He carried a large number of _chits_ from officers of ships that had called here during many years past, and was very anxious that we should add to the number.[25] Poor old "Friend of England"! his lines are no longer cast in pleasant places. His last wife, the widow of a friend, became blind, and he can no longer obtain another on account of his old age; he has become estranged from his son because of his too amorous conduct towards the latter's wife, and has had to pay several fines on account of similar behaviour towards other neighbours. Our last glimpse of him as he made for the shore, after having been assisted to his canoe, generally caught him in the act of undoing his cherished necktie and restoring it, carefully folded, to his pocket. One day--when we had so far broken through our rule as to give him a bottle of rum and water to take ashore "for medicine after we had gone"--going a couple of hours later into the village, we found "Friend of England" tottering up a path, and tried to take his portrait. But the old scamp, who all his life had lived in the sun, refused on this occasion to come out of the shade, and was so afflicted with involuntary staggers, that the result of several exposures was a very qualified success, and lost much of the impressiveness of the original, through his unwillingness to don his necktie in the customary Byronic style. One of our guides about the island was "Frank Thompson," one of Mr Solomon's "most promising pupils, and a sincere Christian"--a rather stupid-looking youth, who had spent some years at the Port Blair School. I fear that we regarded him with some contempt, for he seemed to have developed into nothing better than a hanger-on at the Agency, and although he spoke English fairly well, and could doubtless read and write a little, in the jungle he proved to be quite useless. Birds he could scarcely ever see; he did not know the way about, and after a few miles, he was blowing and panting, and groaning inquiries as to how much farther he was to go. Thompson however could beg as well as the rest, nor was he out of his element when the rum and cigars were being passed round. A very different character was my _shikari_ "Little John," native name unknown. This man was perhaps, on the whole, the best specimen physically of a Nicobarese that we came across. A handsome, rather scornful, face, with aquiline nose, was only spoiled by the occurrence of the Mongolian fold in the inner corner of the eyelids. His curly black hair was worn long, in a thick bushy mass, as far as his shoulders, where it was cut off straight across. Though only 5 feet 6 inches in height, he was splendidly built: was 40 inches round the chest, 13-1/2 inches round the biceps, and 15 inches round the calf. The natives admitted that he was about the strongest man in the village of M[=u]s.[26]