overpowered. He had learned how to take dead reckonings and read portents in the sky.
It was an engrossing study, but there had been hours when the monotony oppressed him. He had grown mortally weary of twenty-odd circumscribed minds, the unending yarns which, if not lacking in picturesqueness and variety of detail, were hopelessly similar in tone, being confined to some aspect of sea life or the deeds of seamen on land. His mates had few ideas left with which to surprise him, and Paul had discovered that the element of surprise was as necessary to mental progress as salt was necessary in food.
It was consequently with a very fever of elation that he strained his eyes through the velvety blackness. Fair winds had been blowing for days, following a series of storms encountered south of the Cape of Good Hope. The pencil record in the chart-room showed only a short's pace between the position at noon and the port of Fremantle. And now a propitious breeze was bearing them straight towards the promised land.
"Birds of varigated plumage abound, but their cries are for the most part raucous. The songsters of European groves are practically unknown in the Commonwealth," Paul had read, and he wondered if he would see wild parrots perching on telegraph wires. He disliked parrots. But for them the boys of Hale's Turning would never have lurked around corners waiting to scream out at his approach, "Polly want a cracker, Polly want a cracker!"
He wondered if Australians ate pancakes and cornmeal muffins and frosted walnut cakes. He wondered what Australian candy was like, and marbles and tops. Did they play Nobbies and Lacrosse and Duck on the Rock? Almost any strange custom might prevail in a country where even the seasons were upside down. Fancy being hot and sticky in January! While he was
