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 rot and die--that is, there was nothing to do after
the night that followed the first death. On that night, the mate, the
supercargo, the Polish Jew, and four native divers sneaked away in the
large whale boat. They were never heard of again. In the morning the
captain promptly scuttled the remaining boats, and there we were.

That day there were two deaths; the following day three; then it
jumped to eight. It was curious to see how we took it. The natives,
for instance, fell into a condition of dumb, stolid fear. The
captain--Oudouse, his name was, a Frenchman--became very nervous and
voluble. He actually got the twitches. He was a large fleshy man,
weighing at least two hundred pounds, and he quickly became a faithful
representation of a quivering jelly-mountain of fat.

The German, the two Americans, and myself bought up all the Scotch
whiskey, and proceeded to stay drunk. The theory was
beautiful--namely, if we kept ourselves soaked in alcohol, every
smallpox germ that came into contact with us would immediately be
scorched to a cinder. And the theory worked, though I must confess
that neither Captain Oudouse nor Ah Choon were attacked by the disease