“When I was your age I was just such another lad as you are, and my father was as proud of, and as hopeful for, me as any parent can possibly be of an only son. He gave me a first-class education, and finally procured me an excellent post under Government. My duties took me abroad—there is no need to say where—and I at once found myself the associate and companion of a lot of young fellows who had somehow imbibed the idea that it was incumbent upon them, as Government officials, to adopt a smart, bold, dashing, reckless demeanour, a kind of modern edition of the swashbucklers of the Stuart regime; and they did their best to live up to that idea. This sort of thing was quite new to me; for you must remember that I was fresh from school at the time, and had never seen anything of the kind before, my father being an exceptionally quiet and sober-minded individual, associating only with men of similar temperament to himself. With my new companions, however, ‘respectability’ was voted old-fashioned and out of date, sobriety of conduct a bore. They were fine, dashing, high-spirited young fellows, fearing nothing and nobody, and they didn’t care who knew it. They drank freely, constituted themselves authorities on all kinds of sport, gambled, and did many other things that at first distinctly frightened me, but which, a little later on, I rather admired, and—like the young fool that I was—soon began to humbly emulate. Facilis descensus Averni! The reverence for truth, and purity, and uprightness that had come to me in the atmosphere of home soon died. I recognised that those virtues belonged to a bygone period, but I was going to be up-to-date, in the forefront: nobody should surpass me! I dare say—ay, and I very fervently hope—that all this sounds the most incredible folly to you; but I give you my word that, so imperceptible were the steps by which I descended the down-grade that, looking back upon it all, I am even now not astonished at what I did. I believe that it was inevitable, under the circumstances, for, mark you this, I had never been warned against it! My parents had such implicit faith in me that the possibility of such a warning being necessary never occurred to them! Of course there could only be one end to this sort of thing, and in two years it came. Two years sufficed to convert me, from such a lad as you are now, into an utterly worthless, disreputable blackguard, a confirmed drunkard, a hardened liar, and—a contemptible thief! With my constitution completely shattered, I was obliged to resign my post, to avoid being kicked out, and I returned home a moral and physical wreck. But, even then, my poor father and mother had no suspicion of the truth, for I told them that my condition was due to fever contracted in the discharge of my duty. It was, however, impossible for me to conceal the truth from them very long after I had once more come under their roof; and the grief and shame that overwhelmed them when at length their eyes were opened might have melted the heart of a stone. But it did not melt mine, for I was by that time so completely the slave of my vices that I had lost every vestige of natural feeling. I continued my drunken habits as long as I had money to spend on liquor; and when finally I had exhausted my own resources I stole from my parents the means to still continue in the indulgence of my degrading vice. It broke my poor mother’s heart, and she died; and on the day of her funeral I was unable to follow her body to its last resting-place, because I was too drunk to stand or speak! That was the crowning act of my disgraceful career; for on that very day my father gave me twenty pounds and turned me out of his house, forbidding me ever again to darken his door. I went to London, spent my twenty pounds in a wild life, got into a street fight, and was carried to a hospital with a knife-wound between my ribs; and there I lingered between life and death for nearly a month before I took a turn for the better and began to mend; and it was three months before I was up and out again. But during that three months the hospital chaplain contrived to gain my confidence. He induced me to tell him my story; and in return he told me some home truths that had the eventual effect of opening my eyes to the enormity of my guilt, the effect being helped, perhaps, by the fact that during my stay in the hospital I had been cured of my cursed craving for drink. When at length I was ready to leave the hospital my friend the chaplain offered to communicate with my father and endeavour to effect a reconciliation; but I refused. I had vowed that I would never return home until I could do so as a thoroughly reformed character; I therefore made my way down to the docks, took the first berth that offered, and, under the assumed name of George Gurney, became a common sailor. You will think, perhaps, that to go to sea, and in such a capacity, was not quite the best possible method whereby to effect my reformation, and may be it was not, but I was determined that nothing—nothing—should stand in my way; and I think I may now say, without undue confidence, that I have succeeded. Gracie, to whom I have told my story, assures me that I need no longer fear to face my father, and I believe her, for a woman can see more deeply than a man. So now I shall return home, to be a comfort, as I devoutly hope, to my dear father’s declining years; and perhaps, with the aid of my wealth, I may be able to do enough good to obliterate the memory of all the grief and shame that I have caused him to suffer. That is my story, Troubridge; and all that I will add to it is this: If ever you feel tempted to stray, though ever so slightly, from the path of rectitude, think of the man whom you once knew as George Gurney; and let his history serve as a warning to you. And now I will say good night; for we must be stirring early to-morrow.”
