In this strait, he had recourse to the lawyer who paid him his
allowance.

"Try to remember that my time is valuable, Mr. Carthew," said the
lawyer. "It is quite unnecessary you should enlarge on the peculiar
position in which you stand. Remittance men, as we call them here, are
not so rare in my experience; and in such cases I act upon a system. I
make you a present of a sovereign; here it is. Every day you choose to
call, my clerk will advance you a shilling; on Saturday, since my office
is closed on Sunday, he will advance you half a crown. My conditions are
these: that you do not come to me, but to my clerk; that you do not come
here the worse of liquor; and you go away the moment you are paid and
have signed a receipt. I wish you a good-morning."

"I have to thank you, I suppose," said Carthew. "My position is so
wretched that I cannot even refuse this starvation allowance."

"Starvation!" said the lawyer, smiling. "No man will starve here on a
shilling a day. I had on my hands another young gentleman, who remained
continuously intoxicated for six years on the same allowance." And he
once more busied himself with his papers.

In the time that followed, the image of the smiling lawyer haunted
Carthew's memory. "That three minutes' talk was all the education I
ever had worth talking of," says he. "It was all life in a nut-shell.
Confound it! I thought, have I got to the point of envying that ancient
fossil?"

Every morning for the next two or three weeks, the stroke of ten found
Norris, unkempt and haggard, at the lawyer's door. The long day and
longer night he spent in the Domain, now on a bench, now on the grass
under a Norfolk Island pine, the companion of perhaps the lowest class
on earth, the Larrikins of Sydney. Morning after morning, the dawn
behind the lighthouse recalled him from slumber; and he would stand and
gaze upon the changing east, the fading lenses, the smokeless city, and
the many-armed and many-masted harbour growing slowly clear under his
eyes. His bed-fellows (so to call them) were less active; they lay
sprawled upon the grass and benches, the dingy men, the frowsy women,
prolonging their late repose; and Carthew wandered among the sleeping
bodies alone, and cursed the incurable stupidity of his behaviour. Day
brought a new society of nursery-maids and children, and fresh-dressed
and (I am sorry to say) tight-laced maidens, and gay people in rich
traps; upon the skirts of which Carthew and "the other blackguards"--his
own bitter phrase--skulked, and chewed grass, and looked on. Day passed,
the light died, the green and leafy precinct sparkled with lamps or lay
in shadow, and the round of the night began again, the loitering women,
the lurking men, the sudden outburst of screams, the sound of flying
feet. "You mayn't believe it," says Carthew, "but I got to that pitch
that I didn't care a hang. I have been wakened out of my sleep to hear a
woman screaming, and I have only turned upon my other side. Yes, it's a
queer place, where the dowagers and the kids walk all day, and at night
you can hear people bawling for help as if it was the Forest of Bondy,
with the lights of a great town all round, and parties spinning through
in cabs from Government House and dinner with my lord!"

It was Norris's diversion, having none other, to scrape acquaintance,
where, how, and with whom he could. Many a long dull talk he held upon
the benches or the grass; many a strange waif he came to know; many
strange things he heard, and saw some that were abominable. It was to
one of these last that he owed his deliverance from the Domain. For some
time the rain had been merciless; one night after another he had been
obliged to squander fourpence on a bed and reduce his board to the
remaining eightpence: and he sat one morning near the Macquarrie Street
entrance, hungry, for he had gone without breakfast, and wet, as he had
already been for several days, when the cries of an animal in distress
attracted his attention. Some fifty yards away, in the extreme angle of
the grass, a party of the chronically unemployed had got hold of a dog,
whom they were torturing in a manner not to be described. The heart
of Norris, which had grown indifferent to the cries of human anger or
distress, woke at the appeal of the dumb creature. He ran amongst the
Larrikins, scattered them, rescued the dog, and stood at bay. They were
six in number, shambling gallowsbirds; but for once the proverb was
right, cruelty was coupled with cowardice, and the wretches cursed
him and made off. It chanced that this act of prowess had not passed
unwitnessed. On a bench near by there was seated a shopkeeper's
assistant out of employ, a diminutive, cheerful, red-headed creature by
the name of Hemstead. He was the last man to have interfered himself,
for his discretion more than equalled his valour; but he made haste
to congratulate Carthew, and to warn him he might not always be so
fortunate.

"They're a dyngerous lot of people about this park. My word! it doesn't
do to ply with them!" he observed, in that RYCY AUSTRYLIAN English,
which (as it has received the imprimatur of Mr. Froude) we should all
make haste to imitate.

"Why, I'm one of that lot myself," returned Carthew.

Hemstead laughed and remarked that he knew a gentleman when he saw one.

"For all that, I am simply one of the unemployed," said Carthew,
seating himself beside his new acquaintance, as he had sat (since this
experience began) beside so many dozen others.

"I'm out of a plyce myself," said Hemstead.

"You beat me all the way and back," says Carthew. "My trouble is that I
have never been in one."

"I suppose you've no tryde?" asked Hemstead.

"I know how to spend money," replied Carthew, "and I really do know
something of horses and something of the sea. But the unions head me
off; if it weren't for them, I might have had a dozen berths."

"My word!" cried the sympathetic listener. "Ever try the mounted
police?" he inquired.

"I did, and was bowled out," was the reply; "couldn't pass the doctors."

"Well, what do you think of the ryleways, then?" asked Hemstead.

"What do YOU think of them, if you come to that?" asked Carthew.

"O, _I_ don't think of them; I don't go in for manual labour," said the
little man proudly. "But if a man don't mind that, he's pretty sure of a
job there."

