Then it dawned on me what a fearful ass I must presently appear. It is impossible for me to keep on with the particulars. I could not find the key again and let the girl out. The floor was spoiled, the house upside down. I should have been game to have fought his Satanic Majesty himself, but to face the contempt of the "boss" and good, kind Mrs. ---- was terrible. So I talked through the door at the girl and told her to say, if any one made inquiries for me, that I was not at home. With that I decamped, and did not present myself before the next midday. After a while the matter was only referred to as a joke. I should have liked very much to have been able to write a detailed account of the whole twelve months I spent at this place. I am quite sure that if truly written, much of it would prove interesting to people who never were so far north, but I must of necessity pass quickly over many things of which I should have liked to write more fully, or else I shall never come to the end of my travels. Suffice it, therefore, to say that the Kanakas arrived in great numbers; that the "boss" and I went to Cardwell on horseback to fetch them; that a lot of white men were also brought together on the plantation; that I was overseer, or "nigger driver," over part of the Kanakas for some time; that I, during the twelve months, gained a good deal of colonial experience: learned to ride, drive bullocks, split fencing stuff, &c., also how to build slab-houses, as they are called--that is, to go into the bush, and with the help of a few tools, single-handed, to make a good house out of the growing trees. All this I learned, more or less, and then when I had been there about twelve months I caught the fever. This fever is, I believe, peculiar to certain parts of North Queensland; it is not deadly, but very common, indeed my impression is that there was not a man on the Herbert River who had not got it more or less. It comes with shivering of cold, followed by thirst and utter exhaustion, once a day or once every second day. Most people are able to work all the time they have it until they feel the "shakes" coming over them. Then perforce they must lie down, but they generally get up to their work again after the prostration which follows is over. With me it was different. A couple of weeks of it made me so weak that when I felt myself strongest I could only stagger about with the help of a big stick. I had built a carpenter's shop, and my room was off that. Then I would lie down of an evening on the bed, with bed-clothes piled on me enough to smother one, and still the gasping and the "shakes" would gradually commence. The very marrow in one's bones seemed frozen, while the teeth would rattle in the head, and the breath would come and go with fearful quickness. After a couple of hours of this, heat and prostration would follow, coupled with terrible thirst. Of course there was no hospital, and there was no one to hand one a drink.