Chapter Nineteen.
Once more in open water.
I slept anything but soundly that night, fearing that, if I abandoned myself too completely to the influence of the drowsy god, I might not awake early enough in the morning to ensure the accomplishment of all that was to be done next day—for we had to hoist the boat, make sail, and traverse some forty-five miles of winding channel through the reef in order to reach open water before darkness overtook us. But although I was astir with the first signs of the coming dawn, I found, upon going out on deck, that Gurney and Saunders were before me. They too, it appeared, had been too anxious to do more than doze restlessly and intermittently through the hot night, and finally, as though by mutual consent, had turned out about an hour before daylight and, after softly pacing the main deck together, chatting and smoking for about half an hour, had gone forward, lighted the galley fire, and proceeded to prepare an early breakfast, in order that we might all be ready to turn-to the moment that we had light enough to see what we were about. When I went forward and looked into the galley—the light from which had attracted my attention the instant that I emerged from the cabin—I was greeted with the mingled aromas of boiling cocoa and frying bacon, as well as with the cheery “good morning!” of the two men who were bending over the galley stove; but I had scarcely had time to exchange greetings with them when the fourth member of our party, awakened by my movements while dressing, made her appearance and promptly assumed charge of the culinary operations. This left the three males of the party free to tackle the more arduous duties of the day; and we forthwith proceeded to unrig the boat and make her ready for hoisting. By the time that this task had been advanced to the point of hooking on and hauling taut the davit-tackles, we were summoned to breakfast, and in high spirits sat down to partake of what we hoped would be our last meal but one before we should find ourselves once more at sea.
The meal over, we proceeded to get the quarter boat hoisted to the davits, which, heavy boat though she was for three men to handle, we soon accomplished with the assistance of a couple of watch-tackles, in the employment of which we had by this time, through much usage, become experts. Then came the loosing and setting of the canvas. We decided that, as before, we would rely upon the three topsails and the fore topmast staysail to carry us to our destination, that being as much canvas as we could conveniently handle; and an hour and a half sufficed us to get these sails set to our satisfaction and braced ready for casting the ship. Then, sending Grace Hartley aft to the wheel, which she was now able to manipulate as deftly as any of us, Gurney and I stood by the fore braces, while Saunders, armed with an axe, proceeded to the forecastle and stood by to sever the hawser by which the ship rode. At the proper moment the word was given, the axe fell once, twice, and we were once more adrift, the ship gathering stern-way and paying off with her helm hard a-starboard and the port fore braces flattened in. She made a stern board until she was heading about south-south-west, when the squared main and mizen topsails began to fill and checked her, whereupon the head yards were squared, the staysail sheet hauled over, the helm steadied, and the old Mercury began to forge ahead, not to stop again, as we hoped, until she should arrive in Sydney Harbour.
