tal authorities telegraphed for them, and they were allowed to be
with him as much as possible. As may be imagined, grief and terror
filled their hearts when the telegram reached them. There was no time to
dwell on their sorrow, for Dick's condition took up all their thoughts.
The report of the doctors filled them with even deeper grief and
anxiety. They declared it would have been better for the poor fellow if
he had been killed outright. The blow had been so severe that the brain
and spine were both injured. Even if he lived for years, he would never
again walk; in all probability, he would never again understand or speak
properly.

Dick did get better, however, and, as soon as he was fit, was taken down
to Newlyn. Every care and attention were given him with the hope of
proving that the doctors were mistaken. But, alas! in vain. It was a
long, expensive illness. The little home, so full of comfort and
happiness, the pride of Peet's heart--full, as it was too, of Dick's
strange and beautiful things, relics of his voyages--all had to go: sold
to meet the bills of the doctors, and to buy things which were needed
for the invalid. Brought to a very low ebb by this terrible affliction,
and not knowing where all the money was to come from to pay the demands
made upon him--too proud to ask help from even his own brother--Peet
resolved to go back to work again. He applied to his old master, Lord
Lynwood; there being no vacancies at Lynwood, however, the Earl wrote to
his aunt, Lady Coke, whose head gardener had died but a short time
before, and who, he knew, was looking out for a capable man to replace
him.

Such a berth as he found at the Moat House Peet might have searched the
world in vain to discover. Lady Coke's sympathy was at once roused on
hearing of his sorrows, and from her he accepted kindnesses which would
have been an offence from anybody else.

(_Continued on page 110._)

[Illustration: "Dick lying insensible upon the floor."]

[Illustration: "One at a time, they found themselves pinioned."]

STORIES FROM AFRICA.

IV.--A GREAT SEA CAPTAIN.

[Illustration]

Once more our tale begins in the city of Lisbon, but now it is on a
summer day in the year 1497, when the banks of the Tagus were thronged
with those who had come to give God-speed to the gallant captain Vasco
da Gama, sailing to-morrow for 'the Indies.'

This was the age of great sailors and discoverers. Ten years before,
Bartolomeo Diaz