A young Yorkshire farmer of the Yeomanry was invalided home as a "phthisis" case, but he came into hospital the day after we sailed with a temperature of 105°, and he has been desperately ill with enteric all the way (severe hæmorrhage, &c.). He must have had fever for some time before it was diagnosed--the temperature being attributed to his chest condition. He is still very weak, but I think he will pull through. One night I was told that a man in the swinging cots was "rather peculiar," so I went down to see him first thing, and found his cot empty. I flew up on deck, and met some stewards, who had collared him on the upper deck. We made him snug in a safe corner of the hospital with a "special" for that night. Then, there was one poor fellow who had lost an arm, and two who had each lost a leg--one of the latter a sergeant-major, who was wounded at the same time that Colonel Benson was killed at Vlakfontein. He was a Kimberley man, and the poor man's wife and two little children were all killed by one Boer shell during the siege of Kimberley. He is going home to get fitted up with a cork leg, and will then return to South Africa. Perhaps the saddest cases of all were the eleven lunatics we had on board. They had to be very safely kept with special guards and other precautions; and, in case they should try to go overboard, they had a high-railed enclosure on deck as an airing ground. Some of them are very mad and violent, but some seemed so nearly sane that it was a question whether they had not pretended to be mad in order to be sent home. I was not supposed to visit these men in the night, because, to get to them, I should have had to go a long way through the troops' sleeping quarters, but the medical officer went to see them on his last round, and, every two or three hours, I used to stay in the hospital while the wardmaster went along, and brought word how they were. One night the medical officer went along, and when he returned he told me he had found their door unlocked and no guard on duty; fortunately they were all asleep. The next day this tale was about the ship, and very soon it was altered to the following version--"Last night Mr. ---- had found that all the lunatics had escaped; he and Sister thought it better not to make a fuss. Instead, they caught the first eleven men whom they met and locked them up; they were not the _real_ lunatics, but they had been bribed with extra 'skoff' to play the game and say nothing about it: but the real lunatics were still at large!" After that, if any one came up to a man rather quietly, there was a big jump, and "Hullo! are you one of them?" and then a great chase round the deck! There were some hard cases, too, amongst the officers; two of them who had thighs broken by Boer shells, but were just beginning to walk again--one, however, with a short leg, and the other with a stiff knee.