The Isle of Devils

by Craig Janacek

  It had been delivered by a little coal-black negress, about thirteen years of age, if I wagered a guess. She flashed a set of bright white teeth at me as she grinned at my amazement of the odd meal she had set down. I will not pretend that I was prepared to eat codfish and potatoes, with a side of bananas, avocado, a boiled egg, and sautéed onions with bacon. But I must admit that I relished every last bite, even mopping it up with a hunk of fresh bread smeared with butter from the dish resting on my table. All in all, it was a satisfying feast. Once it was concluded, I saturated myself with the news of the day, and by the time I pushed my chair back from the table, the rest of the dining room had cleared out.

  Boyle looked up from his accounts and hurried over to me. “Are you headed out, Doctor?”

  “Indeed. I cannot simply sit around all day. My first instinct is always to do something energetic. Since the weather seems exceptionally genial, I thought I would take a ramble through town.”

  “Well, since you are recently returned from the East, I likely shouldn’t have to warn you about the climate of Bermuda. But it’s going to be a hot and humid day.”

  I shrugged unconcernedly. “After my term of service in full kit under the blazing sun of India and Afghanistan, I have learned to tolerate heat much better than cold. A thermometer of ninety degrees is no hardship.”

  He nodded sagely. “Still, it is always wise to have an extra swill of water before you head out.”

  “Thank you, Boyle. That is sensible advice.”

  “It’s my pleasure, Doctor. Here is some of our finest water.” He handed me the strangest goblet I have ever witnessed in my life. It was rounded and made of a brown wood-like substance. I hesitated before raising it to my lips.

  “You look puzzled, doctor,” he said, seriously.

  “Whatever is this cup made from?” I spluttered.

  “Hah!” he finally laughed. “That is my little joke that I like to play on first time visitors to the isle. It is carved from one of the fruit-shells of a calabash tree, which grow in profusion here. A countryman of yours, a Mister Thomas Moore, wrote poems under one such tree while residing in Bermuda.”

  “Moore? An Irishman, I think,” I said as I took his strange cup and drank the water. “Thank you, Mr. Boyle.”

  With that I took up my hat and stick and set out for a stroll of the quaint little village of St. George’s. I have always been fond of wandering the streets of any town in which I find myself. Not only would a walk be good for the stiffness in my injured leg, but it would give me a chance to watch the every-changing kaleidoscope of life as it ebbed and flowed through the streets of this small island.

  It was a perfect day when I exited the hotel through the dining-room side-entrance onto what I determined was called the Duke of York Street. Turning to my right, I rounded the hotel and strolled down to a small square. It was bounded on three sides by a multitude of two-story brightly-colored buildings, and on the south by the water, where a wooden bridge led over to a trio of small offshore islands. By the bridge, a group of boats were tied up and a significant commotion was disturbing the otherwise tranquil air of the town. I limped my way over to the growing crowd in order to ascertain what was happening.

  Despite my good height, the only thing that I could make out at the center of the crowd were two inebriated men standing over a large pale white lump, streaked with black. Even from my distance, I noted a strong fecal smell, which unfortunately reminded me of the uncontrolled loosenings that on occasion transpire upon the battlefield. “Whatever could that be?” I wondered aloud to myself.

  I had not expected anyone to answer, but to my surprise a man standing next to me replied. I judged him to be in his late twenties, a small wiry, sunburnt man, with brisk, brown eyes and a trim beard. He wore a bowler hat, a brown frock-coat, and black gaiters over square-toe boots.

  “Ambergris,” said the man, nodding.

  “Truly? Whale vomit? The stuff they use to make perfumes?”

  “Aye,” the man said. “Two fishermen found it this morning on Horseshoe Bay, and lugged it back here, perhaps hoping to avoid the tax collectors at Hamilton. But they started celebrating too early, and now the whole town knows about it.”

  “I’ve heard that it is valuable?” I ventured.

  “Valuable? You could say that,” said the man dryly. “That there lump looks to be a good forty stone. They might get five thousand sterling for it, if they are smart about things, though the Queen will get her share.”

  I was staggered by this sum and stared at the man open-mouthed.

  “Of course, that little lump is nothing compared to the famous haul of Carter, Waters, and Chard,” the man continued.

  “Who?”

  He raised his eyebrows. “Don’t tell me you’ve never heard of the Three Kings of Bermuda?”

  “Not that I can recollect,” I admitted.

  “Well, it’s a bit of an old tale, I suppose.” He took a cherry-wood pipe from his pocket and proceeded to light it before continuing. “It goes back to the earliest days of Bermuda, when Sir George Somers had crashed the Sea Venture upon its reefs. He managed to rebuild two barks, the Deliverance and the Patience, out of its timbers supplemented with cedar from the island, and was ready to set forth to complete his mission to the Virginia Colony at Jamestown. Amongst his men were two, Christopher Carter and Edward Waters, who were guilty of capital offences, but before they could be shot, they escaped into the deeper reaches of the isle. Somers departed without them, and upon his return the two criminals convinced a third seaman, Edward Chard, to desert and join them. Thus, for almost two years, until the Plough arrived with Governor Moore, these three men ‘ruled’ Bermuda, sovereigns over no one but themselves! One day, as the legend goes, while searching the rocks for turtles to eat, they came across a great mass of ambergris. It was one of the largest ever known, weighing over eighty pounds. This was worth a great fortune, and if only they had a way to carry it to London or Paris, they truly could have lived like lords. But as it was, they had no way to leave the island until the Governor arrived, and he promptly confiscated the treasure of the three ‘kings’ for the Somers Isles Company. There was an American who even wrote a little story about the Three Kings.” The man finally decided to introduce himself. “By the way, I am Harry Dunkley, the constable of this town.”

