The third time I woke Holmes and forced him to sit up against me and clear his lungs he swore at me between coughs with such vehemence that I might have taken offense had I not been just as abusive to the men who had tended me while I lay invalid and miserable in Peshawar, caught between half-healed wounds and deadly fever. It was a better sign than tears, though I did not tell him as much, remembering the desperate lengths to which I had gone in trying to persuade those patient healers to allow me to die in peace.