Then bidding him good-bye, I made my way ashore and up the one long and dusty street which constitutes the business portion of Cooktown. The first thing to be done was to visit the office of the steamship company's agent to endeavour to find out whether they could tell me anything concerning the Reverend Colway-Brown. This, it appeared, the agent was quite unable to do. He had seen the gentleman in question on board the vessel, he told me, but beyond having congratulated him on his marvellous escape, he had no further conversation with him. Somewhat disappointed at the meagreness of his information, I left him, and went on up the street, intending to make inquiries at an hotel kept by an old diving acquaintance, who, I felt sure, would have made it his business to see the man in question had he come ashore.
Reaching the house, I entered it, to find my old mate sitting behind the bar, reading a sporting article from the Australasian to a man who was lounging on a bench near the door smoking a cigar.
On seeing me, he sprang to his feet, and, seizing my hand, shook it until I began to think he was never going to let it go again.
"Dick Collon, by all that's glorious!" he cried. "Well, who'd have thought of seeing you down here again! I was told you had given up these waters altogether. What brings you to Cooktown?"
"Can't you see?" I answered. "Don't I look as if I needed a change of air?"
"Change of air be hanged!" he replied, with a laugh. "You never needed such a thing in your life. Is there any one with you?"
"Only an old chap from England," I said; "I am showing him the beauties of Australia."
"What's his name?"
"Leversidge," I replied. "He's a little under the weather to-day, or I'd have brought him along with me. He's out here looking for a man—the chap, in fact, who escaped from the Monarch of Macedonia, the Reverend Colway-Brown."
"The deuce he is! And can't he find him?"