’As yet twenty have been in my quarters.  Of these seven are now in Codrington’s house, half-way between hospital and ordinary school life.  They are convalescents, real convalescents.  You know how much so-called convalescents need care in recovering from fever, but these seven have had the fever very slightly indeed, thank God; the type of the disease is much less severe than it was at first.  One lad of about sixteen, Hofe from Ysabel Island, died last Friday morning.  The fever came on him with power from the first.  He was very delirious for some days, restless, sleepless, then comatose.  The symptoms are so very clearly marked, and my books are so clear in detail of treatment, that we don’t feel much difficulty now about the treatment, and the nursery and hospital work we are pretty well used to.

’Barasu, from Ysabel Island, who was near dying on Thursday week, a fortnight ago to-day, has hovered between life and death.  I baptized him at 9 P.M. on Holy Thursday (the anniversary of Mr. Keble’s death).  John Keble:  rather presumptuous to give such a name, but I thought he would not have been named here by it for many hours.  He is now sitting by the hospital fire.  I have just fed him with some rice and milk; and he is well enough to ask for a bit of sweet potato, which he cannot yet hold, nor guide his hand to his mouth.  He has had the regular fever, and is now, thank God, becoming convalescent.  No other patient is at present in a dangerous state; all have the fever signs more or less doubtful.  No one is at present in a precarious state.  It has been very severe in the town, and there are many cases yet.  Partly it is owing to the utter ignorance or neglect of the most ordinary rules of caution and nursing.  Children and men and women all lie on the ground together in the fever or out of it.  The contagion fastens upon one after another.  In Isaac Christian’s house, the mother and five children were all at one time in a dangerous state, wandering, delirious, comatose.  Yet the mortality has been small.  Only seven have died; some few are still very ill, yet the character of the fever is less severe now.  We had some sharp hospital work for a few days and nights, all the accompaniments of the decay of our frail bodies.  Now we have a respite.  Codrington, Palmer, and I take the nursing; better that the younger ones, always more liable to take fever, should be kept out of contagion; to no one but I have gone among the sick in town, or to town at all.  We are all quite well.

’Beef tea, chicken broth, mutton broth, wine, brandy, milk to any extent, rice, &c.—­Palmer manufactures all.  The Pitcairners, most improvident people, are short of all necessary stores.  I give what I can, but I must be stingy, as I tell them, for I never anticipated an attack of typhus here.  They will, I trust, learn a lesson from it, and not provoke a recurrence of it by going on in their old ways.