"By George, you tell me where to go!" cried Carthew, rising.

The heavy rains continued, the country was already overrun with floods;
the railway system daily required more hands, daily the superintendent
advertised; but "the unemployed" preferred the resources of charity
and rapine, and a navvy, even an amateur navvy, commanded money in the
market. The same night, after a tedious journey, and a change of trains
to pass a landslip, Norris found himself in a muddy cutting behind South
Clifton, attacking his first shift of manual labour.

For weeks the rain scarce relented. The whole front of the mountain
slipped seaward from above, avalanches of clay, rock, and uprooted
forest spewed over the cliffs and fell upon the beach or in the
breakers. Houses were carried bodily away and smashed like nuts; others
were menaced and deserted, the door locked, the chimney cold, the
dwellers fled elsewhere for safety. Night and day the fire blazed in
the encampment; night and day hot coffee was served to the overdriven
toilers in the shift; night and day the engineer of the section made his
rounds with words of encouragement, hearty and rough and well suited to
his men. Night and day, too, the telegraph clicked with disastrous news
and anxious inquiry. Along the terraced line of rail, rare trains came
creeping and signalling; and paused at the threatened corner, like
living things conscious of peril. The commandant of the post would
hastily review his labours, make (with a dry throat) the signal to
advance; and the whole squad line the way and look on in a choking
silence, or burst into a brief cheer as the train cleared the point of
danger and shot on, perhaps through the thin sunshine between squalls,
perhaps with blinking lamps into the gathering, rainy twilight.

One such scene Carthew will remember till he dies. It blew great guns
from the seaward; a huge surf bombarded, five hundred feet below him,
the steep mountain's foot; close in was a vessel in distress, firing
shots from a fowling-piece, if any help might come. So he saw and heard
her the moment before the train appeared and paused, throwing up a
Babylonian tower of smoke into the rain, and oppressing men's hearts
with the scream of her whistle. The engineer was there himself; he paled
as he made the signal: the engine came at a foot's pace; but the whole
bulk of mountain shook and seemed to nod seaward, and the watching
navvies instinctively clutched at shrubs and trees: vain precautions,
vain as the shots from the poor sailors. Once again fear was
disappointed; the train passed unscathed; and Norris, drawing a long
breath, remembered the labouring ship and glanced below. She was gone.

So the days and the nights passed: Homeric labour in Homeric
circumstance. Carthew was sick with sleeplessness and coffee; his hands,
softened by the wet, were cut to ribbons; yet he enjoyed a peace of
mind and health of body hitherto unknown. Plenty of open air, plenty of
physical exertion, a continual instancy of toil; here was what had been
hitherto lacking in that misdirected life, and the true cure of vital
scepticism. To get the train through: there was the recurrent problem;
no time remained to ask if it were necessary. Carthew, the idler, the
spendthrift, the drifting dilettant, was soon remarked, praised, and
advanced. The engineer swore by him and pointed him out for an example.
"I've a new chum, up here," Norris overheard him saying, "a young swell.
He's worth any two in the squad." The words fell on the ears of the
discarded son like music; and from that moment, he not only found an
interest, he took a pride, in his plebeian tasks.

The press of work was still at its highest when quarter-day approached.
Norris was now raised to a position of some trust; at his discretion,
trains were stopped or forwarded at the dangerous cornice near North
Clifton; and he found in this responsibility both terror and delight.
The thought of the seventy-five pounds that would soon await him at the
lawyer's, and of his own obligation to be present every quarter-day in
Sydney, filled him for a little with divided councils. Then he made
up his mind, walked in a slack moment to the inn at Clifton, ordered a
sheet of paper and a bottle of beer, and wrote, explaining that he held
a good appointment which he would lose if he came to Sydney, and asking
the lawyer to accept this letter as an evidence of his presence in the
colony, and retain the money till next quarter-day. The answer came in
course of post, and was not merely favourable but cordial. "Although
what you propose is contrary to the terms of my instructions," it ran,
"I willingly accept the responsibility of granting your request. I
should say I am agreeably disappointed in your behaviour. My experience
has not led me to found much expectations on gentlemen in your
position."

The rains abated, and the temporary labour was discharged; not Norris,
to whom the engineer clung as to found money; not Norris, who found
himself a ganger on the line in the regular staff of navvies. His camp
was pitched in a grey wilderness of rock and forest, far from any house;
as he sat with his mates about the evening fire, the trains passing on
the track were their next and indeed their only neighbours, except
the wild things of the wood. Lovely weather, light and monotonous
employment, long hours of somnolent camp-fire talk, long sleepless
nights, when he reviewed his foolish and fruitless career as he rose and
walked in the moonlit forest, an occasional paper of which he would read
all, the advertisements with as much relish as the text: such was the
tenor of an existence which soon began to weary and harass him. He
lacked and regretted the fatigue, the furious hurry, the suspense, the
fires, the midnight coffee, the rude and mud-bespattered poetry of the
first toilful weeks. In the quietness of his new surroundings, a voice
summoned him from this exorbital part of life, and about the middle of
October he threw up his situation and bade farewell to the camp of tents
and the shoulder of Bald Mountain.

Clad in his rough clothes, with a bundle on his shoulder and his
accumulated wages in his pocket, he entered Sydney for the second time,
and walked with pleasure and some bewilderment in the cheerful streets,
like a man landed from a voyage. The sight of the people led him on. He
forgot his necessary errands, he forgot to eat. He wandered in moving
multitudes like a stick upon a river. Last he came to the Domain and
strolled there, and remembered his shame and sufferings, and looked with
poignant curiosity at his successors. Hemstead, not much shabbier and
no less cheerful than before, he recognised and addressed like an old
family friend.

