The doctor set out for Rhodes in all haste in order to bring back money and provisions. The bey received him very badly, though it is true that the doctor cut a very sorry figure in his garments of a rescued traveller. Meantime, Lady Hester, who had endeavoured to leave the hovel in which she was stranded, had fallen ill on the way. She had nothing by way of luggage except General Moore's miniature, a snuff-box given her by Lord Sligo, and two pelisses. Precious souvenirs, no doubt, but of no utility. The consul, who was an old man of seventy-five, was unable to do anything for them, and the bey pretended to be so poor that, after having granted them thirty pounds, he begged them not to trouble him further. Thirty pounds! It was little for eleven persons naked and famished. The loss the most irreparable was that of the medicine chest. Finally, however, everything was arranged. Lady Hester, whose adventurous character accommodated itself to the unexpected, praised the Turks warmly: "I do not know how it is done, but I am always at ease with them and I obtain all that I ask for. As for the Greeks, it is quite different; they are cheats, cheats...." The doctor had made a good recruit. Lady Hester, who resigned herself to the misadventures of the others as readily as she did to her own, wrote, in speaking of Bruce, Pearce and Meryon, to one of her friends: "They are quite well; they have saved nothing from the wreck; but do not imagine that we are melancholy, at any rate, for we have all danced, myself included, the Pyrrhic dance with the peasants of the villages which were on our way!" What an exceptional character! A woman who has lost all her trunks and who dances the Pyrrhic dance! The doctor, who had been despatched on a confidential mission to Smyrna, to bring back money, without which one can do nothing in the Orient, and clothes, without which one can go nowhere, returned with boxes and coffers. Lady Hester, Bruce and Pearce threw themselves upon him like children and arrayed themselves as fancy dictated. They donned magnificent and strange costumes, which seemed to form part of a vast Turkish emporium. The doctor completed his accoutrement by thrusting a yataghan through his girdle. Lady Hester, finding herself very much at her ease with her Turkish robe, her turban and her burnous, decreed that she should travel thus henceforth. And the wearing of this masculine costume was to remove many difficulties in permitting her to move everywhere with her face uncovered. From his stay in Rhodes the doctor preserved two principal recollections: first, that the English raise the cost of living wherever they go; next, that the women of the island weave very durable silk shirts, which can be worn for three years without tearing them.