[COPYRIGHT RESERVED.] A BUSHMAN AFLOAT

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XXXIX, Issue 8, 24 August 1907, Page 38

[COPYRIGHT RESERVED.] A BUSHMAN AFLOAT

By

ALBERT DORRINGTON

Author of “ Along the Castlereagh,” “ Children of the Gully,” Etc.

ADELAIDE. < Arrived at I-args Bay on March 14. A train-ride of seven or eight miles through several sand-ridden suburbs brought us to the capital of S.A. Adelaide is without doubt the siler-tail of Australian cities. It is piquant and more respectable than the average vestryman The near hills that stared out so sharply in. the morning air. the jingle of the horsetrams. give it the appearance of a Mexican city. We found parks and churches, and more parks. In our haste to be rid of a telegram we mistook the G.P.O. for another church. The hurrying crowds and gangs of loiterers so apparent within the precincts of Melbourne and Sydney Post Offices are nowhere visible here. Two or three boys idled within its court-like entrance. A strange man with American whiskers and accent stated in a loud voice that we were in the city of the dead. He said that several more or less dead people haunted the Post Office during business hours in quest of stamps and other refreshments. He walk'd round us deliberately and offered to show us where to put our letters. He was sorry, he said, for people who came to -the city of the dead. He had come there himself, only a month before, under the impression that it was a, living, breathings place'where men could'ad&ress each .other in loud voices and get drunk. He told us in his best Chicago voice that he bad offered a patent niekel-plated, stamp-lieking machine to the S.A. Government for £OOO. Nothing had come of it. The Government had merely offered him its silent respectable ear. Ten minutes later he tried to sell us k gold watch for £3 15/ —the one that belonged to his dead wife. Adelaide is not so tame as it looks. Iv rose early one morning-recently, and gaoled its ex-mayor on a charge of fraud and embezzlement. Sydney would sooner die of plague or tramar sare thau see one of its councillors safely inside a healthy stone gaol. Some difference between the men of the South. The Sydneyite will borrow your last shilling. The Melbourne man is satisfied to toss you for drinks; but the Adelaide chap is simply artful —he. waits for you patiently and tries to sell you his grandmother's gold watch. We heard several girls singing inside an up-to-date restaurant. We entered ami ordered breakfast hurriedly. Steak and poached eggs. A red-haired girl tripped in singing “ Mollie Riley ” as she took our order. She told us frankly that she could not help singing when she waited on brown-faced strangers from the Backbloeks. We felt glad. Bill reckons that we ought to give Adelaide a good character. Therefore We take back the opinion anent the artfulness of the city, and apologise by saving that Adelaide is the place where “ Mollie Riley ” sounds well with, poaehed «g<sTHE BOAT CATCHER. * We returned to the station in time to. »»-• the 12 a.m. boat-train depart. Nice fix. Steamer timed to leave I-args Bay at 2. sharp. We fretted up and down tba platform until the 12.30 started, hoping that some unforeseen accident would delay the Orotava another half-jiour. Mail steamers have a sticky habit of Bailing on time. When we arrived at.< Larg« Bay we observed the Grotava moving slowly and gracefully from her an-

