o cook my balances, and to lay the
foundation of the strange adventures that I am going to tell you about.

After my time expired and I had served my Trading Company on half the
mudbanks of the Pacific, I returned to Australia and went up inside the
Great Barrier Reef to Somerset--the pearling station that had just come
into existence on Cape York. They were good days there then, before all
the new-fangled laws that now regulate the pearling trade had come into
force; 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 the life 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 myself out with a
brand-new lugger and full crew, so that I could go pearling on my own
account.

For many years I went at it head down, and this brings me up to four
years ago, 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 on the
mainland, which had, contrary to most ventures of the sort, turned up
trumps, giving me as my share the nice round sum of L5,000. With all
this wealth at my back, and having been in harness for a greater number
of years on end than I cared to count, 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 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 doing the thing in style! And why not? I'd
got more money to my hand to play with than most of the swells who
patronize the first saloon; I had earned it honestly, and was resolved
to enjoy myself with it to the top of my bent.

I reached Sydney a week before the boat was advertised to sail, but I
didn't fret much about that. There's plenty to see and do in such a big
place, and when a man's been shut away from theatres and amusements for
years at a stretch, he can put in h