At Montevideo, things were better. They _did_ take my remaining sick men
out of the vessel, after two days' delay; my agent procuring a tug,
which towed them in the ship's boat three hundred fathoms astern. In
this way they were taken to Flores Island, where, days and days before,
they had been refused admittance! They were accompanied this time by an
order from the governor of Montevideo, and at last were taken in. Two of
the cases were, by this time, in the favourable change. But the poor old
cook, who stood faithfully by me, and would not desert his old
shipmates, going with them to the Island to care for them to the last,
took the dread disease, died of it, and was there buried, not far from
where he himself had buried his friend Jose, a short time before. The
death of this faithful man occurred on the day that the bark finally
sailed seaward, by the Island. She was in sight from the hospital
window when his phantom ship, that put out, carried him over the bar!
His widow, at Paranagua, I was told, on learning the fate of her
husband, died of grief.
The work of disinfecting the vessel, at Montevideo, after the sick were
removed, was a source of speculation that was most elaborately carried
on.
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