Whether I felt the “call” strongly, overpoweringly, or merely preferred the country as a change to England has been tested. Not long ago my Editor enquired was I willing for a journey to Egypt, with its splendid climate and the charm of looking on the land of Bible stories; he asked whether I cared for a trip through East Africa, with the delightful flora and fauna of a new colony. Neither attracted me. The mention of each created no eagerness. But when, one Wednesday afternoon, he called me into his room and spoke of West Africa I was all agog. “You will be there in the rainy season,” he warned. “I know, though I should prefer another period of the year; but do not ask anybody else if you wish me to go.” “All right. When would you be ready to start?” “From London next Tuesday if you urgently desire, but I should like a little longer, to fulfil a special engagement.” The conversation took place at 2.30 p.m. By 5.30 the following afternoon everything had been settled. Another prospective journey in West Africa filled me with delight, and no more blithesome soul stepped on the Elder Dempster liner _Akabo_ the morning she left the Princes’ Quay at Liverpool. A smooth course through the Irish Sea takes us next morning round Land’s End and across the mouth of the English Channel, which is in anything but a friendly mood; and, as usual on the second day out, the chronicler promptly goes into involuntary retirement. In previous similar experiences he had not troubled the ship’s doctor, but on the present occasion a slight trouble not yielding to the applications from his own medicine-case, he thinks it well to utilise skilled, professional treatment. As promptly as if he were carrying out a three-guinea visit, Dr Hanington appears. A British Columbian with an exceedingly rapid delivery of words, before you have finished your explanation, not a look at tongue nor a touch at the pulse, he has darted out of the cabin and almost instantaneously returns, holding a tube of gelatine in the left hand and a tumbler of water in the other. You cannot gulp down drug and liquid and splutter or stammer your thanks in time for them to catch the swiftly disappearing doctor, who whilst you have been employed in the operation of swallowing has ejaculated, with a delightful Irish brogue, “That will put you right. You will be skipping about the deck to-morrow.” Three times that day Dr Hanington came unsolicited to see the patient, the two later visits extending to interviews with conversations. They were of the bright, cheery kind, such as, “The Channel is always beastly. I am usually sick there myself. We shall be through the Bay to-morrow noon. It will be smoother than this choppy water”—a glance through the glass of the porthole—“and then you will be running along the promenade deck.” That seems a far-distant vision to the helpless victim of grievous mal-de-mer, though its manifestation is limited to intense headache.