A few days after the triple excitement of Mars, the Orontes, and the Mail, two blood-stained travellers arrived at our encampment towards sunset, with torn clothes and limping gait. At first sight of them I felt a thrill of alarm, but was soon relieved by a familiar voice calling out cheerily, “Halloo, Gill, we have not fallen among thieves, only upon the clinker—the horse bolted with us, made too free with the road, and a big bump threw us out on the top of each other.”

Here was a thrilling tale wherewith to stir up our quiet life, and after hearing it in full detail I registered an inward vow, never to drive across the clinker with that horse. Our friends, happily, did not seem hurt, beyond a few bruises and some slight cuts about the arms, but these were enough to stain their torn sleeves and give them an air quite touching and heroic.

Of course there was considerable abuse of our thoroughfare, and we now heard for the first time, that the day the Orontes was in harbour, several of her officers, with two lady passengers, had set out with the intention of paying us a visit. But the bumping had been such as to bump a wheel off one cart; and some accident, I forget what, having happened to the other, the whole party was obliged to return to Garrison without having been able to reach our inaccessible retreat.

New Year's Day, 1878, was a hot day in Ascension, and we tried hard to keep cool by recalling former New Year's Days spent in Scotland, much to the disadvantage of the present one.

What a burden life becomes when its chief end is to war against heat! Life, did I say? It is only existence in such latitudes, and with brain half-awake you speculate dreamily about life, with its hurry and feverish bustle, as a thing far off and beyond you; and if sometimes you try to grasp it, nerves and spirit fail, you miss it, and, worn out with the effort, sink back into a deeper lethargy than before. That is to say, if you do not wear some gre-gre strong enough to defy the evil power of indolence—a Fetish too evil and too powerful in these climes to be easily overcome. But English pluck and Scotch endurance can do it. Stay at home, or hang these gre-gres round your neck.

In Ascension each man wore one; and at six o'clock this New Year's morning my husband and two of the island officers were hard at work, practising for a rifle-match that they were to shoot the same afternoon against three officers of H.M.S. Sea-gull, then in harbour.

David was sadly out of practice; neither did the scoring of his allies, in this preliminary canter, give much promise of success, especially as their opponents had a high reputation as marksmen.

Fortunately the clouds did not follow us, and the triangulation of the Mars stars now advanced apace. A week of lovely evenings, and fresh strength to use them—what more could the heart of astronomer desire? Alas! this was Mars Bay, and not Arcadia! I cannot think why the poet says,

It seems to me that man, and woman too, wants a very great deal; and the beauty of the universe and the contemplation of the glory of far-off worlds, what consolation do they give, when the kitchen-chimney smokes, when a tooth aches or a new shoe pinches?

“Is life worth living?” asks one of our modern philosophers, and another answers, “That depends on the liver.” True, oh Punch. Then why should we sneer if a man fears indigestion as a mortal foe, and the heart of woman fails when a good cook falls sick in the desert where there is none to replace him?

Such piteous case was ours! Hill fell a victim to severe rheumatism at this time, and woe is me! I had never attended cooking classes at South Kensington.

Although we did not know it at the time, our cook had been originally invalided here for this very malady, caught, like every evil thing, on the Gold Coast; and the damp air of the Mountain had unfortunately brought on a relapse.

Some weeks now passed by pleasantly and busily, but so entirely devoid of incident, that I fear my readers would find in a daily chronicle of them only monotonous repetition.

Sometimes a pretty little donkey would peep over the rocks at us and scamper off again; sometimes a wild cat would mistake my larder for public property, and bring involuntary fasts into the camp. Almost daily a ship of some kind passed us; sometimes so far off as to seem a mere white speck on the horizon, at other times so close that we could easily read her signals without the help of a glass. “What news of the East?” “Is England at war?” “When is the mail due?” were invariable questions; and often, when outward-bound vessels found that a mail was expected soon, they would send letters ashore at Garrison, so that Ascension has still good claim to its old name, “The Sailor's Post Office.”

About the middle of November H.M.S. Beacon, homeward-bound from China, put into harbour for coals and provisions, and her coming made another break in our little community, for at sight of her Graydon grew home-sick. Having exceeded his term of service on the West Coast by two years, he might have gone home with the Orontes in September; and David could not find it in his heart to oppose him now, much as we were likely to suffer by a change.

Our first work was, of course, the Observatory, for observations ought to begin on the 17th of July, and it was necessary that no time should be lost in getting ready.

Our twenty tons of baggage had been landed on the evening of our arrival. At 6 o'clock on the following morning, carts were busy bringing up the numerous cases from the pierhead, and marines were at work unscrewing box-lids and unsoldering tin-lined cases. The sound of hammer and saw woke an echo in the still morning, and by breakfast time the croquet ground was littered with extraordinary heaps of queershaped materials.

In the south-west corner, masons were laying down a level bed of cement for the sleepers of the circular railway on which the Heliometer House revolves; for, as stars had to be observed in all parts of the heavens, the opening of the Observatory must necessarily be arranged to view any part of the sky. This was managed as follows.

A strong octagonal frame was mounted on flanged wheels rolling on the railway, and this frame carried a structure of iron gas-pipes, screwed together and stiffened by cross ties of iron wire—the whole forming a species of cage. To make this a good water-tight house, it was necessary then to cover it with canvas, previously shaped and fitted with means of attachment to the frame.

At Dartmouth, on the 14th of June, we joined the Balmoral Castle, a beautiful new steamer of the Donald Currie Line, bound for the Cape of Good Hope. She had left the London Docks three days before, having all our goods on board except the chronometers, which we brought with us. None of the outward-bound English mail ships touch at Ascension, so that we were under the necessity of taking our passage to St. Helena, there to wait for a return steamer from the Cape to take us back to Ascension.

After a rapid railway journey, we enjoyed a quiet night in harbour. Next morning we had a stroll through the picturesque little town of Dartmouth; for our ship would not sail until mid-day on the 15th. What a curious old town it is!—with its steep, narrow streets, shaded and cooled by projecting piazzas and gable-ends. Bewitched by the quaintness of the place, one sees the streets again alive with the brave army of Red Cross Knights that sailed from this fair bay so many hundred years ago to do battle against the Saracen, and pictures many a “ladye bright” peeping shyly from the little latticed windows to wave a last adieu to her own true knight.

Before entering upon the work that we had left England to do, it was a kind chance that took us for a holiday to St. Helena. Tired of anxious preparation and the constant thinking of one thought, it was no real loss of time to turn aside for a rest by the way, and gather fresh strength from fresh scenes and from the most delightful air it is possible to imagine.

During our week's stay we were able to make three excursions on horseback from James Town, and these little peeps into the country showed me so much that was strange and new, that I find it difficult to disentangle one impression from another. So quickly did they follow in succession, that the one partly effaced the other before time had allowed it to harden on the mind, and the picture memory has to show is somewhat blotted and confused.

The sun had been shining some hours on the hill tops, and was just beginning to creep down the dark rocks into the valley when we started for our first excursion. Captain Oliver had kindly offered to be our guide to Diana's Peak, the hill par excellence of St. Helena, and towards it we now wended our way southwards and upwards. A narrow bridle-path, curling itself among aloes and wild geraniums, soon brought us to “The Briars,” where Napoleon spent the first month of his imprisonment.