They had in the beginning led a turtle-dovey kind of life in those old days on the shores of Port Jackson. Not long after their marriage the shipping firm in which he was employed failed, and he had to seek for another billet; and, being an energetic, self-reliant man, with no false pride, he shipped as steward on board the Noord Brabant, a hogged-backed, heartbroken and worn-out American lumber ship running between Puget Sound and the Australian colonies. His wife had cried a little at first; but he told her that no one but their two selves would know, and it was better for him to be earning five pounds a month than idling about in Sydney.
On board the crazy old barque he found an acquaintance, who soon became a friend. This was the second mate—another Sydney man—who had shipped on the Noord Brabant because berths on good ships were scarce and mates and skippers were plentiful. So the two men, while the ship was being patched up for her long voyage across the Pacific, spent their evenings together at Masters's house.
Harry Laurance—that was the second mate's name—was a fine, handsome man, with clear, honest eyes and a merry, infectious laugh, and those evenings at his friend's house were a source of unalloyed happiness to him, for from his boyhood he had known no home except a ship or a squalid boarding-house.
One night, as the three sat together in Masters's little four-roomed cottage, and Nellie Masters had ceased playing upon the rattling fifteen-guinea box of discord called a piano, the three made plans for the future. When they—Masters and Laurance—returned from Puget Sound, they were not to part. Laurance, who had had long experience in the Island trade, had saved a little money—not much (as he told Masters one day when he placed ten sovereigns in the latter's hand, and asked him to accept it as a loan for his wife's sake), but nearly enough to buy a little thirty-ton vessel he knew of which was for sale, and which would be just the craft to run on trading voyages from New Zealand among the islands of the Gambier Group—if they could load her with trade goods. And he knew a man in Puget Sound who, he thought, would lend him a few hundreds, and take a third share in the venture. Then, when he and Masters returned from the impending voyage to Sydney, they, with Mrs Masters, would go over to Auckland, buy the schooner and the trade goods, and then sail for Manga Reva in the Gambier Group, where Masters and his wife were to buy a bit of land and put up a trading station, whilst Laurance ran the little vessel to and fro among the various islands of the group, and brought back pearl shell and copra for sale to the big German firm in Tahiti. And Masters's pretty wife smiled joyously. She did not like to be parted from Tom for nearly seven months; but seven months was not a lifetime—and then they would be so happy, away from the grinding poverty of their existence in Sydney.
Dreams! Six weeks afterwards, as the old Noord Brabant lay groaning over on her beam ends, thrashing her canvas to ribbons in a fierce night squall off Beveridge Reef, Tom Masters, hurrying on deck to help the hands shorten sail, was knocked overboard by the parting of the spanker-boom guy, and disappeared without a cry, into the seething boil to leeward.
For two hours—after the squall had ceased, and Masters was missed—the boat searched for him under the bright rays of a silvery moon and a clear, cloudless sky. But every now and then rain fell heavily, and though the boat rowed round and round the ship within a radius of two or three miles no answering cry came to the repeated hails of the crew. So then the Noord Brabant stood away again on her course, and Harry Laurance lay awake all his watch below, thinking sadly of his friend and of the dreadful shock which awaited the young wife in Sydney.
But Tom Masters did not drown. When he came to the surface of the water he found himself floating among the debris of the quarter-boat, which, when the spanker-boom guy parted and the heavy spar swung over to leeward, had swept the after-davit out of its socket and let the boat hang, stern down, by the for'ard fall, until the labouring old barque, raising her stern high out of the water, smashed down upon it as it dragged under her counter and tore out the for'ard ringbolt.
Half-stunned by the force of the blow which he had received on the back of his head from the spanker-boom when it swept him overboard, Masters was yet able to swim to the wreckage of the boat which he saw floating near him, and, clinging to the after part of the keel, he saw the cabin lights of the Noord Brabant shining brightly through the square, old-fashioned ports for a minute or two, and heard the cries of her crew as the sails were clewed up and furled. Then a sharp, hissing rain squall hid her from view in a thick white mist, and, with agony and despair in his heart, he gave up all hope of life, knowing that the only other boat was turned bottom up on the main hatch of the barque, and that the ship was only half-manned by a scratch crew of long-shore loafers.
But it so happened that when the Noord Brabant, close-hauled to clear Beveridge Reef, was thrown on her beam ends by the violence of the squall, the whaling schooner John Bright was rolling easily along before it under shortened canvas, and the cook of the schooner, as he stood on the foc'scle, smoking his pipe, caught a sight of floating wreckage right ahead, with the indistinct figure of a man clinging to it, and bawled out 'Hard a-port!' just in time, or else the schooner had run right on top of the drifting boat and finished this tale and Tom Masters as well.