The Isle of Devils Read Free Page A

succumbed to the yellow fever, so the good man was at a loss of what to do with a high-spirited young lady. As there were no other close relatives in England, as she grew older, he found that could not simply leave her behind un-chaperoned, and he therefore decided to bring her out to live with him at the base-camp. Unfortunately, Violet’s determined nature inherently forbade her from sitting quietly at home all way gossiping with the wives or daughters of the other officers. And so, against the general’s better judgment, she persuaded him to allow her to volunteer her assistance in succoring the wounded at the base hospital.
     
    Although Violet had spent the majority of her life at her uncle’s estate in Essex, she had quickly adapted to life in the lands of the British Raj. One evening she even showed me the curious pet that she had acquired in Calcutta in order to keep away snakes from her uncle’s home. She leaned over to a fabric-lined shutter-topped basket that she had brought with her. I had briefly imagined that it might contain a bit of home-cooked food, as I was rapidly tiring of the food served by the hospital commissary, and my time spent talking of England with Violet had awakened a strong craving for some oysters and grouse. Therefore, I was much surprised when she instead brought forth a beautiful reddish-brown creature, thin and lithe, with the legs of a stoat, a long, thin nose, and a pair of the finest red eyes that I ever saw in an animal’s head.
     
    “What is it?” I exclaimed.
     
    “Ricky is a mongoose,” she laughingly explained. 
     
    As she elaborated, my esteem for her only grew. She was a remarkable woman to brave both the dangers of life upon the frontier and the horrors of a base-camp hospital. I found myself pondering why she chose to spend so much of her precious time with a crippled surgeon of limited means such as myself. I marveled at her lustrous hair, which took on a wonderful golden glow in the slanting rays of the setting sun. On a keen impulse, I reached out my right arm and drew her to my side, where she came without a hint of demurral. And thus, as the cooler air of twilight descended upon us and the days passed into beautiful moonlit nights, our time together was filled less with pleasant talk and more with exquisite moments of silence.  
     
    Unfortunately, this happy interlude was not destined to last. Just as I was growing stronger and returning to my prior robust health, I was struck down again, this time by one of the many foul fevers that are so prevalent in the Peshawar valley. As I battled the enteric fever, I had little time for thoughts of romance or my fellow comrades, though it was clear that this particular scourge had affected half of the companies in the area, flooding the poor hospital in which I lay prostrate from the paroxysms of intense cramping. As my hectic temperature rose to over a hundred and four degrees, I found myself growing too dizzy to even rise out of bed in order to evacuate the vileness from my innards in the privacy that a man prefers. I could barely keep in enough liquid to hold body and soul together. Although the doctors were too good to say it to my face, my medical knowledge had not deserted me in spite of my febrile state, and I knew that my life was despaired of. As a further cruel blow, during that time the Third Buffs completed their mission for the Afghan campaign and were mobilized back to England, to be replaced by the Royal Munsters. I was left without even a photograph of her to gaze upon, but was too weak to even give words to my dull despair over Violet’s precipitous departure.
     
    Eventually, however, the doctors found a supply of cooling medicine and my naturally vigorous constitution won out over the pestilential flux. As I began to recuperate, I was greatly surprised to be informed that I had a visitor, despite being on the very frontier of the Empire. For a brief moment I imagined that Violet had somehow managed