perhaps no diplomatist; he was
certainly no lawyer; but he discharged the duties of his office with the
constancy and courage of an old soldier, and these were found
sufficient. He and his wife had no ambition to be the leaders of
society; the consulate was in their time no house of feasting; but they
made of it that house of mourning to which the preacher tells us it is
better we should go. At an early date after the battle of Matautu, it
was opened as a hospital for the wounded. The English and Americans
subscribed what was required for its support. Pelly of the _Lizard_
strained every nerve to help, and set up tents on the lawn to be a
shelter for the patients. The doctors of the English and American ships,
and in particular Dr. Oakley of the _Lizard_, showed themselves
indefatigable. But it was on the de Coetlogons that the distress fell.
For nearly half a year, their lawn, their verandah, sometimes their
rooms, were cumbered with the sick and dying, their ears were filled
with the complaints of suffering humanity, their time was too short for
the multiplicity of pitiful duties. In Mrs. de Coetlogon, and her
helper, Miss Taylor, the merit of this endurance was perhaps to be
looked for; in a man of the colonel's temper, himself painfully
suffering, it was viewed with more surprise, if with no more admiration.
Doubtless all had their reward in a sense of duty done; doubtless, also,
as the days passed, in the spectacle of many traits of gratitude and
patience, and in the success that waited on their efforts. Out of a
hundred cases treated, only five died. They were all well-behaved,
though full of childish wiles. One old gentleman, a high chief, was
seized with alarming symptoms of belly-ache whenever Mrs. de Coetlogon
went her rounds at night: he was after brandy. Others were insatiable
for morphine or opium. A chief woman had her foot amputated under
chloroform. "Let me see my foot! Why does it not hurt?" she cried. "It
hurt so badly before I went to sleep." Siteoni, whose name has been
already mentioned, had his shoulder-blade excised, lay the longest of
any, perhaps behaved the worst, and was on all these grounds the
favourite. At times he was furiously irritable, and would rail upon his
family and rise in bed until he swooned with pain. Once on the balcony
he was thought to be dying, his family keeping round his mat, his father
exhorting him to be prepared, when Mrs. de Coetlogon brought him round
again with brand