On both sides, between the fore and main
shrouds, guys had been stretched, just low enough for the
fore-boom to swing clear; and from each of these guys at least
fifty bunches of bananas were suspended.
It promised to be a messy passage, even if we did make it in the
two or three days that would have been required if the southeast
trades had been blowing fresh. But they weren't blowing fresh.
After the first five hours, the trade died away in a dozen
gasping fans. The calm continued all that night and the next
day--one of those glaring, glossy calms when the very thought of
opening one's eyes to look at it is sufficient to cause a
headache. The second day a man died, an Easter Islander, one of
the best divers that season in the lagoon. Smallpox, that is what
it was, though how smallpox could come on board when there had
been no known cases ashore when we left Rangiroa is beyond me.
There it was, though, smallpox, a man dead, and three others down
on their backs. There was nothing to be done. We could not
segregate the sick, nor could we care for them. We were packed
like sardines. There was nothing to do but die--that is, there
was nothing to do after the night that followed the first death.
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