From light till dark, unless writing the biography, we were staggering about our rolling ship with sherbet and food and medicines--we carried no doctor--treating dysentery, fever, diarrhœa; but if I had the misfortune to touch anything, they would not eat it, dying as they were, because they would lose caste. But I made more progress with them than most Europeans, because I could recite the Bismillah in giving it to them. The first funerals made one very serious. I have alluded to them in my "Arabia, Egypt, and India." What struck me was the jolliness with which they were executed--it seemed no more than heaving the lead; but I had never seen a funeral at sea, and I kept saying to myself, "That poor Indian and I might both be lying dead to-day; there would be a little more ceremony for me, and, excepting for my husband, it would cast a gloom over the dinner-table for _one_ day only. The sharks would eat us both, and perhaps like me a little the best, because I am fat and well fed, and do not smell of cocoanut oil. Then we both stand before the throne of God to be judged, he with his poverty, hardships, privations, sufferings, pilgrimage, and harmless life, and I with all my sins, my happy life, my luxuries, and the little wee bit of good I have done, or ever thought to obtain mercy with--only equalled that our Saviour died for both." All are laughing because it is only a poor, ugly old skeleton of a "nigger;" not one of them thinking, "Supposing that were _me!_ My turn _will_ come, and then the rest will think it jolly fun to see _me_ thrown over the side." Richard at Aden inquired after all his old party in his exploration to Harar. Mohammed el Hammál died only a year ago. Long Guled and the two women, Shehrazade and Deenarzade, are still alive; the former in camp, the latter in Somali-land. Abdo (the End of Time) died a natural death; Yusuf, the monocular one, was murdered by the Isá tribe; Hasan Hammad, the boy, is now sergeant to the water-police. The Egyptians, who took possession of Berberah and Zayla, entered Harar without fighting, and the Amir died under suspicious circumstances. Rauf Pasha is invested on all sides by Gallas and Somali, and is in considerable danger. Hasan procured for us the coins of Harar, which Richard brought to England in 1878.