Chapter I

Sydney is one of the finest towns in the world and it has the finest harbour, unless you call San Francisco Bay a harbour, it has the most hospitable people and a gaiety and push all its own, also, in the matter of temperature, when it chooses it can beat any other town except maybe Calcutta.

“A hot shop,” said Brent. He was seated at a bar adorned with coloured bottles, and a girl with peroxide of hydrogen tinted hair had just handed him a lemon squash with a hummock of ice in it.

“You aren’t looking yourself, Captain,” said the girl.

“No, my dear, I aren’t,” replied Brent, “not if I look as I feel.” He relapsed into gloom and I offered him a cigarette which he refused.

“I’m going to a funeral,” he explained.

“Sorry,” said I. “Not a near relation, I hope?”

“Well, it might be a relation, by the way I feel, but I’ve none. When a man gets to my age he leaves a lot of things astern.” He sighed, finished the last half of his drink in one mighty gulp, wiped his mouth and got off his chair.

“Walk down with me a bit of the way,” said he.

We left the bar and entered the blaze of the street. It was eleven o’clock in the morning.

“It ought to be raining,” said the Captain as we wended our way along King Street towards the wharves. “Happy is the corpse that the rain rains on, is the old saying, and she’s a corpse if ever there was one, but rain or shine, if there’s happiness for such things as corpses, she’s happy—she’s done her duty.”

“What did she die of?” I asked, by way of making conversation.

“Old age,” replied Brent. He had a black tie on, but his garb was otherwise unchanged, his mourning was chiefly expressed by his voice and manner, and as we drew closer to the whiff of the harbour and the scent of shipping he took off his panama and mopped his bald head now and then with a huge red handkerchief.

That handkerchief was always the signal of worry or perplexity with Brent, and now, right on the wharves and feeling for his state of mind, I halted to say good-bye.

“Wouldn’t you care to see her?” he asked.

“No thanks,” I replied. “I ought to meet a man at twelve and it’s after eleven now—and——”

“He’ll wait,” replied the Captain. “It’s only a step from here and she’s _worth_ seeing. Kim on.”

He took me by the arm and led me along, reluctantly enough, towards some mean-looking buildings, the relics of old days; under the bowsprit of a full rigged ship, over hawsers, and then on to a decayed slip of a wharf beside which an old schooner lay moored.

“That’s her,” said Brent.

On her counter in letters almost vanished stood the word _Greyhound_.

“The _Greyhound_,” said I, “is this the old schooner you and Slane owned?”

“The same,” said Brent. “She’s to be towed to the breakers’ yard eight bells—noon, they gave me word so that I might have a last look at her.”

So this was the funeral he was to attend. He mopped his face with the red handkerchief, contemplated the deck beneath him, heaved a sigh and then, “Come down,” said he. “I’ve told Jimmy Scott to leave me something in the cabin.”

He dropped on to the deck and I followed him. There was no watchman to guard the corpse. I looked at the standing rigging all gone to ruin and the sticks that had survived many a gale, the grimy decks that once had been white, then I dropped down to the cabin after Brent.

The ports were open and water shimmers from the harbour water danced on the maple panelling, the upholstery had been eaten by rats or roaches and a faint smell filled the place like the ghost of the odour of corruption, but there was a bottle of whisky on the table, a couple of glasses and a syphon.

“If I hadn’t met you, I’d ’a brought someone else,” said Brent, taking his seat before the funeral refreshments, “but there’s not many I’d have sooner had than you to give her a send off. You remember I told you, Buck had her from Pat O’Brien who didn’t know her qualities, no one did in those days; why, a chap by name of Gadgett come aboard first day we had her and said she ought to be condemned, said she wasn’t seaworthy and that’s many years ago.” He took the cork from the bottle and poured “Many years ago and now I’m having my last drink and smoke here where Buck and me have often sat, and him in the cemetery. Well, here’s to you, Buck—and here’s to her.” We drank and lit up.

“Well, she’s had her day,” said I, trying to say something cheerful. “It’s like a wife that has done her duty——”

The Captain snorted.

“Wives,” said he, “a ship’s all the wife I’ve ever had and I don’t want no other, it’s all the wife a sailor-man wants and if she’s decently found and run, she never lets him down. I told that to Buck once. I told him the _Greyhound_ was his lawful wife and he’d come a mucker if he took another. He wouldn’t believe me, but he found it out. You’ve never seen him. He died only four years ago and he hadn’t lost a tooth, he hadn’t got a grey hair on his head, six foot he stood and he’d only to look at a girl and she’d follow him, but he wasn’t given that way after his marriage.”

“Oh, he got married, did he?” said I. “I always fancied from what you told me of him that he was a single man.—Did she die?”

“I expect she’s dead by this,” said the Captain. “No knowing, but if she ain’t she ought to be. We fell in with her, me and Slane, the year after that dust up with Sru I told you of. We’d lost money on that job, but we’d pulled up over a deal in silver that had come our way through Pat O’Brien and Buck had thirty thousand dollars in the Bank of California, and I’d got near ten in my pocket. I didn’t trust banks. For all that money we lived quiet, not being given to drink, and we were fitting the _Greyhound_ out for a new job, when one night at a sociable we met in with Mrs. Slade. That was the name she gave herself, a fine, fresh-faced young woman, not thirty, with eyes like Cape mulberries, they had that red look in the black of them, and a laundry of her own they said was bringing in five hundred a week profit. She harpooned Buck. Clean through the gizzard. You’ve seen a chicken running about with a woman after it till she catches it and wrings its neck, that was Buck. He was no more good after she’d got the irons into him.

“One night I had it out with him. I said: ‘The Lord Almighty has given you a ship to tend and take care of, she’s been true to you and brought you in the dollars, and look at the way you’re usin’ her, why, we ought to have had her out of dock by this and the cargo half on board her, she over there at Oakland and you foolandering after a widow woman.’

“‘She’s a girl,’ says he.

“‘Well, woman or girl don’t matter,’ I says, ‘you ain’t the age for marrying, nor the sort of chap to make good at the game.’ We went at it hammer and tongs, me trying to pump sense into him like a chap trying to pump up a burst bicycle tyre, but at last, somehow or another, I began to get the better of the business and bring him to reason and by two in the morning I’d brought him to own he was a damn fool and marriage a mug’s game. I went to bed happy, and next day he turned up at noon with a flower in his coat and looking as if he’d gone queer in his head.

“What’s the matter with you?” I says.

“‘I’ve just been married,’ says he.