SPARTIVENTO AGAIN 143 



is breeding with this rain. (No fear for those who 

 do not sleep on shore.) A Httle iron hut had been 

 placed there since 1858 ; but the windows had been 

 carried off, the door broken down, the roof pierced 

 all over. In it, we sat to make experiments ; and 

 how it recalled Birkenhead ! There was Thomson, 

 there was my testing board, the strings of gutta 



percha ; Harry P even, battering with the 



batteries ; but where was my darling Annie ? 

 Whilst I sat feet in sand, with Harry alone inside 

 the hut — mats, coats and wood to darken the 

 window — the others visited the murderous old 

 friar, who is of the order of Scaloppi and for whom 

 I brought a letter from his superior, ordering him 

 to pay us attention ; but he was away from home, 

 gone to Cagliari in a boat with the produce of the 

 farm belonging to his convent. Then they visited 

 the tower of Chia, but could not get in because the 

 door is thirty feet off the ground ; so they came 

 back and pitched a magnificent tent which I 

 brought from the Bahiana a long time ago — and 

 where they will live (if I mistake not) in preference 

 to the friar's, or the owl- and bat-haunted tower. 



MM. T and S will be left there : T 



an intelligent, hard-working Frenchman with whom 

 I am well pleased ; he can speak English and Italian 



well, and has been two years at Genoa. S is a 



French German with a face like an ancient Gaul, 

 who has been sergeant-major in the French line 



