interest in life as
a whole; because life seems to you a dull, empty, or prosaic
business--that argues a kind of blindness, a poverty of imagination,
which amounts to disease, and, surely, to disease of a most humiliating
sort.

But this is digression of a sort I have not hitherto permitted myself
in this record. To be precise, I should say, it is digression of a
sort which up till now has, when detected, been religiously
expunged--sent to feed my fire. Well, one has always pencils; the fire is
generally at hand; we shall see. After all, a great deal of one's life
is made up of digressions.

VII

In the summer-time there were sharks in Myall Creek, but I had never
seen them there in the spring. It was, I think, still somewhere short
of midnight when I stepped quietly out of the low window of the room I
shared with seven other orphans. (The house was all of one storey.) I
would have taken boots, but, excepting on visitors' Sundays, these
were kept in a locked cupboard in the sisters' building. My outfit
consisted of a comparatively whole pair of trousers--not those
immortalised in Mr. Rawlence's sketch--a strong, short-sleeved shirt
of hard, grey woollen stuff, a dilapidated waistcoat, a belt, my
little book of bush flowers and trees, and my one-pound note. Oh, and
an ancient grey felt hat with a large hole in the crown of it. That
was all; but I dare say notable careers have been started upon less;
in cash, if not in clothing.

Beside the punt I hesitated for a few moments, half inclined to cross
by that obvious means, and leave Tim to do the swimming by daylight.
Finally, however, I slipped off my clothes, tied them in a bundle on
my head, and stepped silently into the water, closely and interestedly
observed by one of the Orphanage watch-dogs, chained beside the
landing-stage. If he had barked, it would have been only from desire
to come with me, in which case, to save trouble, I should probably
have become guilty of dog-stealing. The dogs were all good friends of
mine.

The water was cold that spring night, but I was soon out of it, and
using my shirt for a hard rub down in the scrub beside the creek
wharf. As a precaution I had waited for a moonless night, and had made
my exit with no more noise than was caused by one of the night birds
or little beasts that visited our island. I had seen maps, and knew
the compass bearings of the locality. My ultimate destination being
Sydney, I turned to the southward