chorage. Here was a dilemma! Only a few shillings in our pockets, and no possible hope of catching her before she reached Marseilles. Our luggage, circular notes, etc., were steering cheerfully towards the horizon. While 1 was staring dumbly at the departing vessel, Bill had leaped down the pier-steps and button-holed a grey-whis-kered plub of a man squatting in the stern of a small motor-launch. 1 heard Bill's voice rise above the thrash of the tide; 1 saw his hands poised between heaven and sea. The man in the motor launch sat still as eould be; his glassy, sea-blown eyes gazing into space. And Bill’s voice was round and above him in nine different keys. He explained that all his hopes of future salvation lay aboard the fast-mov-ing mail steamer. Would the kind gentleman. who owned the launch give chase and put us aboard for a reasonable sum—five shillings, say? The light of reason came slowly into the launch proprietor’s eyes. He drew a short pipe from his pocket and scraped it carefully, with a knife. "Blamed if we ain’t goin" ta have some weather!” he said huskily. “Bit blaek over Semaphore way.” _ Bill sat beside him and held his hand half fiercely. He explained that the mail boat vyas leaving us bghind. He repeated his argument in a voice full of suppressed rage. The little old man heard him sorrowfully, but made no attempt to put off. He told us that the business of catching mail boats was full of peril and hardships. Only a month before his launch had been struck by a departing steamer's propeller while endeavouring to put a couple of desperately-belated passengers aboard. “We'll make it half a-sovereign, then,” said Bill, hoarsely. “And we’ll take all chances.” The'launch-owner glanced dreamfully at the skyline as though it were a distant relation of his. By no word or smile did he acknowledge Bill's offer. We breathed miserably and waited for the old man to speak. “If it was for me own child I couldn’t do it,” he said at last. “It’s a terrible long way from here to the steamer. 'An' she's .tearin’ up the wafer mpre’n I care about.’ Bill spoke again, and there was another ten shillings in his voice. Nothing happened. It seemed to us as though the grey-whiskered old battler had been bargaining with desperate passengers all his life. His old. sea-blown eyes measured the horizon and tire throbbing keel of the outgoing ship leisurely. “I'll do it for ye.” he said after a while; “if ye ll make it another half-crown.” We closed with the offer and sprang aboard nimbly., and were soon tearing horizon wards in the direction of the Orotava’s black smoke line. “We ain't got no hope,” drawled the old man dismally. "It's a terribfe waste of time ehaein' a 16-knot mail boat.” The motor-launch fretted and plunged in the wake of the leviathan. A crowd of inquisitive passengers gathered on the starboard side and watched us jubilantly. We could hear them betting on our chance of being taken aboard alive. “They’ll slow down when they sight us,” said Bill hopefully. “They wouldn't leave us behind.” “Them slow down!” grunted the boatchaser. ' “Why. if yer wife an family warcry in’ out to ye over the rail they wohldn’t let down a pound of steam. Mail boat* ain't got no feelin'*, young man.”.

The great onrushing steamer was indifferent to our presence. Like a blind colossus she wore seaward, hooting and clearing the blue with her giant shoulders. Several lady passengers waved their handkerchiefs to us. “If ye’d make it another five bob,” broke in the old man, “I’ll open her out an’ chance it.” W? counted out another five shillings. The old man pocketed it lazily and smiled. “Hold on!” he shouted suddenly. “We ll board her on the port side.” The launch seemed to leap forward through the blinding spray, shivering and rattling as the seas slapped her hood and funnel. Foot by foot we gained on the Orotava until we ran drenched and half-blinded under her port davits. The bos’n’s head appeared casually over the rail. He regarded us eoldly and with evident disfavour. , "This sort of thing's against the regulations,” he said loudly. “ Why don’t you come aboard in the proper way?” "Now. .Toe!” cried our boat-catcher oilily. "These two chaps are breakin’ their hearts to ’ave a bottle of wine with you.” The bos'n was silent. His head disappeared suddenly : then a long wet rope struck, us with the force of a well-flung lariat.’’ Up fer yer lives!” shouted the old man. “Up an’ hold!” Luckily there was no sea on as we clung tooth and nail to the line. Bill scrambled after me with the celerity of a man-o-war’s man. Wet, but grateful, we tumbled over the rail. An officer passed us smartly as we stepped on deck. Bill saluted sarcastically. "Yer might have waited half a minute,” he said loudly. “Me an’ me mate represent 60 pounds’ worth of passage money.” The officer looked witheringly at Bill but made no reply. "Suppose.” continued Bill, following him leisurely; "suppose one of your fifty-pound lifeboats had broken loose: would you have stopped to pick it up?” The officer turned, eyed him curiously, and vanished down the saloon stairs. “My word you would!” cried Bill. “You'd have slewed round an’ thrown the patent gasometer over the ship’s parallelogram.” Tue stewards are amiable fellows. Constant intercourse with passengers makes them nimble-minded and human. The ship’s officer is a different fellow. If you address him suddenly he will look at you for 90 seconds without answering. And if you say things about his gold braid and unimpeachable pants he will retire and invite another uniformed creature to look hard in your direction. Most of the firemen and sailors say “Baa!" whenever Bill passes along the deck. He doesn't mind. He told them the other night that he'd sooner be mistaken for a crow than a ship’s greaser. It must be admitted that he annoys these Cockney firemen. Whenever they come up from below he barks at them from the taffrail. It is a real kind of a bark that causes them to skip round and claw the air with both hands. Bill learned the barking trick when he lost his dog while taking a mob of sheep from Gunnedah to Narrabri once. The run across the Bight from Adelaide to Fremantle is sometimes an uneventful performance. While idling below we discovered casually that our mattresses were stuffed with seaweed. No

