y coast-fever fell upon them, and they shivered, and burned, and
groaned, and raved, and leaped into holes, or rolled into camp fires.
The Colonel died early, and the Naval Captain followed him; none stood
upon the order of their going; but man followed man, as in a funeral, to
the grave, until there was no grave to go to. The hand of the Lord
was stretched out against them; and never would one have come back
to England, out of more than five hundred who landed, except for the
manhood and vigour of a seaman, Captain Southcombe, of the transport
Gwalior.

This brave and sensible man had been left with his ship lying off to be
signalled for, in case of mishap, while his consort and the frigate were
despatched in advance to a creek, about twenty leagues westward, where
the land-force triumphant was to join them. Captain Southcombe, with
every hand he could muster, traced the unfortunate party inland, and
found them led many leagues in the wrong direction, lost among quagmires
breathing death, worn out with vermin, venom, and despair, and hemmed
in by savages lurking for the night, to rush in upon and make an end of
them. What need of many words? This man, and his comrades, did more than
any other men on the face of this earth could have done without British
blood in them. They buried the many who had died without hope of the
decent concealment which our life has had, and therefore our death longs
for; they took on their shoulders, or on cane wattles, the many who had
made up their minds to die, and were in much doubt about having done it,
and they roused up and worked up by the scruff of their loose places the
few who could get along on their own legs. And so, with great spirit,
and still greater patience, they managed to save quite as many as
deserved it.

Because, when they came within signal of the Gwalior, Captain
Southcombe, marching slowly with his long limp burdens, found ready on
the sand the little barrel, about as big as a kilderkin, of true and
unsullied Stockholm pitch, which he had taken, as his brother took
Madeira, for ripeness and for betterance, by right of change of climate.
With a little of this given choicely and carefully at the back of every
sick man's tongue, and a little more spread across the hollow of his
stomach, he found them so enabled in the afternoon that they were glad
to sit up in the bottom of a boat, and resign themselves to an All-wise
Providence.

Many survived, and blessed Captain S