reen and mountain grye,
Courtin' o' this young thing,
Just come frye her mammie."

It was the accepted jest for all hands to greet the conclusion of this
song with the simultaneous cry, "My word!" thus winging the arrow of
ridicule with a feather from the singer's wing. But he had his revenge
with "Home, Sweet Home," and "Where is my Wandering Boy
To-night?"--ditties into which he threw the most intolerable pathos. It
appeared he had no home, nor had ever had one, nor yet any vestige of a
family, except a truculent uncle, a baker in Newcastle, N.S.W. His
domestic sentiment was therefore wholly in the air, and expressed an
unrealised ideal. Or perhaps, of all his experiences, this of the
_Currency Lass_, with its kindly, playful, and tolerant society,
approached it the most nearly.

It is perhaps because I know the sequel, but I can never think upon this
voyage without a profound sense of pity and mystery; of the ship (once
the whim of a rich blackguard) faring with her battered fineries and
upon her homely errand, across the plains of ocean, and past the
gorgeous scenery of dawn and sunset; and the ship's company, so
strangely assembled, so Britishly chuckle-headed, filling their days
with chaff in place of conversation; no human book on board with them
except Hadden's Buckle, and not a creature fit either to read or to
understand it; and the one mark of any civilised interest being when
Carthew filled in his spare hours with the pencil and the brush: the
whole unconscious crew of them posting in the meanwhile towards so
tragic a disaster.

Twenty-eight days out of Sydney, on Christmas Eve, they fetched up to
the entrance of the lagoon, and plied all that night outside, keeping
their position by the lights of fishers on the reef, and the outlines of
the palms against the cloudy sky. With the break of day the schooner was
hove-to, and the signal for a pilot shown. But it was plain her lights
must have been observed in the darkness by the native fishermen, and
word carried to the settlement, for a boat was already under weigh. She
came towards them across the lagoon under a great press of sail, lying
dangerously down, so that at times, in the heavier puffs, they thought
she would turn turtle; covered the distance in fine style, luffed up
smartly alongside, and emitted a haggard-looking white man in pyjamas.

"Good-mornin', cap'n," said he, when he had made good his entrance. "I
was taking you for a Fiji man-o