The Isle of Devils

by Craig Janacek

  I took them, and then shook my head in ongoing confusion. “But how can I just go to Bermuda? The medical board…”

  “Old chap, I am the medical board here in Cape Town.” With that Parthian shot, he left me in order to resume his rounds on his other patients, whom he had neglected in order to reminisce with me.

  After contemplating this for a short while, I finally acquiesced to his wisdom, and wrote the note, which was duly dispatched. Who was I to complain of a chance to see my brother again after ten long years? Over the next three days I continued to grow stronger, and by the time I was to be discharged to my ship, I was able to amble around the wards with the aid of the colonel’s Penang lawyer. On the day of my departure, Jackson kindly took time from his schedule in order to accompany me down to the docks.

  “Thank you for everything, Jackson!” I said warmly.

  “Of course, old chap! It was my greatest pleasure. I should let you know that I plan to retire soon from this business myself. I have met a nice lady, Miss Olive Sanford, whose father is a captain in the Rhodesian police. We have come to an understanding. She has done me the honor of accepting me as a husband in prospective. Once I can obtain my release, we plan to wed and return to London to start up a civil practice,” said he, beaming with joy.

  Although my heart ached for Violet, for whom I had once entertained similar thoughts, I nevertheless covered my feelings as best I could and attempted to be happy for my friend. “My congratulations!” cried I, warmly. “That is most splendid news. Then I hope to see you again very soon, when I complete my convalescence. Where should I call upon you? Cavendish Square? Harley Street?”

  Jackson laughed. “The citadel of medicine? I am hardly so exalted or so flush with capital as to aim to start up a specialty practice on those hallowed streets. I would have to compete with the likes of Sir Jasper Meek, Penrose Fisher, Sir Leslie Oakshott, or any of the other best men in London. No, I am compelled to buy into an old-established general practice with my brother-in-law, Anstruther. His brass plate can be found in the Paddington district, on Crawford Place. You cannot miss the red lamp that shines outside. I assure you that there are many other excellent practices nearby. You could purchase one yourself and set up your own consulting-room for a reasonable rent and furnishing expenses! In fact, according to Anstruther’s last letter, his neighbor old Farquhar is getting on in years and the St. Vitus Dance is preventing him from seeing patients on many days.”

  “I am not so certain of that, Jackson,” said I, my brows knitted. “I think that the public not unnaturally goes on the principle that he who would heal others must himself be whole and looks askance at the curative powers of the doctor whose own case is beyond the reach of his medicines.”

  “Tut, tut,” said he. “You were the best doctor in our class. The public recognize quality. They will advertise your virtues and endeavor to send you every sufferer over whom they have the slightest of influence. You will undoubtedly have clients aplenty.”

  I nodded my head slowly. “I will think on it. I have not yet decided how I will keep myself occupied once I am fully discharged from the Army.” I reached out my hand and shook his heartily.

  And with that, I parted from my old colleague, with every intention of calling upon him after my return to London. Within an hour, I was safely ensconced in my new quarters upon the HMS Malabar, ready to embark upon yet another chapter in my adventurous life. Only the future could show just how sensational it was to be.

  §

  CHAPTER II

  THE MALABAR

  There were certainly no great difficulties in the next stage of my adventure, but I may have been premature in my excitement, as I clearly had little comprehension of the dull monotony that would be the hallmark of that sea voyage. While my time on the Serapis was a bit hazy due to the horrible fevers which had wracked my frame, I distinctly recall that we generally hugged the varied coast, which at least allowed for a tableau of some interest. However, once the Malabar cleared the great harbor of Cape Town, there was little to look upon, excepting only the never-ending crashing waves of the Atlantic’s wide expanse and an occasional great white bird, a gull or an albatross, soaring aloft in the blue heavens.

