though their eyes were brimming with tears.
Sister Cecilia instructed her as to the attendance, and then withdrew, leaving the guilty and unconscious husband in his wife's care. There was joy at least in one heart on board that night. From her low seat beside the bed, Harriet Draper watched his face, murmuring soft and endearing words, and obeying the doctor's instructions to the letter and second.
"He will recover, and he will know me," she whispered to her heart; "I shall win back his love by— being faithful and forgiving."
The climax of the fever would not come till the sixth day and during these days Harriet watched her husband with scarcely an hour's rest. Every hour that passed added to his chance of recovery, as the ship was sailing swiftly towards the cooler latitudes.
One day, while Harriet sat beside the bed, holding the feeble hand, as she loved to do, there came a lucid interval to her husband. She had been murmuring soft words as she kissed his hand, when, looking at his face, she met his eyes fixed upon her. For a moment there came a light of recognition and dismay in his look; but before she could speak his name, or recall his memory the light faded, and he reverted to a state of sluggish delirium.
For the first time since she came to his side, a chill of fear pierced Harriet's heart. For one instant she knew he had seen her. But there was no love in the look of recognition. What if the same cold stare should return on his recovery, and continue?
"God will not let it be" whispered her heart. "When he recovers, he will surely love me as of old!"