The Portuguese captain was daunted then; there is no doubt about that.  He had known of this outbreak of small-pox for two days, had stifled his qualms, and had taken his own peculiar methods of keeping the disease hidden, and securing money profit for his ship.  He had even gone so far as to carry a smile on his dark, oily face, and a jest on his tongue.  But this prospect of being shut up with the disorder till it had run its course inside the walls of the ship, and no more victims were to be claimed, was too much for his nerve.  He fled like some frightened animal to his room, and deliberately set about guzzling a surfeit of neat spirit.

Nilssen, from the bridge, fearful for his credit with the State, his employer, roared out orders, but nobody attended to them.  Mates, quartermasters, Krooboys, had all gone aft so as to be as far as possible from the smitten area; and in the end it was Kettle who went to the forecastle-head, and with his own hands let steam into the windlass and got the anchor.  He stayed at his place.  An engineer and fireman were still below, and when Nilssen telegraphed down, they put her under weigh again, and the older pilot with his own hands steered her across to the quarantine berth.  Then Kettle let go the anchor again, paid out and stoppered the cable, and once more came aft; and from that moment the new regime of the steamer may be said to have commenced.

In primitive communities, from time immemorial, the strongest man has become chieftain through sheer natural selection.  Societies which have been upheaved to their roots by anarchy, panic, or any of these more perfervid emotions, revert to the primitive state.  On this Portuguese ship, authority was smashed into the smallest atoms, and every man became a savage and was in danger at the hands of his fellow savage.

Rabeira had drunk himself into a stupor before the boilers had roared themselves empty through the escapes.  The two mates and the engineers cowered in their rooms as though the doors were a barrier against the small-pox germs.  The Krooboys broached cargo and strewed the decks with their half-naked bodies, drunk on gin, amid a litter of smashed green cases.

Meals ceased.  The Portuguese cook and steward dropped their collective duties from the first alarm; the Kroo cook left the rice steamer because “steam no more lib”; and any one who felt hunger or thirst on board, foraged for himself, or went without satisfying his wants.  Nobody helped the sick, or chided the drunken.  Each man lived for himself alone—­or died, as the mood seized him.

Nilssen took up his quarters at one end of the bridge, frightened, but apathetic.  With awnings he made himself a little canvas house, airy, but sufficient to keep off the dews of night.  When he spoke, it was usually to picture the desolation of one or other of the Mrs. Nilssens on finding herself a widow.  As he said himself, he was a man of very domesticated notions.  He had no sympathy with Kettle’s constantly repeated theory that discipline ought to be restored.