"That was a good turn you did me," said he. "That railway was the making
of me. I hope you've had luck yourself."


"My word, no!" replied the little man. "I just sit here and read the
_Dead Bird_. It's the depression in tryde, you see. There's no positions
goin' that a man like me would care to look at." And he showed
Norris his certificates and written characters, one from a grocer
in Wooloomooloo, one from an ironmonger, and a third from a billiard
saloon. "Yes," he said, "I tried bein' a billiard marker. It's no
account; these lyte hours are no use for a man's health. I won't be no
man's slyve," he added firmly.

On the principle that he who is too proud to be a slave is usually not
too modest to become a pensioner, Carthew gave him half a sovereign,
and departed, being suddenly struck with hunger, in the direction of the
Paris House. When he came to that quarter of the city, the barristers
were trotting in the streets in wig and gown, and he stood to observe
them with his bundle on his shoulder, and his mind full of curious
recollections of the past.

"By George!" cried a voice, "it's Mr. Carthew!"

And turning about he found himself face to face with a handsome sunburnt
youth, somewhat fatted, arrayed in the finest of fine raiment, and
sporting about a sovereign's worth of flowers in his buttonhole. Norris
had met him during his first days in Sydney at a farewell supper; had
even escorted him on board a schooner full of cockroaches and black-boy
sailors, in which he was bound for six months among the islands; and had
kept him ever since in entertained remembrance. Tom Hadden (known to the
bulk of Sydney folk as Tommy) was heir to a considerable property, which
a prophetic father had placed in the hands of rigorous trustees. The
income supported Mr. Hadden in splendour for about three months out of
twelve; the rest of the year he passed in retreat among the islands.
He was now about a week returned from his eclipse, pervading Sydney in
hansom cabs and airing the first bloom of six new suits of clothes; and
yet the unaffected creature hailed Carthew in his working jeans and
with the damning bundle on his shoulder, as he might have claimed
acquaintance with a duke.

"Come and have a drink!" was his cheerful cry.

"I'm just going to have lunch at the Paris House," returned Carthew.
"It's a long time since I have had a decent meal."

"Splendid scheme!" said Hadden. "I've only had breakfast half an hour
ago; but we'll have a private room, and I'll manage to pick something.
It'll brace me up. I was on an awful tear last night, and I've met no
end of fellows this morning." To meet a fellow, and to stand and share a
drink, were with Tom synonymous terms.

They were soon at table in the corner room up-stairs, and paying due
attention to the best fare in Sydney. The odd similarity of their
positions drew them together, and they began soon to exchange
confidences. Carthew related his privations in the Domain and his toils
as a navvy; Hadden gave his experience as an amateur copra merchant in
the South Seas, and drew a humorous picture of life in a coral island.
Of the two plans of retirement, Carthew gathered that his own had been
vastly the more lucrative; but Hadden's trading outfit had consisted
largely of bottled stout and brown sherry for his own consumption.

"I had champagne too," said Hadden, "but I kept that in case of
sickness, until I didn't seem to be going to be sick, and then I opened
a pint every Sunday. Used to sleep all morning, then breakfast with my
pint of fizz, and lie in a hammock and read Hallam's _Middle Ages_. Have
you read that? I always take something solid to the islands. There's no
doubt I did the thing in rather a fine style; but if it was gone about a
little cheaper, or there were two of us to bear the expense, it ought
to pay hand over fist. I've got the influence, you see. I'm a chief now,
and sit in the speak-house under my own strip of roof. I'd like to see
them taboo ME! They daren't try it; I've a strong party, I can tell you.
Why, I've had upwards of thirty cowtops sitting in my front verandah
eating tins of salmon."

"Cowtops?" asked Carthew, "what are they?"

"That's what Hallam would call feudal retainers," explained Hadden, not
without vainglory. "They're My Followers. They belong to My Family.
I tell you, they come expensive, though; you can't fill up all these
retainers on tinned salmon for nothing; but whenever I could get it, I
would give 'em squid. Squid's good for natives, but I don't care for it,
do you?--or shark either. It's like the working classes at home. With
copra at the price it is, they ought to be willing to bear their share
of the loss; and so I've told them again and again. I think it's a man's
duty to open their minds, and I try to, but you can't get political
economy into them; it doesn't seem to reach their intelligence."


There was an expression still sticking in Carthew's memory, and he
returned upon it with a smile. "Talking of political economy," said he,
"you said if there were two of us to bear the expense, the profits would
increase. How do you make out that?"

"I'll show you! I'll figure it out for you!" cried Hadden, and with a
pencil on the back of the bill of fare proceeded to perform miracles. He
was a man, or let us rather say a lad, of unusual projective power. Give
him the faintest hint of any speculation, and the figures flowed from
him by the page. A lively imagination and a ready though inaccurate
memory supplied his data; he delivered himself with an inimitable heat
that made him seem the picture of pugnacity; lavished contradiction;
had a form of words, with or without significance, for every form of
criticism; and the looker-on alternately smiled at his simplicity and
fervour, or was amazed by his unexpected shrewdness. He was a kind of
Pinkerton in play. I have called Jim's the romance of business; this was
its Arabian tale.

"Have you any idea what this would cost?" he asked, pausing at an item.

"Not I," said Carthew.

"Ten pounds ought to be ample," concluded the projector.

"O, nonsense!" cried Carthew. "Fifty at the very least."