  One incident of mild curiosity occurred at the last moment prior to the ship departing from the jetty at Prince Alfred Basin. I had already settled my limited effects into my shared cabin, and was taking advantage of the warm breeze in order to enjoy a few solitary moments upon the deck. Rather than gazing out into the open water, of which I knew I would soon be seeing a great amount, I was standing at the dockside bulwark admiring the aptly-named Table Mountain backdrop when a commotion broke out at the bottom of the nearby gangplank. A curious man was arguing with Mr. Moore, the boatswain, who I had recently met upon my embarkation. The stranger was a sturdy, middle-sized fellow, some thirty years of age. He had curly blond-hair, with a thin moustache, and hazel eyes that, combined with a strong masculine face, made him appear quite handsome. He was attired in a dark blue pea-jacket with a sage-colored cravat, which gave him a decidedly nautical appearance, though his stride had more of the infantry to it than would be expected in a true sea-man. He had on well-cut gray trousers and brown leather gaiters that that covered the tops of his elastic-sided boots, and all-in-all seemed a dashing fellow, whose showy dress was in strange contrast with his serious expression. In one hand he carried a Gladstone bag, and with his other he pulled at an Albert chain attached to his gold pocket watch. As they spoke, he glanced at it in an irritated fashion.

  Only snatches of their argument upon the jetty floated up to where I stood. It appeared that the man was vigorous attempting to board the ship, while the boatswain was indicating in lower tones that the Malabar was a troopship.

  “But I must get to Bermuda, and I missed the earlier mail-boat by a fraction of an hour. I cannot wait until next week,” the man insisted.

  The boatswain continued to block the man’s boarding, until the man produced a set of papers from his bag. Mr. Moore perused these documents for a moment, before finally nodding in grudging agreement. He allowed the man to pass, but I noted that Moore did not salute him, as he had upon my boarding earlier that day. I soon lost interest in the matter and saw little of the curiously-hurried fellow upon our voyage.

  As for the ship itself, the HMS Malabar was a fine vessel. Built only fourteen years ago, her iron hull was painted white like her cousins in the Euphrates class, but she seemed slightly smaller than my recollections of the Serapis, though the smell of the sails’ tarred twine baking in the heat of the midday sun was identical. Since my small cabin felt a little close, and having decided that the best way to recover my strength was to perform at least a modicum of exercise every day, I spent several hours slowly pacing her decks until my limbs were weary and stiff. By this method I eventually determined that the ship was roughly three hundred feet long and just shy of fifty feet in breath from port to starboard. She could carry up to twelve hundred troops in a state of relative comfort, at least as gauged by a soldier. The Malabar was propelled by a single screw to what Master Billy later swore was a speed of fourteen knots. A solitary funnel puffed away the black coal smoke from its trunk engine. The barque-rig sail plan of its three masts supplemented the engine’s power from the winds of the Atlantic. A ram bow projected forward from below the waterline, and three small four-pounder guns could be used to repel any undesired attentions. She was named, of course, for the long and narrow coastline of the Indian continent southwest of Bombay, the city where I had disembarked only a few hectic months before. Despite the wounds I had ruefully acquired while on campaign in the East, I still felt that it was a more auspicious appellation than my prior ship, named as it was after a long-forgotten Greco-Egyptian deity.

  Our only ports of call during that lonely crossing to Bermuda were at the infamous isle of St. Helena and later at its far less famous sister, Ascension Island. We did not pause long enough at St. Helena for the troops to disembark, so I contented mysel
f with gazing upon the volcanic island’s barren coast, and forest-covered center. I attempted to secure a view of Longwood House, the former abode of the world’s most famous exile. As far as I knew, the only places in the British Empire that had been given in perpetuity to our rival French government was that house and the nearby Valley of the Willows that had held the former Emperor’s tomb for almost twenty years. Unfortunately, Longwood was far too inland for me to view, even with the aid of my excellent field-glass. Nonetheless, this voyage endowed me with the comprehension of the vast tract of ocean that separated St. Helena from any other lands upon the globe. I finally understood why no loyal patriot had ever endeavored to rescue Napoleon and commence a second Hundred Days and Waterloo. All in all, it seemed a far safer locale than Elba, which a strong swimmer could reach in a day’s outing from Livorno.

