days when a man could do almost as he liked among the islands in those seas. I don't know how other folk liked it, but it just suited me—so much so that when Somerset proved inconvenient and the settlement shifted across to Thursday, I went with it, and, what was more to the point, with money enough at my back to fit my self out with a brand new lugger and full crew, and go pearling on my own account.
For many years I went at it head down, and this brings me up to four years ago, to 1888, we'll say, when I was a grown man, the owner of a house, two luggers, and as good a diving plant as any man could wish to possess. What was more, just before this, I had put some money into a mining concern which had, contrary to most ventures of the sort, turned up trumps, giving me as my share the nice round sum of £5,000. With all this wealth at my back, and having been in harness for a good number of years on end, I made up my mind to take a holiday and go home to England to see the place where my father was born, and had lived his early life (I found the name of it written in the fly leaf of an old Latin book he left me), and to have a look at a country I'd heard so much about but never thought to have the good fortune to set my foot upon.
Accordingly I packed my traps, let my house, sold my luggers and gear, intending to buy new ones when I returned; said good-bye to my friends and shipmates, and set off to join an Orient liner in Sydney. You will see from this that I intended to do the thing in style! And why not? I'd got more money to my hand than most of the swells who patronise the first saloon, had earned it honestly, and was resolved to enjoy myself with it to the top of my bent and hang the consequences.
I reached Sydney a week before the boat was adver-
