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From the time of our arrival in Sydney with the Snark, things moved swiftly to their conclusion. When a couple of weeks had gone by, and a new engineer had been secured to take charge of the boat, the day came for me to say good-bye to the genial people with whom I had journeyed for so long. It was hard, but it had to be done. One consolation, however, I had. Some day we should see each other again. The Londons and I were residents of the same country; and the Tahitians would probably be found as long as they lived somewhere in the confines of p367 Polynesia. And of course, Wada and Nakata I should meet at some future date in Honolulu.
Poor Jack and Mrs. London! They were quite broken-hearted at giving up the cruise. They could speak of nothing else. At the last, after having said good-bye to the Snark and to those aboard, I went up to take dinner with the Londons at the Australian Hotel.
We said little in parting. There was nothing to say. Our grief at the break-up of the little Snark family was too deep for words. For two years, through savage seas, we had fared together; comforts and discomforts, good luck and bad luck, all had been borne together. And now it was at an end. The cruise of the Snark was a thing of the past.
The time came for me to go. We shook hands, promising that we should meet again in America. Then I turned and walked very slowly from the room. p368
POSTSCRIPT
So ended the cruise of the Snark. Henry, the Polynesian sailor, left Sydney on March 30, 1909, for Pago-Pago, Samoa. A week before, Tehei, the Society Islander, had gone with a sailor's bag full of gaudy calico, bound for Bora Bora. Wada San, the Japanese cook, sailed on April 11th for Honolulu.
Martin Johnson left Sydney on March 31st, on the steamer Asturias, after an unsuccessful attempt to join the South African expedition of Theodore Roosevelt. His letter did not reach Mr. Roosevelt until after all preparations for the trip had been made, when it was of course too late to consider his application.
The Asturias stopped for several days in Melbourne, Adelaide, and Perth, as well as in Hobart, Tasmania. Then it proceeded up through the Indian Ocean to Ceylon; thence through the Arabian Sea to Aden; and from there up the Red Sea and through the Suez Canal to Port Said. At Port Said, Mr. Johnson made another effort to get in communication with the Roosevelt party, but found that they had left three days before. Passing through the Mediterranean to Naples, Mr. Johnson left the Asturias, and spent some days viewing Rome, Pompeii, and other interesting historical spots. His next objective was Paris, where he arrived in June. Here he secured a position as an p369 electrician at Luna Park, but not long after, feeling a desire to see his home again, he crossed the channel to England. At Liverpool, early in September, he stowed away on a cattle-boat, and after a trying thirteen days arrived in Boston, the only member of the Snark crew to make the complete circuit of the world.