I also read a great deal, for a kind neighbour luckily lent me at this time a couple of odd volumes of Captain Marryat's works, so that I had now the pleasure of gloating over the wonderful history of Mr Midshipman Easy, besides enjoying the strange episodes of Peter Simple's eventful career. Both of these books were previously unknown to my boyish ken, and I need hardly say how entrancing I found them. Even now, after the lapse of so many years, I cannot hear the titles of either mentioned, without my memory taking me back in a moment to the garden of my old island home in the West Indies--the very perfume of the frangipanni and jessamine being almost perceptible to my vivid imagination, while my fancy pictures the scene around, and my listening ear catches the faint rustle of the wind through the tops of the cabbage palms! Once, I recollect, when lazily rocking to and fro in my hammock, I saw a large armadillo crawl out from amidst the brushwood under the trees, he having probably come down from his cave somewhere up in the mountains for change of air. This animal is something like a tortoise, only ever so much bigger; and as the negroes esteem them very good eating, saying they are better than turtle, I at once gave Jake a hail to let him know of the arrival of the strange visitor, when my darkey hastened speedily to the spot, securing the armadillo without much difficulty. Jake was all the more delighted with his prize from the fact that my accident had prevented me from going manacou hunting with him as I had promised. He argued that the armadillo would serve as a set-off to Pompey's iguana, which had been constantly "thrown in his teeth," as it were, ever since his rival had killed it in my presence, the one capture neutralising the other. It may be wondered that I introduce all these little details of my illness and subsequent recovery, but, "there's a reason in everything, even in the roasting of eggs," says the proverb; and, when it is considered that, had it not been for my accident, dad and mother with my sisters and myself would all have gone to England in the mail steamer together, instead of my essaying the voyage alone in a sailing ship, these incidents are naturally relevant, quite apart from the strong impression they made upon me at the time, as but for what occurred I should have nothing of any importance to tell with reference to my subsequent adventures when alone on the Atlantic. However, to make a long story short, I may briefly state that, after a pretty long interval of lying still, Doctor Martin said one day that I might get up and move about; when the change from inaction to action had such an improving effect on me that, within a very short space, I was myself again--although, perhaps, a much paler and thinner sort of Tom Eastman than "the young rascal," as the doctor persisted in naming me, "who tried to break his neck by galloping down Constitution Hill, but couldn't because it was so tough!"