"FRANK THOMPSON" 57 



Poor old " Friend of England " ! his lines are no longer cast 

 in pleasant places. His last wife, the widow of a friend, became 

 blind, and he can no longer obtain another on account of his 

 old age; he has become estranged from his son because of his 

 too amorous conduct towards the latter's wife, and has had to 

 pay several fines on account of similar behaviour towards other 

 neighbours. 



Our last glimpse of him as he made for the shore, after 

 having been assisted to his canoe, generally caught him in 

 the act of undoing his cherished necktie and restoring it, care- 

 fully folded, to his pocket. 



One day — when we had so far broken through our rule 

 as to give him a bottle of rum and water to take ashore " for 

 medicine after we had gone" — going a couple of hours later 

 into the village, we found " Friend of England " tottering up a 

 path, and tried to take his portrait. But the old scamp, who 

 all his life had lived in the sun, refused on this occasion to 

 come out of the shade, and was so afflicted with involuntary 

 staggers, that the result of several exposures was a very 

 qualified success, and lost much of the impressiveness of the 

 original, through his unwillingness to don his necktie in the 

 customary Byronic style. 



One of our guides about the island was " Frank Thompson," 

 one of Mr Solomon's "most promising pupils, and a sincere 

 Christian" — a rather stupid-looking youth, who had spent some 

 years at the Port Blair School. I fear that we regarded him 

 with some contempt, for he seemed to have developed into 

 nothing better than a hanger-on at the Agency, and although 

 he spoke English fairly well, and could doubtless read and 

 write a little, in the jungle he proved to be quite useless. Birds 

 he could scarcely ever see ; he did not know the way about, 

 and after a few miles, he was blowing and panting, and 

 groaning inquiries as to how much farther he was to go. 

 Thompson however could beg as well as the rest, nor was he 

 out of his element when the rum and cigars were being passed 

 round. 



