a big sheaf of Sydney Heralds and Dead Birds, or perhaps with a volume of Buckle’s History of Civilisation, the standard work selected for that cruise.  In the latter case, a smile went round the ship, for Buckle almost invariably laid his student out, and when Tom awoke again he was almost always in the humour for brown sherry.  The connection was so well established that “a glass of Buckle” or “a bottle of civilisation” became current pleasantries on board the Currency Lass.

Hemstead’s province was that of the repairs, and he had his hands full.  Nothing on board but was decayed in a proportion; the lamps leaked; so did the decks; door-knobs came off in the hand, mouldings parted company with the panels, the pump declined to suck, and the defective bathroom came near to swamp the ship.  Wicks insisted that all the nails were long ago consumed, and that she was only glued together by the rust.  “You shouldn’t make me laugh so much, Tommy,” he would say.  “I’m afraid I’ll shake the sternpost out of her.”  And, as Hemstead went to and fro with his tool basket on an endless round of tinkering, Wicks lost no opportunity of chaffing him upon his duties.  “If you’d turn to at sailoring or washing paint or something useful, now,” he would say, “I could see the fun of it.  But to be mending things that haven’t no insides to them appears to me the height of foolishness.”  And doubtless these continual pleasantries helped to reassure the landsmen, who went to and fro unmoved, under circumstances that might have daunted Nelson.

The weather was from the outset splendid, and the wind fair and steady.  The ship sailed like a witch.  “This Currency Lass is a powerful old girl, and has more complaints than I would care to put a name on,” the captain would say, as he pricked the chart; “but she could show her blooming heels to anything of her size in the Western Pacific.”  To wash decks, relieve the wheel, do the day’s work after dinner on the smoking-room table, and take in kites at night,—­such was the easy routine of their life.  In the evening—­above all, if Tommy had produced some of his civilisation—­yarns and music were the rule.  Amalu had a sweet Hawaiian voice; and Hemstead, a great hand upon the banjo, accompanied his own quavering tenor with effect.  There was a sense in which the little man could sing.  It was great to hear him deliver My Boy Tammie in Austrylian; and the words (some of the worst of the ruffian Macneil’s) were hailed in his version with inextinguishable mirth.

     Where hye ye been a’ dye?

     he would ask, and answer himself:—­

     I’ve been by burn and flowery brye,
     Meadow green an’ mountain grye,
     Courtin’ o’ this young thing,
     Just come frye her mammie.