Durham, Who Had Nerves Of Steel, Bore His Lot With The Grim Stoicism Which Marked His Character.

But at one time the doctor considered his state so serious that he thought his lordship's family should be informed of it.

Accordingly I wrote to the last Lord Grey, his uncle and guardian, stating that there was little hope of his recovery. Poor Phoca was at once tragic and comic. His medicine had to be administered every, two hours. Each time, he begged and prayed in lacrymose tones to be let off. It was doing him no good. He might as well be allowed to die in peace. If we would only spare him the beastliness this once, on his honour he would take it next time 'like a man.' We were inexorable, of course, and treated him exactly as one treats a child.

At last the crisis was over. Wonderful to relate, all three began to recover. During their convalescence, I amused myself by shooting alligators in the mangrove swamps at Holland Bay, which was within half an hour's ride of the bungalow. It was curious sport. The great saurians would lie motionless in the pools amidst the snake-like tangle of mangrove roots. They would float with just their eyes and noses out of water, but so still that, without a glass, (which I had not,) it was difficult to distinguish their heads from the countless roots and rotten logs around them. If one fired by mistake, the sport was spoiled for an hour to come.

I used to sit watching patiently for one of them to show itself, or for something to disturb the glassy surface of the dark waters. Overhead the foliage was so dense that the heat was not oppressive. All Nature seemed asleep. The deathlike stillness was rarely broken by the faintest sound, - though unseen life, amidst the heat and moisture, was teeming everywhere; life feeding upon life. For what purpose? To what end? Is this a primary law of Nature? Does cannibalism prevail in Mars? Sometimes a mocking-bird would pipe its weird notes, deepening silence by the contrast. But besides pestilent mosquitos, the only living things in sight were humming-birds of every hue, some no bigger than a butterfly, fluttering over the blossoms of the orchids, or darting from flower to flower like flashes of prismatic rays.

I killed several alligators; but one day, while stalking what seemed to be an unusual monster, narrowly escaped an accident. Under the excitement, my eye was so intently fixed upon the object, that I rather felt than saw my way. Presently over I went, just managed to save my rifle, and, to my amazement, found I had set my foot on a sleeping reptile. Fortunately the brute was as much astonished as I was, and plunged with a splash into the adjacent pool.

A Cambridge friend, Mr. Walter Shirley, owned an estate at Trelawny, on the other side of Jamaica; while the invalids were recovering, I paid him a visit; and was initiated into the mysteries of cane-growing and sugar-making.

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