Jenkin caught cold and was confined
to bed. He was so unchanged in spirit that at first there seemed no
ground of fear; but his great age began to tell, and presently it was
plain he had a summons. The charm of his sailor's cheerfulness and
ancient courtesy, as he lay dying, is not to be described. There he lay,
singing his old sea-songs; watching the poultry from the window with a
child's delight; scribbling on the slate little messages to his wife,
who lay bedridden in another room; glad to have Psalms read aloud to
him, if they were of a pious strain--checking, with an "I don't think we
need read that, my dear," any that were gloomy or bloody. Fleeming's
wife coming to the house and asking one of the nurses for news of Mrs.
Jenkin, "Madam, I do not know," said the nurse; "for I am really so
carried away by the Captain that I can think of nothing else." One of
the last messages scribbled to his wife, and sent her with a glass of
the champagne that had been ordered for himself, ran, in his most
finished vein of childish madrigal: "The Captain bows to you, my love,
across the table." When the end was near, and it was thought best that
Fleeming should no longer go home, but sleep at Merchiston, he broke his
news to the Captain with some trepidation, knowing that it carried
sentence of death. "Charming, charming--charming arrangement," was the
Captain's only commentary. It was the proper thing for a dying man, of
Captain Jenkin's school of manners, to make some expression of his
spiritual state; nor did he neglect the observance. With his usual
abruptness, "Fleeming," said he, "I suppose you and I feel about all
this as two Christian gentlemen should." A last pleasure was secured for
him. He had been waiting with painful interest for news of Gordon and
Khartoum; and by great good fortune a false report reached him that the
city was relieved, and the men of Sussex (his old neighbours) had been
the first to enter. He sat up in bed and gave three cheers for the
Sussex Regiment. The subsequent correction, if it came in time, was
prudently withheld from the dying man. An hour before midnight on the
5th of February, he passed away: aged eighty-four.

Word of his death was kept from Mrs. Jenkin; and she survived him no
more than nine-and-forty hours. On the day before her death she received
a letter from her old friend Miss Bell of Manchester, knew the hand,
kissed the envelope and laid it on her heart; so that she too died upon