Walt Read Online Free PDF Page B

he realized that, if he did not know what he was trying to accomplish, it was very unlikely for anyone to be able to help him achieve anything. He remembered that he had had an irresistible compulsion to leave the island and that this drive was somehow involved with the Easybeats. Riding along on the San Geronimo did not seem in any way contrary to his current mood, so he reasoned that it must be the appropriate thing to do.
    He became even firmer in this reasoning when he considered his alternatives.
    As has been previously mentioned, in the days following Walt’s rescue by the freighter he was stricken with a severe case of dysentery. The ship’s complement was too small to include a doctor, but the Second Mate had some interest in medicine. He treated Walt as best he could with the limited medical facilities aboard the ship. The Second Mate was a dedicated man and he cursed himself and his ship’s provisioning when Walt did not respond to his treatment. The Second Mate was a kindly man and refrained from cursing Walt for failing to get better.
    There was of course a reason why Walt was not getting better. The Second Mate had assumed that the source of Walt’s intestinal parasites was the tuna. In fact, the microbes that now flourished in Walt’s abdomen had originally come from his boots. They grew in the sun-warmed water of Walt’s boots, which he used for drinking.
    If the Second Mate had had access to a decent medical laboratory, he would have found that the organisms spawned in Walt’s boots were of a completely unknown variety. Thus, Walt’s disease was a truly new thing under the sun.
    If this discovery had been made by the Second Mate, which it was not, several different things could have happened. He could have isolated the parasite, written a scientific paper about it, and been the man of the moment among the world’s medical bacteriology community. Not least among the pleasures of such an activity would have been the honor of naming the newly found organism. No one can say what he might have called the bacterium if he had discovered it. Perhaps he would have named it after Walt. Perhaps he would have named it after a certain woman in Singapore of whom he was fond, and visited without fail every time he sailed there.
    Another thing: if he had capitalized on the discovery of this organism, a discovery which, I must repeat, he did not after all make, he could potentially have made a tremendous amount of money in the process. At that time, the Second Mate believed that he wanted to make a great deal of money, and that doing so would make him happy.
    In what way could a sailor become wealthy from a microbe? There were at least fifteen governments around the world that would have paid dearly for a dysentery bacterium that bred in people’s boots. They would pay even more when they found out that this particular organism was resistant to conventional antibiotic therapy.
    There is of course a second possible outcome to this bacteria scenario. The organism could have run rampant through the crew, killing them all in one of the most unpleasant ways imaginable. Remember that the San Geronimo was still nearly two thousand miles from the nearest shore. She could have drifted for months, a ghost ship and a plague ship both, before being found by anyone.
    It never crossed the Second Mate’s mind that Walt might be carrying a disease which could eradicate all forms of life on the vessel, even the rats that lived in the deepest part of the hold.
    But, again, the Second Mate never learned how drastically Walt’s case of the trots could have changed the course of human history.
    Walt, incidentally, recovered after not too long an illness. The Second Mate was reduced to explaining away Walt’s recovery to his strong constitution and his willingness to undertake bed rest.
    Quite honestly, the Second Mate had absolutely no idea what had in fact cured Walt. Walt had very wisely chosen to tell no one aboard the ship about