  I grasped his outstretched hand and identified myself in turn. “This looks like a very nice town. It must be a pleasant job, Constable.”

  “Well, Doctor, it has its moments. To be honest, this post was just established last year, and I’m the first man to hold the job. Before the Police Establishment Act, things were much looser round here, with only part-time men filling the post. Of course, I’ll admit that the town is much quieter now that the American war is over. I remember when I was a lad President Lincoln erected his huge naval blockade to strangle Southern supplies, and awoke a great ingenuity in my fellow islanders. There had long been trading ties between us and ports like Wilmington and Charleston. The swift, low-profile steamers of Bermuda refueled here on the run from England and Europe to the Southern ports, eluding Union gunboats. There they picked up ‘white gold’ to bring back to the hungry textiles mills of Europe.”

  “White gold?”

  “Cotton bales, Doctor. Fortunes were made, lives were lost, and St. George’s was the capital of a boisterous time. The streets were awash with woozy sailors duking it out, dolled-up ladies of the night, the enigmatic, the shifty, the straight-laced, and those up to no good. But with the South’s eventual surrender fifteen years ago, the boom times were over. Debts and destitution replaced the short-lived surge in the economy.”

  “Surely it must be utterly peaceful now then? How can one get up to much mischief here?” I inquired.

  “You would be surprised. It was only two short years ago that poor Anna Skeeters disappeared. They eventually pulled her body from Chub Cut, tied to a boulder. I suppose it wasn’t too hard to pin this upon her husband, since he was a real viol
ent wreck of a man once he got up in his Bibbey.”

  “Bibbey?” I asked, unfamiliar with the term.

  “The curse of the colony! Since time immemorial, mankind has applied an incredible amount of industry to the task of making spirits that will render themselves senseless. Bibbey is the island’s version of this strong swill, made from fermenting and distilling the sap of the local Palmetto. Its use has landed my good fellows in the stocks, the pillory, the whipping-post, and of course, gaol. There are laws in Bermuda against the use of the Palmetto for making Bibbey, not only due to its riotous effects, but because it is a valuable plant used for building, thatching, cordage, hats, baskets, and a thousand other necessities.”

  “A type of whisky, then?”

  “More akin to rum,” he clarified.

  “But the murderer?”

  “Ah yes, well, Edward Skeeters eventually confessed to his crime and swung right over yonder on Gallows Island.” He pointed to a small island offshore. It was felt that an appropriate tombstone for Mr. Skeeters would be the very stone with which he drowned his wife, and so it was lashed to his body and he was sunk near Moses Island in the Great Sound. It is said that Edward does not rest easy, and on violent nights, when the lightning is flashing, you can sometimes see his spirit leaping upon the rocks of that solitary isle.”

  I smiled at the conclusion to his tale. “Surely you jest, Constable.”

  He raised his eyebrows and nodded his head slowly. “There are stranger things in heaven and earth…”

  “Shakespeare, Hamlet,” I immediately answered.

  “Indeed.” Dunkley nodded. “Well, it’s been a pleasure, Doctor. I hope you enjoy your stay at St. George’s and that it is a quiet one.”

  “I am certain it will be. I suspect that this great fortune of ambergris will be the most exciting thing that happens while I am here.”

  With that we parted and, in high spirits, I made my way back to the square. Passing a two-story building with flanking staircases, which I reckoned to be the Town Hall, I strolled along a small brick-paved lane. This was lined with handsome houses, separated from the street itself by low, sunbaked walls, mottled with lichens and topped with moss, the sort of walls what might have stood for a hundred years. The lane eventually led up a slight incline to a venerable but fine two-story Italianate-style white building. This had two cross-shaped gun slits in the upper floor, and a welcoming-arms staircase leading up to it. A man was resting upon the stairs, clearly a local by his manner of dress. I engaged him in a few moments of conversation, and he informed me that this was the former State House, the oldest stone building on the island, constructed with mortar made from turtle oil and lime. The governor of the time felt that Bermuda had a similar climate to Italy and directed that the building should be completed in that style, hoping to commence a general trend for the isle. However, the poor deluded man forgot that Italy was generally not beset by hurricanes, and thus the flat-topped roofs that flourish in Tuscany simply would not serve in stormy Bermuda. Rain water collected and seeped through the porous limestone blocks of the roof, and ensured that all future houses on the isle would adopt the curious white-stepped roof now typical of the charming island architecture. Once the capital moved to Hamilton in 1815, there was no real use for a State House in St. George’s and thus the entire building was rented out to the Scottish Freemasons for the absurd sum of one peppercorn per year.

