Ii8 Malta Fever [1905 



turn in my bed and began to have visions, so I rebelled and insisted 

 on a new-laid egg and I am now reviving. Button has returned to 

 Venice, having been away, and has taken charge of me. 



" 6th April. — Still no change, but the doctor is fairly out of his reck- 

 oning and I am determined at all risks to move on homewards, con- 

 vinced that my best chance with the fever is to get away from the 

 Mediterranean. I have been a fortnight here in bed. 



' 18th April. — Chapel Street. On the 8th I made the venture, and, 

 thanks to Button, successfully. I was carried out just as I was, un- 

 dressed, in bed on a stretcher, and placed in a gondola and from there 

 into the train, where a first-class carriage had been prepared on pur- 

 pose and so, still all the way in bed, and helped with morphia, to 

 Boulogne and so to Folkestone and London. It is pronounced now that 

 I have Malta fever. 



' 13th May. — Easter has come and gone and I have been a fort- 

 night at Newbuildings in beautiful weather but hardly any better. 



" George, who promised to come down here to see me before making 

 his final apologia about Ireland, seems to have been captured by Arthur 

 Balfour at Clouds and brought over to a position of mere party obedi- 

 ence. 



" 30th May. — George writes proposing to come to see me. I am 

 glad of this. There is news to-day of a great naval victory by the 

 Japanese. 



" 8th June. — I have been back in London seeing doctors, but to no 

 profit, as I still suffer continual pain and grow no stronger. George has 

 been several times to see me, and has explained to me all his Irish 

 story. He has sacrificed himself to party necessities and his devotion 

 to Arthur Balfour." 



The next month is without record in my Diary. I had hardly got 

 down to Newbuildings when I began to be seized with a pain in the 

 nape of my neck, which gradually increased in violence till it became 

 a perpetual agony, preventing me from taking any rest whatever either 

 day or night. It is no exaggeration to say that for a full six weeks 

 I did not get one minute's sleep, in spite of all the drugs that could 

 be given me. Neither could I lie down nor even rest my head upon a 

 pillow, and if for an instant I lost consciousness it was only to be 

 awakened by the sensation as of a spear transfixing me from shoulder 

 to shoulder through the spine, an indescribable agony. With this, con- 

 tinuous fever and drenching sweats. I had a bed made up for me in the 

 hall, but could not actually lie down on it, and remained day and night 

 propped up, my forehead resting on a band fastened to the bed head 

 against which I leaned it, or I would wander from room to room and 

 from chair to chair on the ground floor, followed by my nurse. I 

 remember one especial night, when a new nurse had come who did 



