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 brandy and smelling-salts. After discharge, he returned upon
a visit of gratitude; and it was observed, that instead of coming
straight to the door, he went and stood long under his umbrella on that
spot of ground where his mat had been stretched and he had endured pain
so many months. Similar visits were the rule, I believe without
exception; and the grateful patients loaded Mrs. de Coetlogon with gifts
which (had that been possible in Polynesia) she would willingly have
declined, for they were often of value to the givers.

The tissue of my story is one of rapacity, intrigue, and the triumphs of
temper; the hospital at the consulate stands out almost alone as an