"You told me yourself this moment you knew nothing about it!" cried
Tommy. "How can I make a calculation, if you blow hot and cold? You
don't seem able to be serious!"

But he consented to raise his estimate to twenty; and a little after,
the calculation coming out with a deficit, cut it down again to five
pounds ten, with the remark, "I told you it was nonsense. This sort of
thing has to be done strictly, or where's the use?"

Some of these processes struck Carthew as unsound; and he was at times
altogether thrown out by the capricious startings of the prophet's mind.
These plunges seemed to be gone into for exercise and by the way, like
the curvets of a willing horse. Gradually the thing took shape; the
glittering if baseless edifice arose; and the hare still ran on the
mountains, but the soup was already served in silver plate. Carthew in a
few days could command a hundred and fifty pounds; Hadden was ready with
five hundred; why should they not recruit a fellow or two more, charter
an old ship, and go cruising on their own account? Carthew was an
experienced yachtsman; Hadden professed himself able to "work an
approximate sight." Money was undoubtedly to be made, or why should so
many vessels cruise about the islands? they, who worked their own ship,
were sure of a still higher profit.

"And whatever else comes of it, you see," cried Hadden, "we get our keep
for nothing. Come, buy some togs, that's the first thing you have to do
of course; and then we'll take a hansom and go to the Currency Lass."

"I'm going to stick to the togs I have," said Norris.

"Are you?" cried Hadden. "Well, I must say I admire you. You're a
regular sage. It's what you call Pythagoreanism, isn't it? if I haven't
forgotten my philosophy."

"Well, I call it economy," returned Carthew. "If we are going to try
this thing on, I shall want every sixpence."

"You'll see if we're going to try it!" cried Tommy, rising radiant from
table. "Only, mark you, Carthew, it must be all in your name. I have
capital, you see; but you're all right. You can play vacuus viator, if
the thing goes wrong."

"I thought we had just proved it was quite safe," said Carthew.

"There's nothing safe in business, my boy," replied the sage; "not even
bookmaking."

The public house and tea garden called the Currency Lass represented
a moderate fortune gained by its proprietor, Captain Bostock, during
a long, active, and occasionally historic career among the islands.
Anywhere from Tonga to the Admiralty Isles, he knew the ropes and could
lie in the native dialect. He had seen the end of sandal wood, the end
of oil, and the beginning of copra; and he was himself a commercial
pioneer, the first that ever carried human teeth into the Gilberts. He
was tried for his life in Fiji in Sir Arthur Gordon's time; and if ever
he prayed at all, the name of Sir Arthur was certainly not forgotten. He
was speared in seven places in New Ireland--the same time his mate
was killed--the famous "outrage on the brig Jolly Roger"; but the
treacherous savages made little by their wickedness, and Bostock, in
spite of their teeth, got seventy-five head of volunteer labour on
board, of whom not more than a dozen died of injuries. He had a hand,
besides, in the amiable pleasantry which cost the life of Patteson; and
when the sham bishop landed, prayed, and gave his benediction to the
natives, Bostock, arrayed in a female chemise out of the traderoom, had
stood at his right hand and boomed amens. This, when he was sure he was
among good fellows, was his favourite yarn. "Two hundred head of labour
for a hatful of amens," he used to name the tale; and its sequel, the
death of the real bishop, struck him as a circumstance of extraordinary
humour.

Many of these details were communicated in the hansom, to the surprise
of Carthew.

"Why do we want to visit this old ruffian?" he asked.

"You wait till you hear him," replied Tommy. "That man knows
everything."

On descending from the hansom at the Currency Lass, Hadden was struck
with the appearance of the cabman, a gross, salt-looking man, red-faced,
blue-eyed, short-handed and short-winded, perhaps nearing forty.

"Surely I know you?" said he. "Have you driven me before?"

"Many's the time, Mr. Hadden," returned the driver. "The last time you
was back from the islands, it was me that drove you to the races, sir."

"All right: jump down and have a drink then," said Tom, and he turned
and led the way into the garden.

Captain Bostock met the party: he was a slow, sour old man, with
fishy eyes; greeted Tommy offhand, and (as was afterwards remembered)
exchanged winks with the driver.

"A bottle of beer for the cabman there at that table," said Tom.
"Whatever you please from shandygaff to champagne at this one here; and
you sit down with us. Let me make you acquainted with my friend, Mr.
Carthew. I've come on business, Billy; I want to consult you as a
friend; I'm going into the island trade upon my own account."


Doubtless the captain was a mine of counsel, but opportunity was denied
him. He could not venture on a statement, he was scarce allowed to
finish a phrase, before Hadden swept him from the field with a volley
of protest and correction. That projector, his face blazing with
inspiration, first laid before him at inordinate length a question, and
as soon as he attempted to reply, leaped at his throat, called his facts
in question, derided his policy, and at times thundered on him from the
heights of moral indignation.

"I beg your pardon," he said once. "I am a gentleman, Mr. Carthew here
is a gentleman, and we don't mean to do that class of business. Can't
you see who you are talking to? Can't you talk sense? Can't you give us
'a dead bird' for a good traderoom?"

"No, I don't suppose I can," returned old Bostock; "not when I can't
hear my own voice for two seconds together. It was gin and guns I did it
with."

"Take your gin and guns to Putney!" cried Hadden. "It was the thing in
your times, that's right enough; but you're old now, and the game's up.
I'll tell you what's wanted now-a-days, Bill Bostock," said he; and did,
and took ten minutes to it.

