Said the broken-down sailorman, who was one reek of rum and navy twist:
"Southern Cross in dry dock havin' her bottom scraped? I dunno in the nation what bee's got into Hakluyt's bonnet. There's the Mary and Louise—that's her lyin' by the oil tank—the weeds fathoms long on her keel and the barnacles as big as saucers on her copper, yet she's good enough to put out o' port without no dry dockin'. There's the Boomerang, another of his tubs. You can see her forrard, the yaller one, beyond that point. She's wrong from stem to rudder, she's held together mostly by her paint, she hasn't seen a dry dock for years, an' the sight of one would make her spew her bolts. I reckon she's just held together by the salt water she floats in, yet he docks the Southern Cross! Is that all his vessels? No, it ain't. D'you see that schooner out there by the whistlin' buoy? She's the Domain. She's Hakluyt's. Just come back from the islands a month ago. Been lyin' there waitin' for I don't know what ever since. The copra's been out of her this fortnight, and there she lays waitin' her job.
"What sort o' man is Hakluyt? Well, he's no sort to speak of. He blew in here twenty years ago out of a Dutch ship that was glad to get rid of him, and here he's stuck and prospered till he's fair rotten with money and has his thumb on the town and half the harbor side as well. He's owner and ship's chandler both. I've heard folk say he's sold his soul to the devil, but that's a lie, for he ain't got a soul to sell. The grub aboard his ships is most salt horse, and the bread bags has to be tethered they're that lively with the weevils. Go and ask any sailorman on the front if you don't believe me."
Floyd did not need to confirm this view of Hakluyt by making inquiries of sailormen on the front. He took a long look at the Domain, and then turned away from the wharfside and walked uptown to Hakluyt's office.
Hakluyt was in, and they went over the list of stores together.
"You leave id all with me," said Hakluyt. "I shall have them all aboard by the date of sailing. Well, and how do you like Sydney?"
Floyd expressed his opinion of Sydney. The dullest place in the world for a lone man unaddicted to bar-room festivity or horse-racing. Hakluyt gave him a pass for the theater, regretted that he could not ask him to dinner, as he was a lone bachelor, told him to enjoy himself, and dismissed him.
During the next fortnight Floyd managed to amuse himself innocently enough. He had never been much of a reading man, but, picking up a cheap edition of the "Count of Monte Cristo," he suddenly found a new world open before him. He read it in bed at night, and he took it out with him and read it by the sea front.
It occupied a good deal of his time, as he was a slow reader, and it gave him a new horizon and new ideas and a new energy.
Monte Cristo's discovery of the treasure, his escape from the Château d'If, the girl he loved, his cruel separation from her, his revenge, all these things appealed to his mind with the power of reality, as they have appealed to minds all the world over and as they ever will appeal.