humours, complexions, and animal spirits. Jack Brimblecombe,
mere pulpit, about its being the visitation of God. Cary, mere
despair, though he jested over it with a smile. Yeo, mere stoic
fatalism, though he quoted Scripture to back the same. Drew,
the master, had nothing to say. His "business was to sail the
ship, and not to cure calentures."

Whereon. Amyas clutched his locks, according to custom;
and at last broke forth--

"Doctor! a fig for your humours and complexions! Can
you cure a man's humours, or change his complexion? Can an
Ethiopian change his skin, or a leopard his spots? Don't shove
off your ignorance on God, sir. I ask you what's the reason of
this sickness, and you don't know. Jack Brimblecombe, don't
talk to me about God's visitation; this looks much more like
the devil's visitation, to my mind. We are doing God's work,
Sir John, and He is not likely to hinder us. So down with the
devil, say I. Cary, laughing killed the cat, but it won't cure
a Christian. Yeo, when an angel tells me that it's God's will
that we should all die like dogs in a ditch, I'll call this God's
will; but not before. Drew, you say your business is to sail
the ship; then sail her out of this infernal poison-trap this very
morning, if you can, which you can't. The mischief's in the
air, and nowhere else. I felt it run through me coming down
last night, and smelt it like any sewer: and if it was not in the
air, why was my boat's crew taken first, tell me that?"

There was no answer.

"Then I'll tell you why they were taken first: because the
mist, when we came through it, only rose five or six feet above
the stream, and we were in it, while you on board were above
it. And those that were taken on board this morning, every
one of them, slept on the main-deck, and every one of them, too,
was in fear of the fever, whereby I judge two things,--Keep as
high as you can, and fear nothing but God, and we're all safe
yet."

"But the fog was up to our round-tops at sunrise this
morning," said Cary.

"I know it: but we who were on the half-deck were not
in it so long as those below, and that may have made the
difference, let alone our having free air. Beside, I suspect the
heat in the evening draws the poison out more, and that when
it gets cold toward morning, the venom of it goes off somehow."

How it went off Amyas could not tell (right in his facts as
he was), for nobody on earth knew, I suppose, at that day;

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