"Well, they has me, and no mistake. I am a British subject and I set up a roar. The Consul was called, and I tried my best to get him to believe my story. It was no go. 'Bally rot!' he says.
"I was sent to Batavia, and held for murder. Fortunately my story about what happened in Cape Town was verified in an unexpected manner or things would have gone hard with me. What saved me was a newspaper story of my jail term in that port, my belt of money, and my hard luck in being taken for the crook. This tallied with my yarn when I gave an account of myself, and the fact that the Java had sailed, as I said, and the story of the salvage crew put on her, sent on from Singapore when the steamer arrived, helped me. The British Consul took up matters, and by spending the greater part of what I had left, funds that were again at my disposal, I cleared myself. However, in the meantime, my people in England had got the story of my being a murderer with full details of the horrible deed. It killed my mother, who was in feeble health. Nothing of the clearing up ever reached the other members of my family and to them I am a murderer to this day.
"I left Batavia on a tramp steamer bound for Sydney, a wiser young fellow than ever before, also a much poorer one, for I had just two pounds in my pocket when I went ashore.
"My narrow escapes had the effect of making me restless. In the next two years I worked at every trade and calling that I could lay my hands to. I tried sheepherding, I went into the bush and tried farming, working as a laborer. I worked as a blacksmith in Sydney after picking up something of the trade travelling with a small circus. In Melbourne I started a very good business in peddling milk. I gave this up as soon as it began to pay me and I could afford the help to make it easier. Again I shipped to sea. News of my mother's death had reached me, and I worked my way back to England. My brother had married and would have nothing to do with me. My name was never mentioned in his home. Both of my sisters had married and moved away, one to Scotland and one to America—Canada, I think. Then I went to Liverpool and shipped on the iron bark Falls of Ettrick. Now that is my story. Rotten, eh? Well, I hope some day to settle down, and quit this thing for good. I have cheated the rope out of a good stiff by helping along the murderer with five-quid, and nearly paid for it with my own neck; I almost got mine a number of times before and since. If I had a decent chance I could make good, if I only could settle down and stick."
"You ought to get married; that would settle you, Australia, old boy," I offered, somewhat taken aback at the recital, for it was poured out from the heart. I knew that a strange sort of adventurer was telling me the things closest to his soul. What I said jarred.
"Married? Say, kid, I've tried that game. Yes, sir, I've been married twice, and I suppose they could jail me for that, too."
"Twice?"
"You bet. Once in Melbourne, and again in London, when I came home and found I was a murderer yet."
"What happened to your wives?"