  Despite the re-victualing that took place at each isle, after we departed Ascension Island the choice of fare upon the ship grew rapidly worse as we made the long uninterrupted haul from the Old World to the New. The tins of preserved peaches held up fine, but I noted that every day the ship’s cook added a progressively greater amount of curry to the mutton, and I began to wonder if we were destined for an outbreak of some deadly flux. Fortunately, by some agent of providence, my fears proved to be in vain.

  There were various cabin boys assigned to cover particular areas of the ship, and I became acquainted with one of them, whose missions brought him often within my walking grounds. Although I am certain that he must have possessed a surname, the only appellation I ever caught was a simple Billy. He was a bright lad of four and ten years, whose perpetually smudged face blended with his grey eyes and curly black hair. He would spend the day helping the cook in the galley and carrying the curried mutton to the forecastle, running messages throughout the ship, and scrambling up the rigging whenever a line had become caught. He was a harum-scarum, reckless lad, and some of the feats of acrobatics that he performed high up amongst the sails and spars were simply astonishing. If he owed shoes, I was unaware of it, for I only ever observed his blackened naked feet. Although I could never perceive anything else that was officially out of place with Master Billy’s modest uniform, he still somehow managed to affect an air of ragged slouching nonchalance. Only when he was surrounded by his peers, did he make an effort to draw up to his full height, which just barely cleared the others and thereby gave him a sort of unofficial superiority amongst that clan of scarecrows.

  One day I asked him how he found himself at sea. “My father thought I was too high-spirited, the doctor prescribed a year at sea, and here I am,” replied he, simply.

  But he was a fount of information regarding the workings of the ship, as well as its route. As we drew closer to our destination, I began to notice an unpleasant odor drifting off the ocean. I made my way over to the bulwark in order to discover the source of this strange scent, only to find that we were sailing through an enormous patch of a strange brown weed-like substance drifting upon the surface of the waves, which were otherwise a distinctive deep blue color.

  “Whatever could that be?” I pondered aloud to myself.

  At that very moment Master Billy was scurrying by, and he stopped to answer my rhetorical question. “It’s sargassum, Doctor.”

  I frowned at this strange word, and he read my expression clearly, so he elaborated. “It’s a type of seaweed. It congregates in this area of the ocean. It is why we call this the Sargasso Sea, the only ‘sea’ without a shore in the whole wide world.”

  I pondered over this information. “I’ve heard of this area. Is it not dangerous? I’ve read tales of ships being trapped here…”

  Billy laughed delightedly. “Myths, Doctor, myths! It’s true that we can have sudden periods without winds in these latitudes, and perhaps before the days of our engines, when sails alone drove our ships, some may have been becalmed here. But the sargassum itself is no match for a ship like the Malabar, sir.”

  “Ah, yes,” I flushed with discomfiture that the boy should be so much more knowledgeable than me, a ungenerous reaction since he was in his element, and I out of mine. “I suppose that I have been reading too much Coleridge. ‘Water, water everywhere,’ and all that,” said I, forcing a laugh.

  But Billy shook his head again. “Coleridge is not to be trusted, Doctor. The man was an inveterate opium addict. That stuff will drown your life in false dreams.”

  I started in surprise over these sagacious words from this youthful lad. But in the varied ports of call of this ship, he had likely seen even more of the world than I could lay claim to, and sailors were notorious for their vices. I was glad to see that he had already learned a lesson that had made a slave of many older, but certainly not wiser, men.

