After dinner they strolled out to see a monkey bread-tree, the baobab, a huge monster which Mr Wilkie asserted was three or four thousand years old. It was not more than seventy feet high, but the stem was close upon thirty feet in diameter, with immensely long roots, while the boughs hung down to the ground, forming altogether a wonderful mass of verdure. "A jolly abode for the monkeys," observed Adair. "I wonder whether my friend Queerface would like to take up his lodgings there, if I were to leave him on shore?" Queerface seemed to understand the remark, and jumping up on Adair, showed no inclination to leave him. Murray had held up wonderfully during all the hardships he had undergone, and even after he came on shore he was able for some time to go about, but a few days after this the fever, which had been hovering about him, seized him. He would have had to go to the hospital, but Mr Wilkie sent a litter for him, and had him carried to his own house, and nursed him as if he had been his son. Jack and Terence went there every day, and assisted in nursing him, but for long he appeared to be hovering between life and death. Often his two messmates left him with sad and sorrowing hearts, believing that they might never see him again. At last he rallied, and seemed to be getting better. Now they longed for a ship, because they hoped that breathing again the pure sea air, unmixed with any exhalation from the land, might restore him. He was at last able to accompany them about the town. Everybody will remember old Hobnail, the coloured boot and shoe-maker at Freetown. What a jolly, good-natured, genial-hearted man he was! Every naval officer was welcome at his shop, not because he wanted to make customers of them, for it seemed all the same to him whether they bought his boots and shoes, but really from his genuine kindliness of heart. He had a little room, cool and at the same time airy, with the last newspaper from England, and lemonade, or some other refreshing beverages, and not unfrequently a cigar of a quality rarely to be surpassed. Hobnail's shop, as may be supposed, was often visited by the three midshipmen. They were good customers too, for Murray and Adair had worn out their shoes before landing, and Jack very soon finished off his with walking about.