Twice had that long weary journey home from the capital to be undertaken by moonlight. I got a lady’s palanquin--a long oblong box made of strips of sheepskin fastened to two long poles--and lay down in it with a rug over me to protect me from the dews of the night, covered my face with my helmet, and tried to sleep, but not with much success. I arrived at home suffering from very severe headache, which lasted for the following four days. A night’s rest was enough to free me from headache from exposure to sunlight, but it took four days to do so from that of exposure to moonlight. I could not understand this at first, nor till the text came into my mind: ‘_The sun shall not smite thee by day, nor the moon by night._’ The moon smites, in some senses, more severely than the sun, and the effects remain longer. Of course if the effects of the rays of the sun reach the point of sunstroke, the result is far worse than anything the moon can do. CHAPTER XII GATHERING CLOUDS ‘The earth shall be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the Lord, as the waters cover the sea.’--HABAKKUK ii. 14. An embassy was sent by the British government to Madagascar in the summer of 1880. The late Admiral Gore-Jones and his staff went up to the capital and spent some time there in interviewing the queen and prime minister and in interchanging courtesies. Ostensibly his mission was to remonstrate about the slave trade on the west coast, to offer assistance in putting it down, even to the carrying of Hova troops to be placed at stations along the coast. Some suspected at the time that that was but a blind, and that the admiral had a secret mission; and it has been asserted by those who profess to know that he was sent out to feel the pulse of the Madagascar government, and find out not merely whether any wish for a British protectorate existed, but to definitely offer one if there were any likelihood of its being accepted. There can be little doubt now that the interpreter was even then a traitor in the pay of the enemy, and he interpreted nothing of importance communicated to the prime minister. The Jesuits boasted after the war that they won Madagascar for France, and, however foolish in their own interests with the people such a statement made publicly may be, it was generally believed that for once they had told the truth. They had had a grant of 15,000 f. a year for many years (previously, I believe, it was very much larger), which was greatly increased after the war, and they earned their wages by their political intriguing.