Carthew could not refrain from smiling. He began to think less seriously
of the scheme, Hadden appearing too irresponsible a guide; but on the
other hand, he enjoyed himself amazingly. It was far from being the same
with Captain Bostock.

"You know a sight, don't you?" remarked that gentleman, bitterly, when
Tommy paused.

"I know a sight more than you, if that's what you mean," retorted Tom.
"It stands to reason I do. You're not a man of any education; you've
been all your life at sea or in the islands; you don't suppose you can
give points to a man like me?"

"Here's your health, Tommy," returned Bostock. "You'll make an A-one
bake in the New Hebrides."

"That's what I call talking," cried Tom, not perhaps grasping the spirit
of this doubtful compliment. "Now you give me your attention. We have
the money and the enterprise, and I have the experience: what we want is
a cheap, smart boat, a good captain, and an introduction to some house
that will give us credit for the trade."

"Well, I'll tell you," said Captain Bostock. "I have seen men like you
baked and eaten, and complained of afterwards. Some was tough, and some
hadn't no flaviour," he added grimly.

"What do you mean by that?" cried Tom.

"I mean I don't care," cried Bostock. "It ain't any of my interests. I
haven't underwrote your life. Only I'm blest if I'm not sorry for the
cannibal as tries to eat your head. And what I recommend is a cheap,
smart coffin and a good undertaker. See if you can find a house to give
you credit for a coffin! Look at your friend there; HE'S got some sense;
he's laughing at you so as he can't stand."

The exact degree of ill-feeling in Mr. Bostock's mind was difficult to
gauge; perhaps there was not much, perhaps he regarded his remarks as a
form of courtly badinage. But there is little doubt that Hadden resented
them. He had even risen from his place, and the conference was on
the point of breaking up, when a new voice joined suddenly in the
conversation.

The cabman sat with his back turned upon the party, smoking a meerschaum
pipe. Not a word of Tommy's eloquence had missed him, and he now faced
suddenly about with these amazing words:--

"Excuse me, gentlemen; if you'll buy me the ship I want, I'll get you
the trade on credit."

There was a pause.

"Well, what do YOU, mean?" gasped Tommy.

"Better tell 'em who I am, Billy," said the cabman.

"Think it safe, Joe?" inquired Mr. Bostock.

"I'll take my risk of it," returned the cabman.

"Gentlemen," said Bostock, rising solemnly, "let me make you acquainted
with Captain Wicks of the Grace Darling."

"Yes, gentlemen, that is what I am," said the cabman. "You know I've
been in trouble; and I don't deny but what I struck the blow, and where
was I to get evidence of my provocation? So I turned to and took a cab,
and I've driven one for three year now and nobody the wiser."

"I beg your pardon," said Carthew, joining almost for the first time;
"I'm a new chum. What was the charge?"

"Murder," said Captain Wicks, "and I don't deny but what I struck the
blow. And there's no sense in my trying to deny I was afraid to go to
trial, or why would I be here? But it's a fact it was flat mutiny. Ask
Billy here. He knows how it was."

Carthew breathed long; he had a strange, half-pleasurable sense of
wading deeper in the tide of life. "Well," said he, "you were going on
to say?"

"I was going on to say this," said the captain sturdily. "I've overheard
what Mr. Hadden has been saying, and I think he talks good sense. I like
some of his ideas first chop. He's sound on traderooms; he's all there
on the traderoom, and I see that he and I would pull together. Then
you're both gentlemen, and I like that," observed Captain Wicks. "And
then I'll tell you I'm tired of this cabbing cruise, and I want to get
to work again. Now, here's my offer. I've a little money I can stake
up,--all of a hundred anyway. Then my old firm will give me trade, and
jump at the chance; they never lost by me; they know what I'm worth as
supercargo. And, last of all, you want a good captain to sail your ship
for you. Well, here I am. I've sailed schooners for ten years. Ask Billy
if I can handle a schooner."

"No man better," said Billy.

"And as for my character as a shipmate," concluded Wicks, "go and ask my
old firm."

"But look here!" cried Hadden, "how do you mean to manage? You can whisk
round in a hansom, and no questions asked. But if you try to come on a
quarter-deck, my boy, you'll get nabbed."

"I'll have to keep back till the last," replied Wicks, "and take another
name."

"But how about clearing? what other name?" asked Tommy, a little
bewildered.

"I don't know yet," returned the captain, with a grin. "I'll see what
the name is on my new certificate, and that'll be good enough for me.
If I can't get one to buy, though I never heard of such a thing, there's
old Kirkup, he's turned some sort of farmer down Bondi way; he'll hire
me his."

"You seemed to speak as if you had a ship in view," said Carthew.

"So I have, too," said Captain Wicks, "and a beauty. Schooner yacht
Dream; got lines you never saw the beat of; and a witch to go. She
passed me once off Thursday Island, doing two knots to my one and laying
a point and a half better; and the Grace Darling was a ship that I was
proud of. I took and tore my hair. The Dream's been MY dream ever since.
That was in her old days, when she carried a blue ens'n. Grant Sanderson
was the party as owned her; he was rich and mad, and got a fever at last
somewhere about the Fly River, and took and died. The captain brought
the body back to Sydney, and paid off. Well, it turned out Grant
Sanderson had left any quantity of wills and any quantity of widows, and
no fellow could make out which was the genuine article. All the widows
brought lawsuits against all the rest, and every will had a firm of
lawyers on the quarterdeck as long as your arm. They tell me it was
one of the biggest turns-to that ever was seen, bar Tichborne; the Lord
Chamberlain himself was floored, and so was the Lord Chancellor; and all
that time the Dream lay rotting up by Glebe Point. Well, it's done now;
they've picked out a widow and a will; tossed up for it, as like as not;
and the Dream's for sale. She'll go cheap; she's had a long turn-to at
rotting."

