"Would you very much mind--" he began, "at least if you are not too
old--I should so like--we shall never get another opportunity like
this--would you very much mind--" and out it came, "playing at pirates
for a little while?"
It was unthinkable! The Guardsman was actually proposing to a staid,
middle-aged gentleman of forty-eight, an ex-Member of Parliament, a
church-warden, and an ex-editor, to play at pirates with him, as
though he were ten years old. I pointed out how unusual it was for an
officer in the Coldstream, aged twenty-six, to think even of so
puerile an amusement, but to include a dignified, earnest-minded,
elderly man in the invitation was really an unprecedented outrage. My
justifiable indignation increased when I found that the Guardsman
actually expected me at my age to enact the role of "Carlos, the
Cut-throat of the Caribbean."
Our discussion was interrupted by a violent shivering fit which seized
me, accompanied by a sudden, racking headache. The swamps had done
their work on the previous evening. By night-time I was in a high
fever, and when we returned to Kingston next day by train, I, with a
temperature up to anywhere, was hardly conscious of where I was or
what I was doing.
I was put to bed at King's House, and the fever rapidly turned to
malarial gastritis.
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