And now the most ticklish part of our task lay before us, for we had to navigate some forty-five miles of narrow, winding channel, and negotiate several very awkward places, where the slightest mistake meant disaster, before we should find ourselves once more rising and falling in safety on the swells of the open Pacific. But we had talked the matter over a dozen times or more before reaching this stage of our adventure, and knew exactly what was best to be done. We therefore proceeded forthwith to do it, for there is no time for hesitation when a ship is under way in narrow waters; whatever has to be done must be done smartly and on the instant. The channel which we had to traverse, and toward the entrance of which the ship was now heading, started by heading due west for a short distance, then it swerved to about south-west, then looked up to about south-by-east, and thence, undulating slightly a point or so east or west, trended south for the remainder of its length. Now, there were two or three short reaches of channel, the longest of them not much more than a mile in length, where we should find the wind shy enough to necessitate the ship being braced sharp up on the port tack to enable her to negotiate them successfully. But it was necessary for one of us to be aloft to con the ship, and as it was obvious that the other two could not brace round the yards of a ship of the Mercury’s size, we were no sooner free of our anchor than, although the ship was at the moment running off square before the wind, we sprang to the braces, and braced the yards sharp up on the port tack, in readiness for the negotiation of the reaches of which I have spoken. For, while the ship would run before the wind with her yards braced sharp up, she would not sail close-hauled with her yards square; and we had therefore settled it that the proper thing to do was to provide for the difficult points at once. By the time that this was done we were so close to the western extremity of the basin, and the entrance of the channel, that it became necessary for me to jump aloft at once, while Gurney relieved Grace Hartley at the wheel, and Saunders stood in the waist, with his eye on me in the fore topmast crosstrees, ready to pass the word from me to the helmsman, from whom I was hidden by the main and mizen topsails.
I am bound to admit that when I reached the crosstrees, and noted the speed with which the ship was sliding along in that perfectly smooth water, under the impulsion of a fine brisk easterly breeze, and observed the narrowness and tortuousness of the channel that we had to traverse, winding hither and thither through that vast expanse of reef, my heart almost quailed within me, and I felt inclined to doubt whether we three males possessed the ability, the skill, the quickness of eye, the readiness and strength of hand, to take the ship in safety through that apparently endless, twisting channel. But the feeling was merely momentary; an old adage flashed into my mind to the effect that one need never trouble about crossing a bridge until one comes to it; also that it is very unwise to meet troubles halfway. I told myself that I would not worry about the difficulties and dangers ahead, but would stand up there in the crosstrees and deal with them, one at a time, as we came to them. And so I did, with the gratifying result that when the sun’s lower rim had reached to within a finger’s breadth of the western horizon the Mercury slid out past the southern edge of the reef and made her first curtsy as she once more dipped to the swell of the open ocean, having triumphantly negotiated and overcome every one of the difficulties of that endless rock-bound channel. I sprang into the topgallant rigging and shinned up to the royal yard, from which elevation I was able to watch, over the head of the main topsail, the great black expanse of reef receding on either quarter, until the sun plunged beneath the horizon in a blaze of purple, crimson, and gold, and then I descended to the deck by way of the backstay, and walked aft to exchange congratulations with the little group of two men and a woman, who stood clustered about the wheel watching the evanishment of that strange rock prison in the fast-gathering gloom of the tropical night. Before descending from aloft I had taken the precaution to fling one long, lingering, all-embracing glance round the horizon ahead, from one quarter to the other, and had pretty well satisfied myself that there were no dangers lurking in the road along which we were going, no white curl of surf to warn us of the existence of treacherous sunken reefs. Our next act, therefore, was to bring the ship as close to the wind as she would lie, on the port tack, lash the wheel, adjust the after braces in such a way that the craft would steer herself, and then all go below to partake of the very excellent meal that Grace Hartley had prepared specially to celebrate the occasion of our happy escape from the reef.
The ensuing fortnight was a period absolutely barren of events, the weather remaining fine and the wind steady during the whole time, so that we had nothing to do but just to permit the ship to drive steadily along to the southward, hour after hour, and day after day, at an average speed of about four knots. It is true that during the course of that fortnight we sighted and passed several islands, at varying distances; and in one case we hove-to for about half an hour to permit a canoe with half a dozen natives to come alongside and barter their load of fruit for a few feet of brass wire and a handful of glass beads. But we determined to anchor nowhere, if we could help it; for we were now all anxiety to reach our destination as quickly as possible. The care of so big a ship was a heavy responsibility to rest upon the shoulders of three men—and a girl, and we desired to free ourselves of it without a moment’s unnecessary delay. And, quite apart from that, the monotony of the thing was beginning to get upon our nerves. For Gurney and Grace Hartley it was doubtless well enough; so long as they could be together it mattered little to them to what length the voyage might be spun out, but so far as I was concerned—and I think I might also answer for Saunders—I was beginning to crave for the sight of fresh faces, the sound of new voices, and the stir and bustle and excitement of life ashore.