"What size is she?"

"Well, big enough. We don't want her bigger. A hundred and ninety, going
two hundred," replied the captain. "She's fully big for us three; it
would be all the better if we had another hand, though it's a pity too,
when you can pick up natives for half nothing. Then we must have a cook.
I can fix raw sailor-men, but there's no going to sea with a new-chum
cook. I can lay hands on the man we want for that: a Highway boy, an
old shipmate of mine, of the name of Amalu. Cooks first rate, and it's
always better to have a native; he aint fly, you can turn him to as you
please, and he don't know enough to stand out for his rights."

From the moment that Captain Wicks joined in the conversation, Carthew
recovered interest and confidence; the man (whatever he might have done)
was plainly good-natured, and plainly capable; if he thought well of the
enterprise, offered to contribute money, brought experience, and could
thus solve at a word the problem of the trade, Carthew was content to
go ahead. As for Hadden, his cup was full; he and Bostock forgave each
other in champagne; toast followed toast; it was proposed and carried
amid acclamation to change the name of the schooner (when she should
be bought) to the Currency Lass; and the Currency Lass Island Trading
Company was practically founded before dusk.

Three days later, Carthew stood before the lawyer, still in his jean
suit, received his hundred and fifty pounds, and proceeded rather
timidly to ask for more indulgence.

"I have a chance to get on in the world," he said. "By to-morrow evening
I expect to be part owner of a ship."

"Dangerous property, Mr. Carthew," said the lawyer.

"Not if the partners work her themselves and stand to go down along with
her," was the reply.

"I conceive it possible you might make something of it in that way,"
returned the other. "But are you a seaman? I thought you had been in the
diplomatic service."

"I am an old yachtsman," said Norris. "And I must do the best I can.
A fellow can't live in New South Wales upon diplomacy. But the point I
wish to prepare you for is this. It will be impossible I should present
myself here next quarter-day; we expect to make a six months' cruise of
it among the islands."

"Sorry, Mr. Carthew: I can't hear of that," replied the lawyer.

"I mean upon the same conditions as the last," said Carthew.

"The conditions are exactly opposite," said the lawyer. "Last time I
had reason to know you were in the colony; and even then I stretched a
point. This time, by your own confession, you are contemplating a breach
of the agreement; and I give you warning if you carry it out and I
receive proof of it (for I will agree to regard this conversation as
confidential) I shall have no choice but to do my duty. Be here on
quarter-day, or your allowance ceases."

"This is very hard and, I think, rather silly," returned Carthew.

"It is not of my doing. I have my instructions," said the lawyer.

"And you so read these instructions, that I am to be prohibited from
making an honest livelihood?" asked Carthew.

"Let us be frank," said the lawyer. "I find nothing in these
instructions about an honest livelihood. I have no reason to suppose
my clients care anything about that. I have reason to suppose only
one thing,--that they mean you shall stay in this colony, and to guess
another, Mr. Carthew. And to guess another."

"What do you mean by that?" asked Norris.

"I mean that I imagine, on very strong grounds, that your family desire
to see no more of you," said the lawyer. "O, they may be very wrong;
but that is the impression conveyed, that is what I suppose I am paid to
bring about, and I have no choice but to try and earn my hire."

"I would scorn to deceive you," said Norris, with a strong flush, "you
have guessed rightly. My family refuse to see me; but I am not going to
England, I am going to the islands. How does that affect the islands?"

"Ah, but I don't know that you are going to the islands," said the
lawyer, looking down, and spearing the blotting-paper with a pencil.

"I beg your pardon. I have the pleasure of informing you," said Norris.

"I am afraid, Mr. Carthew, that I cannot regard that communication as
official," was the slow reply.

"I am not accustomed to have my word doubted!" cried Norris.

"Hush! I allow no one to raise his voice in my office," said the
lawyer. "And for that matter--you seem to be a young gentleman of
sense--consider what I know of you. You are a discarded son; your family
pays money to be shut of you. What have you done? I don't know. But do
you not see how foolish I should be, if I exposed my business reputation
on the safeguard of the honour of a gentleman of whom I know just so
much and no more? This interview is very disagreeable. Why prolong it?
Write home, get my instructions changed, and I will change my behaviour.
Not otherwise."

"I am very fond of three hundred a year," said Norris, "but I cannot pay
the price required. I shall not have the pleasure of seeing you again."

"You must please yourself," said the lawyer. "Fail to be here next
quarter-day, and the thing stops. But I warn you, and I mean the warning
in a friendly spirit. Three months later you will be here begging, and I
shall have no choice but to show you in the street."

"I wish you a good-evening," said Norris.

"The same to you, Mr. Carthew," retorted the lawyer, and rang for his
clerk.

So it befell that Norris during what remained to him of arduous days in
Sydney, saw not again the face of his legal adviser; and he was already
at sea, and land was out of sight, when Hadden brought him a Sydney
paper, over which he had been dozing in the shadow of the galley, and
showed him an advertisement.

"Mr. Norris Carthew is earnestly entreated to call without delay at the
office of Mr. ----, where important intelligence awaits him."

"It must manage to wait for me six months," said Norris, lightly enough,
but yet conscious of a pang of curiosity.




CHAPTER XXIII. THE BUDGET OF THE "CURRENCY LASS."


