middle-aged gentleman of forty-eight, an ex-Member of Parliament, a
church-warden, and an ex-editor, to play at pirates with him, as
though he were ten years old. I pointed out how unusual it was for an
officer in the Coldstream, aged twenty-six, to think even of so
puerile an amusement, but to include a dignified, earnest-minded,
elderly man in the invitation was really an unprecedented outrage. My
justifiable indignation increased when I found that the Guardsman
actually expected me at my age to enact the role of "Carlos, the
Cut-throat of the Caribbean."

Our discussion was interrupted by a violent shivering fit which seized
me, accompanied by a sudden, racking headache. The swamps had done
their work on the previous evening. By night-time I was in a high
fever, and when we returned to Kingston next day by train, I, with a
temperature up to anywhere, was hardly conscious of where I was or
what I was doing.

I was put to bed at King's House, and the fever rapidly turned to
malarial gastritis. The distressing feature connected with this
complaint is that it is impossible to retain any nourishment whatever.
An attack of fever is so common in hot countries that this would not
be worth mentioning, except as an example of the curious way in which
Nature sometimes prompts her own remedy. The doctor tried half the
drugs in the pharmacopoeia on me, the fever simply laughed at them
all. Nothing could have exceeded the kindness of Sir Alexander and
Lady Swettenham during my illness, but as I could take no nourishment
of any kind, I naturally grew very weak. The doctor urged me to cancel
my passage and await the next steamer to England, but something told
me that as soon as I felt the motion of a ship under me, the
persistent sickness would stop. I also felt sure that were I to remain