‘Those beastly measles! Synge worked like a horse; the unfortunate devils of natives did their level best to die, and it was the work of two average men and a boy to save the life of any one of them--stupid beggars--but he pulled a lot of ’em through somehow. Then my infant got ’em, only a year old, and had a roughish time; there again Synge did the trick, and then--hanged if, to put the finishing touch, he didn’t go and get ’em himself--and badly too. Measles in a climate like this aren’t any kind of a joke, and the poor old chap nearly turned up his toes: but he came round at last--mainly thanks to Judy’s cooking. They left him awfully weak and depressed; I used to go and sit with him a lot, and he was fearfully down, always talking about the misery of dying in a dog’s hole of a prison, as he called the place, and pining for home. He had a fox-terrier called Wasp, that he was awfully fond of, and when we weren’t with him he used to lie and talk to her by the hour about his people at home and a certain girl, and Cambridge, and the cursedness of things generally, and the poor little beggar would sit up at the end of the bed, catching flies, and blink her eyes at him, and let on to understand the whole caboodle. I often heard him yarning away when I was coming in; you can hear anything in those native houses. He had a sort of double one--one for a bedroom and one for a sitting-room. Well, he got better by degrees, but the stronger he got physically, the more gloomy and depressed he seemed to grow; it was like having a funeral in your coat-tail pocket to be with him; it didn’t cheer matters up for us, and to make things worse, the mail missed--through a hurricane or some misbegotten reason--and we didn’t see a ship, except at a distance, for nearly six months.’ Hay paused and shook himself, as if to free his mind from the recollection. Clemenson muttered, ‘Lively!’ Taplin bit his forefinger sympathetically. ‘Well,’ Hay went on rapidly, ‘one morning Synge came down to us at breakfast, and said in his sarcastic way, “Something’s gone wrong with the works of Providence; there’s actually a ship in.” So there was; she brought the mails; Synge had some letters; and she went away that afternoon. I remember Judy saying to me at tiffin, “Wasp hab had five chickens, in honour ob de ship. Synge Sahib dip dem in de big punch-bowl and call dem names--say he chrisey dem. Will de Sahib hab gravy wid de blue man?” Judy’s information is always dished up with some cookery--he meant blanc-mange--but good Lord! How infernally long-winded I am! In the afternoon I went over to see Synge; he’d gone asleep in his chair--it was beastly hot weather. His letters and papers were all strewn about the place, and a big Malay kriss that he’d been cutting papers with was lying beside him. Wasp, licking those five blessed puppies, was sitting at his feet. He looked so tired that I went away without waking him; perhaps if I had, things would have been different.’