Before noon on the 26th November, there cleared from the port of Sydney
the schooner, Currency Lass. The owner, Norris Carthew, was on board in
the somewhat unusual position of mate; the master's name purported to
be William Kirkup; the cook was a Hawaiian boy, Joseph Amalu; and there
were two hands before the mast, Thomas Hadden and Richard Hemstead, the
latter chosen partly because of his humble character, partly because he
had an odd-job-man's handiness with tools. The Currency Lass was bound
for the South Sea Islands, and first of all for Butaritari in the
Gilberts, on a register; but it was understood about the harbour that
her cruise was more than half a pleasure trip. A friend of the late
Grant Sanderson (of Auchentroon and Kilclarty) might have recognised in
that tall-masted ship, the transformed and rechristened Dream; and
the Lloyd's surveyor, had the services of such a one been called in
requisition, must have found abundant subject of remark.

For time, during her three years' inaction, had eaten deep into the
Dream and her fittings; she had sold in consequence a shade above her
value as old junk; and the three adventurers had scarce been able to
afford even the most vital repairs. The rigging, indeed, had been partly
renewed, and the rest set up; all Grant Sanderson's old canvas had been
patched together into one decently serviceable suit of sails; Grant
Sanderson's masts still stood, and might have wondered at themselves.
"I haven't the heart to tap them," Captain Wicks used to observe, as he
squinted up their height or patted their rotundity; and "as rotten as
our foremast" was an accepted metaphor in the ship's company. The sequel
rather suggests it may have been sounder than was thought; but no one
knew for certain, just as no one except the captain appreciated the
dangers of the cruise. The captain, indeed, saw with clear eyes and
spoke his mind aloud; and though a man of an astonishing hot-blooded
courage, following life and taking its dangers in the spirit of a
hound upon the slot, he had made a point of a big whaleboat. "Take your
choice," he had said; "either new masts and rigging or that boat. I
simply ain't going to sea without the one or the other. Chicken coops
are good enough, no doubt, and so is a dinghy; but they ain't for Joe."
And his partners had been forced to consent, and saw six and thirty
pounds of their small capital vanish in the turn of a hand.

All four had toiled the best part of six weeks getting ready; and though
Captain Wicks was of course not seen or heard of, a fifth was there to
help them, a fellow in a bushy red beard, which he would sometimes lay
aside when he was below, and who strikingly resembled Captain Wicks in
voice and character. As for Captain Kirkup, he did not appear till the
last moment, when he proved to be a burly mariner, bearded like Abou
Ben Adhem. All the way down the harbour and through the Heads, his
milk-white whiskers blew in the wind and were conspicuous from shore;
but the Currency Lass had no sooner turned her back upon the lighthouse,
than he went below for the inside of five seconds and reappeared clean
shaven. So many doublings and devices were required to get to sea with
an unseaworthy ship and a captain that was "wanted." Nor might
even these have sufficed, but for the fact that Hadden was a public
character, and the whole cruise regarded with an eye of indulgence as
one of Tom's engaging eccentricities. The ship, besides, had been a
yacht before; and it came the more natural to allow her still some of
the dangerous liberties of her old employment.

A strange ship they had made of it, her lofty spars disfigured with
patched canvas, her panelled cabin fitted for a traderoom with rude
shelves. And the life they led in that anomalous schooner was no less
curious than herself. Amalu alone berthed forward; the rest occupied
staterooms, camped upon the satin divans, and sat down in Grant
Sanderson's parquetry smoking-room to meals of junk and potatoes, bad
of their kind and often scant in quantity. Hemstead grumbled; Tommy
had occasional moments of revolt and increased the ordinary by a
few haphazard tins or a bottle of his own brown sherry. But Hemstead
grumbled from habit, Tommy revolted only for the moment, and there
was underneath a real and general acquiescence in these hardships. For
besides onions and potatoes, the Currency Lass may be said to have
gone to sea without stores. She carried two thousand pounds' worth of
assorted trade, advanced on credit, their whole hope and fortune. It
was upon this that they subsisted--mice in their own granary. They dined
upon their future profits; and every scanty meal was so much in the
savings bank.

Republican as were their manners, there was no practical, at least no
dangerous, lack of discipline. Wicks was the only sailor on board,
there was none to criticise; and besides, he was so easy-going, and so
merry-minded, that none could bear to disappoint him. Carthew did his
best, partly for the love of doing it, partly for love of the captain;
Amalu was a willing drudge, and even Hemstead and Hadden turned to upon
occasion with a will. Tommy's department was the trade and traderoom; he
would work down in the hold or over the shelves of the cabin, till
the Sydney dandy was unrecognizable; come up at last, draw a bucket
of sea-water, bathe, change, and lie down on deck over a big sheaf of
Sydney _Heralds_ and _Dead Birds_, or perhaps with a volume of Buckle's
_History of Civilisation_, the standard work selected for that cruise.
In the latter case, a smile went round the ship, for Buckle almost
invariably laid his student out, and when Tom awoke again he was almost
always in the humour for brown sherry. The connection was so well
established that "a glass of Buckle" or "a bottle of civilisation"
became current pleasantries on board the Currency Lass.