wonder we sleep like Polar bears. Seaweed makes an excellent bed. It gives out a slight flavour of ozone not unlike St. Kilda beaeh at low tide. We intend asking the ship’s doctor, whether seaweed mattresses are intended as a cure for insomnia. Nice little article for a journalist. Seaweed mattresses: A Cure for Bro-ken-down Nerves! London likes to hear about its broken-down nerves. “ MAN OVERBOARD! ” Sunday was an eventful day. An Austrian gum-digger from New Zealand had been acting strangely ever since he came on board. At 4 o’clock in the afternoon he scrambled over the rail and plunged into the sea. His comrade, a big-bodied, black-whiskered fellow, tore round the decks snatching frantically, at all the available lifebuoys and hurling them over the side. The stewards forcibly restrained him from denuding the ship of its stock of life-saving appliances. Strange how quickly a man disappears when a moderate sea is running! The eye is continually baffled by the swiftchanging surface currents. It was at first surmised that our man had been swept astern and eaught bv the propellor. The Orotava slewed round; a boat was lowered in fairly good time, and was soon pulling baek through the long white wake astern. No sign of the gum-digger anywhere. The boat cut here and there travelling far until it was lost to view. A mail boat is as impatient of delay as a woman with an appointment. She fretted and heaved, while several officers searched the wave hollows from the bridge for a of the unfortunate man. Five hundred people crowded the sides peering across the long insliding seas that swept under our stern. A floek of sea hawks and albatrosses circled in groups at a certain point in our wake. A dozen glasses covered them to ascertain whether the struggles of the Austrian had caused the unusual commotion among the birds. Broad-winged mollyhawks and black shags joined the scrimmage, thrashing and screaming in mid air as though anxious to share the spoil. ••Those big birds will drown a man,” said one of the sailors to me. “I’ve seen 'em settle on the head of a swimming boy and drive him under.” "They’re a derned sight worse than sharks,” added a New York man excitedly. "I got adrift from a whaleboat up in the Barrier, some years ago, and a big, skulking cow-bird came at me claw and wing as if it wanted my two eyes for breakfast. “A man can't fight birds when he’s swimming for his life. He's got to chew up all his bad language and duck his head,” continued the American. “I ducked every time it clawed my head until I was blamed,near silly and half drowned. 'Every time my bald head showed above water the derned wings hit me on the face and jaw.” “Then I felt my mate grip me by shoulder and haul me into the boat. Guess he wasn’t a second too soon either. About a dozen other cowbirds had swarmed round, and started sharpening their claws against my scalp.” .A sudden from the Orotava’, stern told us that another boat had been ' lowered. A minute later we beheld tM missing Austrian being lifted into tM

