"I will do all that you and the doctor tells me, if you'll only make me well again." "That's my brave boy," she murmured softly, smoothing my poor hairless head with her gentle hand in such a caressing way that it made me feel drowsy, and in another minute I had dropped off into a sound sleep.

I did not wake again until some hours afterwards, when I was so refreshed and hungry that I was able to demolish a large basin of jelly-like chicken broth with some thin toast, which did me much good.
From that time I gradually got better; but my recovery was very slow, on account of the thorough shaking I had received from my fall, and it was quite another fortnight before I was able to be moved downstairs and allowed to sit in the verandah, where the fresh breezes from the sea and the scent of the flowers on the terrace completed my cure.
For some days even after this, however, I had to keep perfectly quiet, in accordance with the orders of Doctor Martin, who feared that I had sustained some injury to my spine in addition to my other contusions.
This suspicion of his turned out, fortunately for me, to be groundless; but the rest he enjoined was very much out of keeping with my buoyant and excitable nature, which was fidgety in the extreme.
Still, this period of convalescence was by no means irksome to me on the whole, for I had plenty wherewith to occupy my attention and my sisters for companions, little Totty, the youngest, never being so happy as when with me.
In order the better to amuse me, and make me remain in a recumbent position, dad rigged up an Indian grass hammock for me beneath the shade of one of the large silk-cotton trees by the side of the house; and here I used to swing at my ease for hour after hour, looking at the bright- coloured humming-birds flitting about and watching the busy "Jack- Spaniards," as the wild bees or hornets of the tropics are locally styled, building their clay nests under the eaves of the verandah, just in the same way as the sand-martens make their habitations at home.
I also read a great deal, for a kind neighbour luckily lent me at this time a couple of odd volumes of Captain Marryat's works, so that I had now the pleasure of gloating over the wonderful history of Mr Midshipman Easy, besides enjoying the strange episodes of Peter Simple's eventful career.

Both of these books were previously unknown to my boyish ken, and I need hardly say how entrancing I found them.

Even now, after the lapse of so many years, I cannot hear the titles of either mentioned, without my memory taking me back in a moment to the garden of my old island home in the West Indies--the very perfume of the frangipanni and jessamine being almost perceptible to my vivid imagination, while my fancy pictures the scene around, and my listening ear catches the faint rustle of the wind through the tops of the cabbage palms! Once, I recollect, when lazily rocking to and fro in my hammock, I saw a large armadillo crawl out from amidst the brushwood under the trees, he having probably come down from his cave somewhere up in the mountains for change of air.

This animal is something like a tortoise, only ever so much bigger; and as the negroes esteem them very good eating, saying they are better than turtle, I at once gave Jake a hail to let him know of the arrival of the strange visitor, when my darkey hastened speedily to the spot, securing the armadillo without much difficulty.