  Despite Master Billy’s warnings about the inherently untrue nature of some literature, I have always been an omnivorous reader, and that long, monotonous voyage was the perfect situation for me to devour several volumes. I first turned my attention to the recent sea story of the American writer William Clark Russell, entitled The Wreck of the Grosvenor. Although that wonderful tale of adventure and heroism held fast my attention, from the standpoint of a medical man, I determined that the excitement of reading this dangerous nautical adventure while at sea was a poor restorative for my shaken health. Fortunately, our captain and chief mate in no way resembled the brutes of the tale. I then picked up Mr. Collins’ yellow-backed novel The Moonstone. I found it to be highly entertaining, despite the preposterous nature of the convoluted plot.

  After I quickly exhausted my meager library, I was forced to inquire whether any of my companions aboard were in possession of a spare novel. Once again, my young friend Billy proved his usefulness. He had already taken the pulse of the ship, and through his machinations, I was soon introduced to a short and stout, almost burley man by the name of Major Walter Lomax, formerly of the Eighth Foot. Sadly, like me, he had recently been invalided out of the British Army. Although my shoulder continued to ache terribly from time to time, I counted myself most fortunate when contrasted with my new acquaintance, whose entire lower right leg had been amputated, and replaced by a wooden stump. Despite this grim wound, good humor seemed to always play round his mobile, smiling lips, which peered out from under bushy brown side whiskers and a moustache. He was rather closer to forty than thirty, and this showed in his shock of uncontrolled brown hair that was already a little bald in the center. His eyes were an arresting shade of deep blue, and bespoke of an intense inward life, so alert and responsive they were to every question put to him. His face was brown and weather-beaten, the complexion of a man that had lived many years on campaign, yet still attractive in the strong lines of his brow. He continued to wear his scarlet red coat, with only his black trousers modified to accommodate his injury. I quickly discovered that he had been the assistant to the Regimental Adjutant in charge of all of its organization and administration.

  “It is a pleasure to meet a fellow bibliophile, Doctor,” said he with a pleasant mellow voice, once he divined the objectives of my mission. “Not all share our passion.”

  “Indeed,” agreed I, heartily. “It is not clear how I became such a bookworm, as my father was not a great reader.”

  “Well, there we differ,” he laughed. “My father is the head-librarian at the London Library in St. James’s Square. He sent me off to Cambridge, where I continued to study good books in all departments of knowledge. I admit that there I developed an unhealthy hobby of collecting all sorts of obscure volumes.”

  “And yet you joined the Army?” I enquired.

  “I take it you do not hold to the supposition that a love of knowledge and a love for England are mutually exclusive?”

  “Of course not!”

  “‘But dearly was that conquest bought,’ as the words go. I had hoped to rise to become the Regimental Adjutant, but that dream has now been cut short, as the case may be.” He gestured to his missing limb.

  I was a bit taken aback by his grim humor, but pressed on.
“And now?”

  “I have written to my father, and hold every hope that he can find me a position as a sub-librarian under him. Certainly, after the monsoons and jungles of India, I am greatly longing to see the bright green fields and the hedges of England.”

  “I share your feelings,” I replied. “I myself yearn for the glades of the New Forest or the shingle of Southsea.”

  “Well until then,” said he, shaking off his reverie, “I suspect that my trunk contains at least one book that you have not read, and in which you can engross yourself as we await our eventual embarkation upon the jetties of Portsmouth. So what type of literature are you looking for? Perhaps the essays of Thomas Carlyle collected as Heroes and Hero Worship?”

  I smiled. “‘In books lies the soul of the whole Past Time; the articulate audible voice of the Past, when the body and material substance of it has altogether vanished like a dream,’” I quoted. “No, thank you, I have already studied him at university. I was hoping for something perhaps a tad more exciting.”

  “‘What we become depends on what we read after all of the professors have finished with us. The greatest university of all is a collection of books,’” he quoted back to me. “Ah, I have it then. When faced with a dilemma, there is nothing like Pope’s Homer! I have a black-letter edition right here. And it is perfect for our current destination. I have heard that navigating between the treacherous reefs of Bermuda is like sailing between Scylla and Charybdis.”