Some time later, when Polson, having at length accomplished his mission, brought me the signed agreement—which of course I knew was, as a binding document, not worth the paper upon which it was written, although I still hoped that it might be to some extent effective—I related to him the little incident that had occurred between Wilde and myself; at which he expressed some concern, although he fully agreed with me that the schoolmaster—at all events while aboard ship and at sea—must be held as amenable to discipline as anyone else, and that it would never do to give him the least bit more liberty than we were prepared to accord to every one of the other emigrants. Having secured which admission from the boatswain, I sent there and then for the steward and ordered him at once to bundle Wilde’s belongings out of the cabin back to the ’tween-decks.
During the second dogwatch, that same evening, Wilde sought out the boatswain and carpenter, and complained to them of what he termed my tyrannical conduct, which, he represented to his two listeners, was of so grossly humiliating a character that it was calculated very seriously to detract from his influence with his followers. So serious a grievance did he make of it that at length Polson and Tudsbery approached me with something in the nature of a remonstrance, accompanied by a mildly offered suggestion that I should concede something to enable Wilde to preserve his dignity. Probably I should have been wiser to have accepted and acted upon this suggestion; but I had got the idea into my head that the matter had resolved itself into a struggle for supremacy between Wilde and myself, and I obstinately refused to yield a hairbreadth, thereby exciting the permanent hostility not only of Wilde himself, but also—as I afterward found—of several of his followers. The boatswain and carpenter were at first disposed to regard me as unnecessarily firm, but this feeling soon yielded to one of quiet gratification that they had, as leader, one who, young as he was, would not submit to dictation from anybody. And I feel convinced that whatever I may have lost in popularity I more than regained in the shape of power and authority, thereby averting—as I soon had reason to believe—many a serious dispute and quarrel between the widely conflicting elements that were confined so closely together in the ship.
The terms upon which I was to command the Mercury having at length been arranged upon as satisfactory a basis as I could reasonably expect, I now found time to give consideration to my plans for the future. As my hope that the wild scheme of the conspirators might be frustrated, and the ship and her cargo restored to their lawful owners, rested almost entirely upon the possibility that we might fall in with a British man-o’-war, the first question to which I devoted my attention was that of the route which I should choose by which to reach the Pacific. There were two alternative routes open to me; one—and that, perhaps, rather the safer of the two from the navigator’s point of view—to the south and east of Australia, then northward between the Solomon and Admiralty groups to the waters wherein our search for a sort of earthly Paradise was to be prosecuted; and the rather shorter but more dangerous route up the western coast of Australia, then through the Ombay Passage into the Banda Sea, and thence, through the Boeroe Strait, into the Molucca or the Gillolo Passage, the successful negotiation of either of which would bring us to the spot where our search was to commence. If the question of ease and safety of navigation had alone been concerned, I should have unhesitatingly chosen the former; but when I came to weigh the comparative chances of falling in with a British man-o’-war, it did not take me long to make up my mind that the closer I could hug the Philippines, and the longer I could remain in their neighbourhood, the more likely should I be to encounter something belonging to the China station, and I accordingly settled upon the second alternative. This choice had the further advantage that, being the shorter of the two routes, it gratified all hands, none of whom was intelligent enough to understand and appreciate the question of the comparative dangers of the two routes, or to consider that, by adopting the one which met with their approval, the risk of encountering a man-o’-war—and thus having all their plans knocked on the head—was very greatly increased. Naturally, I did not enlighten them.
It was the season of the north-east monsoon in the Indian Ocean, and a careful study of the chart and directory made it clear to me that the proper course to pursue was to run down our easting until 100 degrees east longitude should be reached, and then, still availing ourselves to the utmost of such westerly wind as might be met with, haul gradually up to the northward in the West Australian current, which has a northerly set. Accordingly, I kept the ship’s bowsprit pointing steadily to the eastward, despite the violent remonstrances which Wilde addressed to the boatswain and the carpenter—he had never spoken to me since I had ordered him off the poop and turned him out of the cabin. For the first few days I was rather afraid that I was going to have a little trouble with these two men, for whenever Wilde complained to them that I was unnecessarily prolonging the voyage by steering east instead of north-east—which, according to his crude notions, I ought to have done—they came to me, reiterating the man’s complaints, and evincing so much curiosity and suspicion that it was perfectly evident they did not trust me. But I quickly arrived at the conviction that, let my relations with Wilde be what they might, it was absolutely necessary that I should possess the full confidence of the boatswain and the carpenter—and, through them, of the whole crew. I therefore took considerable pains to make them clearly understand my reasons for acting as I did, after which I had no further trouble with them.
I very soon had reason to congratulate myself upon the adoption of this policy; for while my relations with the crew daily grew more satisfactory—so that had it not been for the ridiculous hopes of a life of perfect liberty, equality, and immunity from hard work with which Wilde had addled their brains, I might easily have won their consent to take the ship to her legitimate destination—Wilde was devoting his entire energies to the task of stirring up and fomenting a spirit of lawlessness and insubordination among his fellow emigrants, chiefly—as it seemed to me—with the object of causing me as much annoyance and trouble as possible.
At length, however, matters came to such a pass that I perceived it would be absolutely necessary for me to seize the first opportunity that offered to assert myself and put an end to a state of affairs that was fast becoming utterly unendurable; and that opportunity was not long in coming.
It arose in this wise. There was among the passengers a girl named Grace Hartley, about twenty-three years of age, of considerable personal attractions, well-educated, and of a very gentle and amiable disposition. She had been a governess in England, and had been engaged by an agent to proceed to Australia to take a similar position in a family out there; and it was, perhaps, the indifferent treatment which she had received at the hands of her former employers that had caused her tacitly to accept the alternative which Wilde’s scheme offered her. Be that as it may, she had apparently raised no protest when the scheme was first mooted, nor subsequently. What sort of life she was really looking forward to upon the island for which we were about to search I do not believe that even she herself could have explained. Probably her philosophy might have been expressed in the phrase: “Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof”. She soon discovered, however, that the future would not permit itself to be shelved in this offhand fashion; there were certain problems that persisted in thrusting themselves upon her notice with increasing frequency, and one of them was—marriage! The idea of creating a Utopia necessarily included that of establishing the home life and domestic happiness. There were two men in particular who forced her to give some thought to this detail, one of whom was Wilde, and the other an able seaman named Gurney—the latter quite as remarkable a man in his way as was Wilde in his, though the ways of the two men were totally dissimilar; for Gurney, while wonderfully popular with his mates in the forecastle, was so entirely different from them in every respect that they admiringly nicknamed him “The Swell”, which will perhaps enable the reader to make a mental sketch of him. He and Wilde had both made formal proposals of marriage to Miss Hartley—the ceremony to be performed as speedily as might be after our arrival at Utopia; but she had thus far accepted neither, although, as might be expected, of the two men she was rather disposed to favour Gurney. Wilde, however, was not at all the sort of man to accept a rebuff tamely, indeed his vanity was so stupendous that he could not understand another being preferred before himself. He consequently plagued the poor girl so persistently that at length, in desperation, she came aft to me, laying all the circumstances before me, and begging my protection. I answered by directing her to remove herself, bag and baggage, to the after cabin, assigning to her one of the spare staterooms therein, and permitting her to take her meals at the cabin table. Whereby I greatly strengthened Wilde’s enmity toward me, but at the same time secured two devoted adherents, namely, the girl and Gurney; and a time came—as I sometimes suspected it would—when I was more than glad to have them on my side, instead of against me.