by its
dazzling, golden light, you will see, as you drop your line for the
yellow and purple mullet which swim deep down over the fine coral sand,
some of the strangest shaped, most fantastically, and yet beautifully
coloured rock fish imaginable. As you pull up a mullet (or a green and
golden striped wrasse which has seized the bait not meant for him), many
of these beautiful creations of Nature will follow it up to within a
few feet of the canoe, wondering perhaps what under the sea it means
by acting in such a manner; others--small creatures of the deepest,
loveliest blue--flee in tenor at the unwonted commotion, and hide
themselves among the branching glories of their coral home.

"LUCK"

CHAPTER I

A "hard" man was Captain William Rodway of Sydney, New South Wales, and
he prided himself upon the fact. From the time he was twenty years of
age, he had devoted himself to making and saving money, and now at sixty
he was worth a quarter of a million.

He began life as cabin boy on a north-country collier brig; was starved,
kicked, and all but worked to death; and when he came to command a
ship of his own, his north-country training stood him in good
stead--starving, kicking, and working his crew to death came as
naturally to him as breathing. He spared no one, nor did he spare
himself.

From the very first everything went well with him. He saved enough money
by pinching and grinding his crew--and himself--to enable him to buy
the vessel to which he had been appointed. Then he bought others,
established what was known as Rodway's Line, gave up going to sea
himself, rented an office in a mean street, where he slept and cooked
his meals, and worked harder than ever at making money, oblivious of the
sneers of those who railed at his parsimony. He was content.

One Monday morning at nine o'clock he took his seat as usual in his
office, and began to open his pile of letters, his square-set, hard
face, with its cold grey eyes, looking harder than ever, for he had been
annoyed by the old charwoman who cleaned his squalid place asking him
for more wages.

He was half-way through his correspondence when a knock sounded.

"Come in," he said gruffly.

The door opened, and a handsome, well-built young man of about thirty
years of age entered.

"Good morning, Captain Rodway."

"Morning, Lester. What do you want? Why are you not at sea?" and he bent
his keen eyes upon his visitor.

"I'm waiting for the wa