■fern, a life-buoy gripped tenaciously in b°< 1i hands. ' He had been in the water exactly 35 ■ninntes. His lips were blue from exposure: his jaw hung listlessly as the boat was heaved to the davits. He was placed in hospital immediately and received medical attendance. Later, an inquiry was held concerning the manner of his going overboard. It has been considered advisable to keep him under strict- surveillance during the rest of the trip. . The approach to Fremantle is fairly easy and far less monotonous than that of Melbourne. To the uninitiated eye the deep-water channel is well buoyed and lit, although from Rottenest to Cape Leuwin the sandbanks have a camel-like habit of appearing on the horizon. A launch conveys passengers up the Swan River to Perth. We did the trip in a blinding shower of rain—the first for many months. Off Five Fathom Bank lies the hull of the Orizaba; gulls and hawks circling round its weather-beaten sides. She was caught in a fog more than a year ago, and ran aground. The Orizaba was a splendid sea-boat, and on aeeount of her good qualities her insurance was reduced 50 per cent. The company had decided to withdraw her from the Australian service, but the fog willed otherwise, and Five Fathom Bank holds her till wind and sea shall have sundered her planks. One hundred and fifty passengers, mostly young men, left at Fremantle, bound for Kalgoorlie and Leonora. The gang Of Afghans streamed ashore, glad to be cut of the stuffy forehold and eager to face the open camel tracks again. Times are supposed to be dull out West, but the crowd of new arrivals think otherwise. “ It’s hot out beyond.” said one; “but tucker and wages are all right. Good bye, old man.” Perth itself was a revelation to us. We Had pictured it a veritable Chinatown among the sandhills and ti-tree swamps. The railway from Fremantle to the capital serves a dozen thriving suburbs. Everywhere one sees the hand of the builder at work. Acres of outlying scrub are being cleared; homesteads and factories bob up from behind yellow sand hills and tree covered heights. Perth is probably the most modern of Australian cities. ' The streets are well laid out. and from east to west one feels the throb of new life streaming into the Capital. Here and there a dilapidated boardinghouse peeps from the rows of well built dwellings. The mind goes back to the early nineties, when the East invaded the West, and the strenuous crowds of goldhungry men flocked in from Adelaide, Melbourne, and Sydney. The ancient boarding-house suggests days and nights of wild excitement when the sand-bitten prospectors crowded back from Bayley’s and the Murchison into Perth. To-day the old coastal steamers are reminiscent of the old days when crowds of successful miners stampeded homewards in quest of elusive pleasures and the girls they had left behind. These were the days when champagne ran into the scuppers, and every steamer was transformed into a floating Monte Carlo. “ I remember when the first bit of fresh mutton came on to the Great Northern,” said Bill. “ Neck crops fetched eighteenpence a pound, and the heads were auctioned at five shillings apiece. The drover who brought ’em over started from Perth with 700 and landed 150. He said there Wasn’t enough feed on the way out to tickle the leg of a grasshopper.” A decade of stock gambling has produced a shrewd type of business man out West. He is not to be confounded with the Wall Street alligator or the London mining spieler. He is a shrewdly happy roan, with enough nous to keep himself free from the soul-rotting influence of the game. Telegrams to hand announcing the wreck of the Mildura off North West Cape. She was bound for Fremantle, with several hundred cattle on board.. Grim stories are already afloat concerning the last moments of the Mildura. ... A stormy night off a treacherous coast. Heavy seas thundering over the frightened ’ship Pens and boxes smashing to and fro. Dead cattle and top hampers flung for’rd in Dantesque heaps. A crew of sweating, half-maddened sailors heaving the dead beasts overboard. ‘Cattle ships are hell!” said Bill, thoughtfully. “I was cook on the old Dominion, running between Halifax and Idverpool. Her for’rd decks was like the Homebush Saleyards. We were, carrying three hundred big horned Canadian cattle to Liverpool, ugly long brutes that any decent Australian squatter would shoot

at sight. About three days out from Halifax we walked into dirty weather that took away our funnels and bridge as if they were made of tin. “ About midnight we heard a smashing of glass above, an’ one of the.stewards came tearin' below with the fear of Gawd in his eyes. He had been carryin' drinks into the saloon when the cattle barricades broke away. “ ‘ They’re loose I ” he sez, crawlin’ under the table. ‘ Oh, my Gawd, they’re loose! ’ “We listened • , . an' heard the big barricades slammin’ against the port stanchions. Then a sea lifted an’ rolled us down an’ down until the water poured through the blamed skylights. The next sea put us on our beam ends an’ spilled the cattle over the deck in scores. “ Don’t know that I’m a coward,” went on Bill; “but I know when to fold up when the bullocks are out. One of the brutes, a big-horned starver. raced along the alley-way and galloped right over the stern. The others came after him until another sea downed the leaders, and in two minutes the alley-way was blocked with broken-legged cattle bashing the life out of each other on the greasy floor. A bullock's body was half hanging across the stairs. They were piled in heaps around the skylight an’ funnel stays. We had to shoot half of ’em before we could clear the deck an’ hoist ’em overboard. Talk about Port Arthur! You don’t get me on a boat that ships wild Canadian bulls! ” Bill passed for’rd to assist a pantryman with the dinner. A voice said “Baa” as he passed. Bill merely smiled. He returned an hour later with a roast fowl wrapped in a newspaper. We left Fremantle at eight o’clock on Monday night, and began our climb north to Colombo. The journey across the Indian Ocean is apt to become monotonous. The endless stretches of sea and sky, the absence of bird life, has a numbing effect on the eye and brain. We spent an hour looking at the ship's freezing chambers, and met a small piocession of stewards carrying ice on their backs up to the saloon pantry. Last trip the ship’s cat got locked in one of the freezing chambers, and remained there for nine days, surrounded by frozen poultry and meat. It was a mystery how she kept herself alive in such an Arctic temperature. When released she bounded upstairs into the hot air, and fell asleep on the saloon couch. She was as lively as a kitten the next day. The English stewards and deck hands appear to suffer from the heat already, and we are five or six days south of the Line. They are mostly fat, over-fed fellows, who believe in a good beef steak and a bottle of stout before going to bunk every night. No wonder they lie awake during the tropic nights, wearing a pale, bloated expression on their faces. We have discovered that quite a number of New Zealand boys are working their passages to London. One took on a job in the stokehole, but gave it up before we had been three days out of Fremantle. The ship’s surgeon is busy this morning inside his little deck dispensary. A small procession of patients wait outside on the form. A fireman crawls along the port alleyway exhibiting a badly scalded foot to his comrades. A white-faced greaser with consumption in his luminous eyes enters the dispensary and is examined by the genial surgeon. The Cockney fireman is a born tough. He does not mix with the rest of the ship’s company. His wont unfits him for polite society. The Sydney larrikin would not be seen dead in his company. Down in the throbbing spaces under the engineroom he slams things and rakes with slice-bar and shovel feeding the fire-hun-gry boilers that gasp and sigh for coal and yet more coal. His boots are ample shod to protect his feet from the burning plates. His hands and bod* xre scarred and livid where he lias been flung at one time or another against the boiler doors. When ashore he finds much relief in fighting policemen. If he has been stoking for ton years, his brain is more or less affected by the terrible heat and the violent changes to which he is subjected. They come up from below dripping from head to shoo with coal-blackened bodies, slack-jawed and limp as fever patients. The Red Sea is the horror of all white firemen, and black ones for the matter of that. In the majority of cases the rum served out in cold latitudes is saved until Colombo and Aden are reached. “ Rum is our mother and father,” said one of them to me. “It feeds us when we can’t eat, and it makes us sing when the heat is crawlin’ down our throats.” “ But the after effects? ” " There ain’t none. The fires sweat oa

