they buried us.
Swinburne, the quarter-master, was in my watch, and as he had been long
in the West Indies, I used to obtain all the information from him that I
could. The old fellow had a secret pleasure in frightening me as much
as he could. "Really, Mr Simple, you ax so many questions," he would
say, as I accosted him while he was at his station at the _conn_, "I
wish you wouldn't ax so many questions, and make yourself uncomfortable
--'steady so'--'steady it is;'--with regard to Yellow Jack, as we calls
the yellow fever, it's a devil incarnate, that's sartain--you're well
and able to take your allowance in the morning, and dead as a herring
'fore night. First comes a bit of a head-ache--you goes to the doctor,
who bleeds you like a pig--then you go out of your senses--then up comes
the black vomit, and then it's all over with you, and you go to the land
crabs, who pick your bones as clean and as white as a sea elephant's
tooth. But there be one thing to be said in favour of Yellow Jack, a'ter
all. You dies _straight,_ like a gentleman--not cribbled up like a
snow-fish, chucked out on the ice of the river St Lawrence, with your
knees up to your nose, or your toes stuck into your arm-pits, as does
take place in some of your foreign complaints; but straight, quite
straight, and limber, like a _gentleman_. Still Jack is a little
mischievous, that's sartain. In the Euridiscy we had as fine a ship's
company as was ever piped aloft--'Steady, starboard, my man, you're
half-a-pint off your course;'--we dropped our anchor in Port Royal, and
we thought that there was mischief brewing, for thirty-eight sharks
followed the ship into the harbour, and played about us day and night. I
used to watch them during the night watch, as their fins, above water,
skimmed along, leaving a trail of light behind them; and the second
night I said to the sentry abaft, as I was looking at them smelling
under the counter--'Soldier,' says I, 'them sharks are mustering under
the orders of Yellow Jack,' and I no sooner mentioned Yellow Jack, than
the sharks gave a frisky plunge, every one of them, as much as to say,
'Yes, so we are, d----n your eyes.' The soldier was so frightened that
he would have fallen overboard, if I hadn't caught him by the scruff of
the neck, for he was standing on the top of the taffrail. As it was, he
dropped his musket over the stern, which the sharks dashed at from every
quarter, making the sea look like fire--and he had it