Hemstead's province was that of the repairs, and he had his hands full.
Nothing on board but was decayed in a proportion; the lamps leaked; so
did the decks; door-knobs came off in the hand, mouldings parted company
with the panels, the pump declined to suck, and the defective bathroom
came near to swamp the ship. Wicks insisted that all the nails were long
ago consumed, and that she was only glued together by the rust. "You
shouldn't make me laugh so much, Tommy," he would say. "I'm afraid I'll
shake the sternpost out of her." And, as Hemstead went to and fro
with his tool basket on an endless round of tinkering, Wicks lost
no opportunity of chaffing him upon his duties. "If you'd turn to at
sailoring or washing paint or something useful, now," he would say,
"I could see the fun of it. But to be mending things that haven't no
insides to them appears to me the height of foolishness." And doubtless
these continual pleasantries helped to reassure the landsmen, who went
to and fro unmoved, under circumstances that might have daunted Nelson.

The weather was from the outset splendid, and the wind fair and steady.
The ship sailed like a witch. "This Currency Lass is a powerful old
girl, and has more complaints than I would care to put a name on," the
captain would say, as he pricked the chart; "but she could show her
blooming heels to anything of her size in the Western Pacific." To
wash decks, relieve the wheel, do the day's work after dinner on the
smoking-room table, and take in kites at night,--such was the easy
routine of their life. In the evening--above all, if Tommy had produced
some of his civilisation--yarns and music were the rule. Amalu had
a sweet Hawaiian voice; and Hemstead, a great hand upon the banjo,
accompanied his own quavering tenor with effect. There was a sense in
which the little man could sing. It was great to hear him deliver _My
Boy Tammie_ in Austrylian; and the words (some of the worst of the
ruffian Macneil's) were hailed in his version with inextinguishable
mirth.

     Where hye ye been a' dye?


     he would ask, and answer himself:--

     I've been by burn and flowery brye,
     Meadow green an' mountain grye,
     Courtin' o' this young thing,
     Just come frye her mammie.

It was the accepted jest for all hands to greet the conclusion of this
song with the simultaneous cry: "My word!" thus winging the arrow of
ridicule with a feather from the singer's wing. But he had his
revenge with _Home, Sweet Home,_ and _Where is my Wandering Boy
To-night?_--ditties into which he threw the most intolerable pathos. It
appeared he had no home, nor had ever had one, nor yet any vestige of
a family, except a truculent uncle, a baker in Newcastle, N.S.W. His
domestic sentiment was therefore wholly in the air, and expressed
an unrealised ideal. Or perhaps, of all his experiences, this of
the Currency Lass, with its kindly, playful, and tolerant society,
approached it the most nearly.

It is perhaps because I know the sequel, but I can never think upon this
voyage without a profound sense of pity and mystery; of the ship (once
the whim of a rich blackguard) faring with her battered fineries
and upon her homely errand, across the plains of ocean, and past
the gorgeous scenery of dawn and sunset; and the ship's company, so
strangely assembled, so Britishly chuckle-headed, filling their days
with chaff in place of conversation; no human book on board with them
except Hadden's Buckle, and not a creature fit either to read or to
understand it; and the one mark of any civilised interest, being when
Carthew filled in his spare hours with the pencil and the brush: the
whole unconscious crew of them posting in the meanwhile towards so
tragic a disaster.

Twenty-eight days out of Sydney, on Christmas eve, they fetched up to
the entrance of the lagoon, and plied all that night outside, keeping
their position by the lights of fishers on the reef and the outlines of
the palms against the cloudy sky. With the break of day, the schooner
was hove to, and the signal for a pilot shown. But it was plain her
lights must have been observed in the darkness by the native fishermen,
and word carried to the settlement, for a boat was already under weigh.
She came towards them across the lagoon under a great press of sail,
lying dangerously down, so that at times, in the heavier puffs, they
thought she would turn turtle; covered the distance in fine style,
luffed up smartly alongside, and emitted a haggard looking white man in
pyjamas.

"Good-mornin', Cap'n," said he, when he had made good his entrance. "I
was taking you for a Fiji man-of-war, what with your flush decks and
them spars. Well, gen'lemen all, here's wishing you a Merry Christmas
and a Happy New Year," he added, and lurched against a stay.

"Why, you're never the pilot?" exclaimed Wicks, studying him with a
profound disfavour. "You've never taken a ship in--don't tell me!"

"Well, I should guess I have," returned the pilot. "I'm Captain Dobbs,
I am; and when I take charge, the captain of that ship can go below and
shave."

"But, man alive! you're drunk, man!" cried the captain.

"Drunk!" repeated Dobbs. "You can't have seen much life if you call me
drunk. I'm only just beginning. Come night, I won't say; I guess I'll be
properly full by then. But now I'm the soberest man in all Big Muggin."

"It won't do," retorted Wicks. "Not for Joseph, sir. I can't have you
piling up my schooner."

"All right," said Dobbs, "lay and rot where you are, or take and go
in and pile her up for yourself like the captain of the Leslie. That's
business, I guess; grudged me twenty dollars' pilotage, and lost twenty
thousand in trade and a brand new schooner; ripped the keel right off of
her, and she went down in the inside of four minutes, and lies in twenty
fathom, trade and all."

"What's all this?" cried Wicks. "Trade? What vessel was this Leslie,
anyhow?"

"Consigned to Cohen and Co., from 'Frisco," returned the pilot, "and
badly wanted. There's a barque inside filling up for Hamburg--you see
her spars over there; and there's two more ships due, all the way from
Germany, one in two months, they say, and one in three; Cohen and Co.'s
agent (that's Mr. Topelius) has taken and lain down with the jaundice on
the strength of it. I guess most people would, in his shoes; no trade,
no copra, and twenty hundred ton of shipping due. If you've any copra on
board, cap'n, here's your chance. Topelius will buy, gold down, and give
three cents. It's all found money to him, the way it is, whatever he
pays for it. And that's what come of going back on the pilot."