66 VISITS TO MADAGASCAR. CHAP. III. minister, with his wife and family, were soon removed to the hospitable home of Mr. and Mrs. Kelsey. Some of their companions were invited to the habitations of other residents in Port Louis, and the rest remained at the quarantine. At a public meeting which the passengers held a few days afterwards, to express their sense of the generous conduct of the officers and crew of the American ship, and to provide some suitable memorial to be presented to Captain Ludlow, I was surprised to meet a gentleman whom I had known in England, and whom I had last met at a bridal party under very different circumstances from those which now brought us together. On a subsequent visit from this gentleman, I learned that one of the passengers, a young man with whose relations I was acquainted in England, had been so crippled by the wreck as to be unable to move, and had lain one whole night upon the rocks, where the surf washed over him. His companions were too weak to carry him; the sailors of his own ship had left him to die; but Captain Ludlow had sent four strong seamen to bring him over to the landing-place, de claring he would not leave the coast while a soul remained on the island. This young man, I was informed, was in the hospital. I lost no time in visiting him there, and he was greatly delighted to meet with some one who knew his family and friends. The noble conduct of Captain Ludlow secured for him the esteem and gratitude of the entire community. The governor acknowledged his gallant and disinterested efforts on behalf of British subjects, and the Chamber of Commerce publicly did the same in the most handsome and appropriate manner, accom panying the expression of their admiration of his generous and humane behaviour, and that of his officers and crew, with the present of a piece of plate, of the value of 120?., to be procured in London, as a memorial of their deep sense of his heroic conduct and distinguished worth.