dry. It shrivels us up an’ boils us, au’ there ain't no room left for after effects. I’ve tried oatmeal water and cold tea, but neither of ’em keeps off the heat like rum. Rum ’as got hands an’ feet, an’ it nurses yer when yer dyin’ below.” ■’ Do men die below 1 ” Die! Some of us was never properly alive. I’ve seen white-faced corpses of men shovel lin’ beside me. Yer can’t get ’em to apeak. Yer never hear ’em complain neither until they lie down, while the second engineer gives ’em an iee poultice." •• How do Australian face the music below 1 ” “ They’re quitters when the clinkers are out. Most of ’em would sooner fight the chief than stay through the Reul Sea.” •‘Make the game good enough,” broke in Bill,” and we’ll fill your stokeholes with Australian firemen. Why, stokin's a fool's game compared with sewer work and rock blastin’. I’ve seen a gang of Australian-born men face choke damp an’ dynamite year in an’ out when the wages was all right. But you ain’t goin’ to get our live men to sweat in your stokeholes for four pounds a month — not while there’s a rabbit in the county.” The discussion ended abruptly. Increased ventilation has made the stokehole of the average mail-boat a more comfortable hell than formerly. But so long as London can supply legions of the damned at three to four pounds a month, the steamship companies will allow poor .Tack just enough air to keep him from dying with a shovel in his hands. A SLIGHT DISSERTATION ON COWS. We have on board about fifty affiulent fanners from New Zealand and Australia. Hard work and strict attention to the better industry has brought its reward to the majority. It must be admitted that the New Zealanders as a whole swear by he land which gives so bountifully and requires so little in return. The nights, especially while crossing

the Indian Ocean, are delightful beyond compare. In the smoke-room and on deck these well-to-do farmers compare notes and methods of conducting an up-to-date dairy farm. This cow-talk, as it is often referred to by the sailors, is often amusing and full of human interest. “I’d sooner have women and children to look after my cows than men,” said an Otngo passenger at dinner. “If a cow kicks a woman she doesn’t rise and belt it with an axe or paling. She simply wipes her face and tells the animal that it is a wieked creature, and if she isn’t badly hurt, will go on milking again. When a man gets kicked he stands up and belts Gehenna out of poor Strawberry, especially if she is not his own property. Result is that Strawberry gets to hate him, and his milk returns will fall off wonderfully throughout the year.” "I don’t know about women not hitting baek,” put in Bill suddenly. "Dropped a maul on my wife’s toe one morning, and she kept me running round the paddock for 13 minutes by the clock. "Still,” said Bill genially, “I don’t remember ever seeing a woman lay violenthands on a eow, although I know a lady out West who hit a bull camel in the nose with a flat-iron when it poked its upper lip through the kitchen window one afternoon. She had great presence of mind, that woman. But she told me afterwards that she mistook the camel's face for a sewing-machine canvasser. Some of these machine agents have wonderful upper lips,” concluded Bill. We crossed the Equator at 4 o’clock on Monday, March 25 th. The day was warm, but not so unbearable as Sydney or Brisbane during midsummer. Consideration must be given to the fact that a mail-boat rushing along at 15 knots an hour creates a refreshing air current. Hereabouts the dawn skies are full of weird beauty. The sun peering over - the sky line flings scarf on scarf of winered light across the naked East. The north-west monsoon rears into the bigthroated windsails, flooding the lower decks with cool air. The vertical sun

