Good-byes filled the air. Women hurried towards the gangway, as if fearful of being carried off to the "wild and woolly West," followed more slowly by those more experienced. Passengers hastened up from the wharf; cab drivers, trotting in leisurely, whipped up their horses in response to nervous appeals from their anxious fares. The big crane went on, creaking and swinging, dumping in its cases as though there were no such item on the ship's programme as starting.
Dick watched the late arrivals curiously. Men formed the greater number; there were smart and brisk commercial travellers, and others, less prosperous, evidently off to seek their fortune in that West which, to much of the rest of Australia, is still an unknown land. Tearful wives and children hung about the necks of some of these, saying the last hard good-byes; but in some cases the wives and children were coming too, and they trooped on board, shabby little flocks, with the tired mothers trying to keep the stragglers together.
The whistle sounded again, and there was a second summons, a peremptory one this time, for strangers to leave the ship. They hurried down the gangway, and then the great ladder was hauled up the ship's side, the deck-railing swung in across the gap, and in a few moments the Moondarra began to back slowly from the wharf. The people below grew smaller, their upturned faces white dots in the evening gloom. From everywhere came shouts of "Good-bye." A young bride, off to the West with a huge, bronzed bushman, leaned over the side, holding the ends of long streamers of ribbon, of which the other ends were held by her friends on shore. Her face was happy and yet tearful; she looked wistfully towards Adelaide. The ribbons lengthened out, gradually tightened as the ship drew further away, and finally, released by the people on the wharf, sprang in the air. The girl gathered them up to her quickly, a gay, fluttering bundle, and Dick heard her give a little sob.
Just as the ship gathered way, they saw a motor suddenly turn in to the wharf from the street, hooting as it came. Mrs. Lester peered at it through the gloom.
"Isn't that Billy's car?" she said.
"My word, yes!" Dick cried. "He's standing up and trying to see us. I wonder what he wants."
"Oh—he has remembered something he didn't tell us; and of course, it's just like Billy to come racing back," Mrs. Lester said, laughing. "At all events, he is too late." She waved her handkerchief towards the car, though she knew that it would be impossible to distinguish anyone in the long row of passengers crowding to look over the ship's rail. "There—he has given it up as a bad job."
They saw Billy sit down again, after waving his hat in a kind of general salutation towards the ship. Then the car turned slowly, and slipped away. The dusk swallowed it up.
Somewhere near them a bugle blared, so suddenly, that everyone jumped. The bugler, a very fat steward, finished a long trill carefully, and then moved off to repeat the performance elsewhere. Someone hailed him.
"What's that for, steward?"