a fight against big odds when, his whole party wounded, he refused to
surrender. He told me later how he had thought he would bleed to death,
and the man who lay next to him was convinced he had a bullet in the
middle of his brain--he could feel it wobbling about there! Just now his
recollections only went so far as to tell of a badly wounded Boer who lay
in the next bed to him when he was convalescent, and how the Boer
insisted on getting up to open the door for him every time he left the
ward, much to his own discomfort.

Otherwise the recollections which survive of South Africa are an
excellent speech made on the expedition by John Xavier Merriman, and the
remark of a seaman who came out to dinner concerning one John, the
waiter, that "he moved about as quick as a piece of sticking-plaster!"

Leaving Simon's Town at daybreak we did magnetic work all day, sailing
out from False Bay with a biggish swell in the evening. We ran southerly
in good weather until Sunday morning, when the swell was logged at 8 and
the glass was falling fast. By the middle watch it was blowing a full
gale and for some thirty hours we ran under reefed foresail, lower
topsails and occasionally reefed upper topsails, and many of us were
sick.

Then after two days of comparative calm we had a most extraordinary gale
from the east, a thing almost unheard of in these latitudes (38° S. to
39° S.). All that we could do was to put the engines at dead slow and
sail northerly as close to the wind as possible. Friday night, September
9, it blew force 10 in the night, and the morning watch was very lively
with the lee rail under water.

Directly after breakfast on Saturday, September 10, we wore ship, and