we three pulled--a broiling pull it was
about half way across to Palikandro; still we did come in, pulling an
uncommon good stroke, and I had learned to hang on my oar. L---- had
pressed me to let him take my place; but though I was very tired at
the end of the first quarter of an hour, and then every successive
half hour, I would not give in. I nearly paid dear for my obstinacy,
however; for in the evening I had alternate fits of shivering and
burning."

III

The next extracts, and I am sorry to say the last, are from Fleeming's
letters of 1860, when he was back at Bona and Spartivento, and for the
first time at the head of an expedition. Unhappily these letters are
not only the last, but the series is quite imperfect; and this is the
more to be lamented as he had now begun to use a pen more skilfully, and
in the following notes there is at times a touch of real distinction in
the manner.

"_Cagliari, October 5, 1860._

"All Tuesday I spent examining what was on board the _Elba_, and
trying to start the repairs of the Spartivento land line, which has
been entirely neglected--and no wonder, for no one has been paid for
three months, no, not even the poor guards who have to keep
themselves, their horses and their families, on their pay. Wednesday
morning, I started for Spartivento, and got there in time to try a
good many experiments. Spartivento looks more wild and savage than
ever, but is not without a strange deadly beauty: the hills covered
with bushes of a metallic green with coppery patches of soil in
between; the valleys filled with dry salt mud and a little stagnant
water; where that very morning the deer had drunk, where herons,
curlews, and other fowl abound, and where, alas! malaria is breeding
with this rain. (No fear for those who do not sleep on shore.) A
little iron hut had been placed there since 1858; but the windows had
been carried off, the door broken down, the roof pierced all over. In
it we sat to make experiments; and how it recalled Birkenhead! There
was Thomson, there was my testing-board, the strings of gutta-percha;
Harry P---- even battering with the batteries; but where was my
darling Annie? Whilst I sat, feet in sand, with Harry alone inside the
hut--mats, coats, and wood to darken the window--the others visited
the murderous old friar, who is of the order of Scaloppi, and for whom
I brought a letter from his superior,