CHAPTER XLI
"FOR LONDON DIRECT"
The Sydney papers of the year 1838 contain no reference to the extraordinary scenes enacted at the Pulteney Hotel on the first Saturday of the month of October. They do not report the removal of a magistrate of the Colony to its best and most private madhouse—some from a sense of journalistic charity—others for reasons which the late Nicholas Harding’s bankers might even now disclose. The curious, however, may still look up the advertisement which Lady Starkie read aloud from the Herald within an hour of the events described. It blew a trumpet for—
THE FINE FAST-SAILING SHIP
FLORENTIA
FOR LONDON DIRECT
and the call found a grateful echo in two young hearts, now so light, and now so heavy, that it was an act of mercy to stir them in this way. The Florentia was described as even then loading at the quay; it seemed as though they might all sail away from that beautiful and accursed land within a week. As a matter of history, however, the Florentia did not complete her cargo until the New Year; no other homeward-bound ship was ready before her; and much happened on shore meanwhile.
Tom Erichsen, having voluntarily confessed the part he had borne in the Castle Sullivan outrage, fell ill as