when veiled by clouds casts a blinding salt-white radiance over the face of the ocean. DODGING A TYPHOON. Past midnight two officers awoke the captain, who appeared suddenly on the bridge scanning the distant horizon. Since eleven o’clock the barometer had fallen considerably, and the sound of the bos’n’s whistle and the hurrying of feet along the deck warned us that something special in the way of typhoons was bounding across the far West. A strip of inky cloud about the size of a shawl fluttered on the horizon. A far-off humming noise reached us as though innumerable harp-strings were being rent asunder. The black cloudshawl opened fanwise revealing its huge wind-torn body. "Heaven help. the cargo tramp that runs into it to-night!” said an old salt standing near the bridge. The sea grew white under the enfolding body of the cloud, as though whipped into mountainous waves by the fury of its onslaught. Incidentally our ship turned her heels to the onrushing mass of cloud and water, her increased funnel smoke showing that pressure was being brought to carry us beyond the track of the old man typhoon. The strumming note of the storm changed swiftly to a deep booming sound that seemed to slide under our keel with the force of an avalanche. The water fairly snarled as it flew over the rail. The fury of the wind-driven waves is incredible. They appear to attack a ship from all points, as though guided by an unseen brain. The wrenehings and groanings of a big ship as she plunges and rolls into the mountainous hollows are almost human. Imagine a sea sweeping away a eouple of lifeboats fixed securely in their davits forty feet above the surface of the water. Mile on mile we skirted the downrushing typhoon, which seemed to confine its operations within a special area. Far away in the west the sky was clear and full of stars. Yet the near east

was a cauldron of storm-whipped clouds and seething water.

“We’s only caught the edge of it!* shouted a voice in my ear. “It doesn’t pay to run away from ordinary but this affair would bend our patent ceilings and deck fittings if we pushed through it. Indian typhoons are better left alone.” And so it proved, even though w9 had only danced a polka on the skirtst of the storm. Two hundred gallons of fresh milk had been burst asunder in the ice-room. A row of sharp meathooks pressing suddenly against the big tins had sliced them asunder, allowing the milk to run over the floor. About a hundredweight of crockery came to grief before the pantrymen eould stow it safely away. To prevent loss by carelessness on thei part of these servants, many of the Australasian shipping companies have inaugurated a Missing Silver Fund. At the end of every trip the chief steward gees over the table cutlery and plate carefully, and each missing article has to be made good from the fund. As much as ten shillings per head is deducted from the stewards’ salary to replace lost articles. The chief explained the matter briefly to a party of saloon passengers one morning. “Before the Missing Silver Fund was started,” he said, “our losses through carelessness were very severe. Last year a pantryman left a locker of entree dishes and tureens near the port rail while he adjourned to a cabin to light a cigarette. The vessel rolled suddenly and £ 150 worth of plate went overboard. "I had occasion to watch a young Australian steward one morning,” weat on the chief. “He was' engaged^in sweeping out the first saloon smokingroom. It was his duty to rinse the cuspidores, very expensive articles, costing us from one pound to thirty shillings each. He picked up one casualty, looked round the empty smoke-roon* sharply, and pitched it through the port hole. ‘One less to elean,’ he said, and went on sweeping. Yes, we’ve got

* check on that kind of thing now. The stewards watch each other, and every spoon and fork and entree dish is guarded pretty closely.” Within three hours we had left the typhoon area in our wake, and the grey dawn showed us the black funnels of a P. and O. liner bound from Colombo to Fremantle, her saloon-lights gleaming with star-like brilliance across the naked sea levels. (To be continued.)