  I thanked the man for the history lesson and then continued on my way, angling down to the crooked Duke of York Street. Wishing to inspect the church that I had spied from the window of my room, I turned to the left and headed in its direction. Once there, it was a significant climb up a set of some thirty or so brick steps to the admirable grey and white church itself. Since the full heat of the day was upon us, I had hoped to escape it temporarily in the cool that is usually found in an old church, but to my dismay the building was shut up tight. I therefore determined to find some shade in the graveyard that wrapped around the back of the church, and therefore followed the path off to my left. I was immediately struck by both the age of the graves, as well as the terrible power of the weather of this land, for many of the gravestones had been completely eroded, the names of their occupants lost to the ravages of time.

  I eventually found a bench tucked under a massive tree and availed myself of its comforts to rest my leg, which had begun to throb mercilessly. Ignoring the pain, I surveyed my surroundings, and though some might call them morbid, in the bright light of day they seemed to me to radiate a sense of peace. I continued to bask in the sun and I found myself silently thanking Jackson, who had so kindly engineered my respite here. I decided that I was quite pleased with this little island of ancient comfort. My thoughts drifted and I am uncertain how long exactly I remained on that bench, when I was finally stirred from my rest by the sound of approaching voices. At first the words were indistinct, but as they drew closer, I was certain that I heard the word ‘doctor,’ which of course attracted my attention.

  “Well, when it’s over, he can finally rest,” a voice said, a hint of a slight foreign accent upon on his tongue.

  “That will be a joyous day,” a British voice replied warmly.

  And then the owners of the voices strolled into my view from a small lane that led into the back of the graveyard. I have a quick eye for faces and given the smallness of the town, I was not surprised to note two of my fellow lodgers at the Globe Hotel. The second voice obviously belonged to the Herculean man that I had encountered the previous evening, while the first had plainly emanated from the Italian that had been eating with Senhor Cordeiro this very morning. Upon seeing me, they immediately ceased their conversation. Both men wore hats against the brightness of the sun, and it may have been a trick of the shadows on their faces, but neither appeared pleased to see me sitting in the graveyard. If indeed such emotions had been present, they were quickly replaced by pleasant, non-committal smiles. Both men tipped their hats at me as they passed by my bench, but neither spoke again. I noted that the giant man walked with a hint of a limp, which told my surgeon’s eyes that he was suffering from a wounded knee.

  After they had passed from my view around the east end of the church, I decided that I had spent enough time resting my leg and resumed my walk. By coincidence, I followed the path that the two men had taken, since I had yet to explore in that direction. But I did not overtake them, as my attention was soon distracted by one of the larger gravestones in the yard, its relative newness plainly evident by the fact that the carved words were still clear. They read: “IN MEMORY OF DOCTOR C. RYAN, PRINCIPAL MEDICAL OFFICER TO HIS MAJESTY’S FORCES, WHO FELL ONE OF THE FIRST VICTIMS TO THE EPIDEMIC FEVER OF 1819, IN THE BLOOM OF LIFE.”

  I paused and rubbed my throbbing left shoulder. A myriad of thoughts washed over me. I was grateful that I had escaped Maiwand with but the two wounds, my life intact. At the same time, I reflected on the grim toll that the spread of the glory of the British Empire took upon its brave lads. When they survived their wounds, they still might be struck down by a fever, as I had almost been. And despite all the learning of our age, many doctors still paid the ultimate price for their intimate treatment of their pestilential patients.

  I shook my head at these somber thoughts and decided that tea-time was nigh. That was certain to lift my spirits. I therefore turned my steps back to the Globe Hotel, and upon entering the dining-room from the side entrance, I was heartened to see a kettle boiling furiously on the spirit lamp. We may have been over three thousand miles from London, but as long as the sun shone, our English traditions would remain. Mrs. Foster clearly ran a tight ship at her hotel.

  When the good lady had brought me my cup, in order to make conversation, I asked her how the hotel had come by its name.

  She paused and raised a hand to cover her mouth. A hint of sadness appeared in her eyes. After a pause, she lowered her hand and replied. “My husband Ralph decided upon the name. Like myself, he was born in Bermuda, but he always wanted to be a
n actor. There was no call for such a thing on this small isle, and he dreamed of one day moving to London and taking to the stage. But eventually, the fires of youth died down, as they always do, and he abandoned that thought in favor of something much more practical. Any yet, whenever given the chance, a glimmer of his first love would occasionally break forth, and so he named his hotel after the greatest theater in the world. By so doing, it was almost if every moment that he spent within these walls, he was actually far away in Southwark, walking its timbers. When he passed, I kept the name to honor his memory.”

  “I am sorry to have raised a painful subject, madam.”

  She smiled bravely, and dabbed at her eyes with a kerchief. “There is no blame, Doctor. You could not have known. And it was a long time ago.”

  “This hotel is hardly the only Bermudian connection with Shakespeare, of course!” a voice interjected, with the queer accent of one who hailed from one of our colonies in the Pacific. I had spent enough time in Australia as a lad to recognize this tone anywhere I encountered it.