We had now arrived at the place, and the canoe which brought the letter
returned to the fort to tell the commander I had fallen sick.

The sun had not risen above an hour the morning after when the Portuguese
officer came to the spot where we had landed the preceding evening. He was
tall and spare, and appeared to be from fifty to fifty-five years old; and
though thirty years of service under an equatorial sun had burnt and
shrivelled up his face, still there was something in it so inexpressibly
affable and kind that it set you immediately at your ease. He came close up
to the hammock, and taking hold of my wrist to feel the pulse, "I am sorry,
Sir," said he, "to see that the fever has taken such hold of you. You shall
go directly with me," continued he, "to the fort; and though we have no
doctor there, I trust," added he, "we shall soon bring you about again. The
orders I have received forbidding the admission of strangers were never
intended to be put in force against a sick English gentleman."

As the canoe was proceeding slowly down the river towards the fort, the
commander asked with much more interest than a question in ordinary
conversation is asked, where was I on the night of the first of May? On
telling him that I was at an Indian settlement a little below the great
fall in the Demerara, and that a strange and sudden noise had alarmed all
the Indians, he said the same astonishing noise had roused every man in
Fort St. Joachim, and that they remained under arms till morning. He
observed that he had been quite at a loss to form any idea what could have
caused the noise; but now learning that the same noise had been heard at
the same time far away from the Rio Branco, it struck him there must have
been an earthquake somewhere or other.

Good nourishment and rest, and the unwearied attention and kindness of the
Portuguese commander, stopped the progress of the fever and enabled me to