down behind; the goat turns sideways to her enemy--by a little knowing cock of the head flicks one ear over one eye, and squints from behind it, for half a minute--tosses her head back, skips a pace or two further off, and repeats the manoeuvre. The cook is very fat, and cannot run after that goat much. "_Pernambuco, Aug. 1._--We landed here yesterday, all well and cable sound, after a good passage.... I am on familiar terms with cocoa-nuts, mangoes, and bread-fruit trees, but I think I like the negresses best of anything I have seen. In turbans and loose sea-green robes, with beautiful black-brown complexions and a stately carriage, they really are a satisfaction to my eye. The weather has been windy and rainy; the _Hooper_ has to lie about a mile from the town, in an open roadstead, with the whole swell of the Atlantic driving straight on shore. The little steam-launch gives all who go in her a good ducking, as she bobs about on the big rollers; and my old gymnastic practice stands me in good stead on boarding and leaving her. We clamber down a rope-ladder hanging from the high stern, and then, taking a rope in one hand, swing into the launch at the moment when she can contrive to steam up under us--bobbing about like an apple thrown into a tub all the while. The President of the province and his suite tried to come off to a State luncheon on board on Sunday; but the launch, being rather heavily laden, behaved worse than usual, and some green seas stove in the President's hat and made him wetter than he had probably ever been in his life; so after one or two rollers, he turned back; and indeed he was wise to do so, for I don't see how he could have got on board.... Being fully convinced that the world will not continue to go round unless I pay it personal attention, I must run away to my work." CHAPTER VI 1869-1885 Edinburgh--Colleagues--_Farrago vitae_--I. The family circle--Fleeming and his sons--Highland life--The cruise of the steam-launch--Summer in Styria--Rustic manners--II. The drama--Private theatricals--III. Sanitary associations--The phonograph--IV. Fleeming's acquaintance with a student--His late maturity of mind--Religion and morality--His love of heroism--Taste in literature--V. His talk--His late popularity--Letter from M. Trelat. The remaining external incidents of Fleeming's life, pleasures, honours, fresh interests, new friends, are not such as will bear to be told at any length or in the temporal order. And it is now time to lay narration by, and to look at the man he was, and the life he lived, more largely.