Well, well, I promise
much, and do not know at this moment how you and the dear child are. If
he is but better, courage, my girl, for I see light.'
He took to gardening, without a natural liking for it, and soon became
an ardent expert. He wrote reviews, and lectured, or amused himself in
playing charades, and reading poetry. Clerk Maxwell, and Mr. Ricketts,
who was lost in the La Plata, were among his visitors. During October,
1860, he superintended the repairs of the Bona-Spartivento cable,
revisiting Chia and Cagliari, then full of Garibaldi's troops. The
cable, which had been broken by the anchors of coral fishers, was
grapnelled with difficulty. 'What rocks we did hook!' writes Jenkin.
'No sooner was the grapnel down than the ship was anchored; and then
came such a business: ship's engines going, deck engine thundering,
belt slipping, tear of breaking ropes; actually breaking grapnels. It
was always an hour or more before we could get the grapnels down again.'
In 1865, on the birth of his second son, Mrs. Jenkin was very ill, and
Jenkin, after running two miles for a doctor, knelt by her bedside
during the night in a draught, not wishing to withdraw his hand from
hers. Never robust, he suffered much from flying rheumatism and
sciatica ever afterwards.
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