I greatly regretted the necessity of going on to Teneriffe; for I had expected to be away from my work only one month and had arranged it accordingly, and this extension of my trip would keep me away three months and the consequences to the work distressed me. I no more enjoyed the trip than if I had been a prisoner in irons. Besides, there was difficulty in regard to my accommodations on board, a difficulty that was increasing at each port as we took on more passengers. I had engaged only a deck-passage for Ndong; but Captain Button whose kindness I can never forget, had told me to take him into my cabin. Thus far I had occupied the cabin alone, but I could not expect that favour to continue longer, as other passengers were coming onboard, and already there were two persons in each of the other cabins. The full price of the cabin for myself and Ndong to Teneriffe and return would have been about five hundred dollars. It was therefore a considerable favour that I was accepting from the captain, and it was now at the cost of possible discomfort to others. But this difficulty, I thought, would not last long, for it did not seem that Ndong would live more than a few days. The captain told me not to think of the matter of accommodations at all; that he would leave me that cabin as long as he possibly could, and if it should become impossible, he actually said that I should bring Ndong up to his own cabin and occupy it. One would need to have been on the coast to have any just appreciation of such extraordinary kindness towards a little black boy. Moreover, almost every morning the captain came to my cabin door and asked for the boy. Again the unexpected happened. Ndong, one might almost say, neither died nor lived. He simply lingered, and lingered on, through weary weeks. After a while the worst of his suffering was past, but in his extreme weakness he required almost as much attention as ever. He was quite unable to walk and could only leave his bed as some one carried him, but it was no difficult matter to carry him for he had rapidly wasted away until he was no heavier than a baby. I need not relate the history of those weeks; there were few incidents to recount; but I wish that you might have witnessed the patience of the poor little sufferer. He had his moments of doubt too. One day when he was talking to me, as I lay in the adjoining berth, I told him that we must try to sleep because that we both were sick. “You sick?” he asked. “You sick, too?” He partly rose in his bed, and leaning his head on his hand, looked long and wistfully at me. After a while I asked him what he was thinking of.