I am going to write, not the history of my life, which, on the whole, has been as quiet as most men's, but simply the story of about a year of it, which, I think, will be almost as interesting to other folks as any yarn spun by a professional novel writer; and if I am wrong, it is because I haven't the knowledge such have of the way to tell a story. As a friend of mine, who is an artist, says, I know I can't put in the foreground properly, but if I tell the simple facts in my own way, it will be true, and anything that is really true always seems to me to have a value of its own, quite independent of what the papers call "style," which a sailor, who has never written much besides a log and a few love-letters, cannot pretend to have. That is what I think.
Our family—for somehow it seems as if I must begin at the beginning—was always given to the sea. There is a story that my great-grandfather was a pirate or buccaneer; my grandfather, I know, was in the Royal Navy, and my father commanded a China clipper when they used to make, for those days, such fast runs home with the new season's tea. Of course, with these examples before us, my brother and I took the same line, and were apprenticed as soon as our mother could make up her mind to part with her sons. Will was six years older than I, and he was second mate in the vessel in which I served my apprenticeship; but, though we were brothers, there wasn't much likeness either of body or mind between us; for Will had a failing that never troubled me, and never will; he was always fond of his glass, a thing I despise in a seaman, and especially in an officer, who has so many lives to answer for.
In 1881, when I had been out of my apprenticeship for rather more than four years, and had got to be mate by a deal of hard work—for, to tell the truth, I liked practical seamanship then much better than navigation and logarithms—I was with my brother in the Vancouver, a bark of 1100 tons register. If it hadn't been for my mother, I wouldn't have sailed with Will, but she was always afraid he would get into trouble through drink; for when he was at home and heard he was appointed to the command of this new vessel, he was carried to bed a great deal the worse for liquor. So when he offered me the chief officer's billet, mother persuaded me to take it.
"You must, Tom," she said; "for my sake, do. You can look after him, and perhaps shield him if anything happens, for I am in fear all the time when he is away, but if you were with him I should be more at ease; for you are so steady, Tom."
I wasn't so steady as she thought, I dare say, but still I didn't drink, and that was something. Anyhow, that's the reason why I went with Will, and it was through him and his drinking ways that all the trouble began that made my life a terror to me, and yet brought all the sweetness into it that a man can have, and more than many have a right to look for.
When we left Liverpool we were bound for Melbourne with a mixed cargo and emigrants; and I shouldn't like to say which was the most mixed, what we had in the hold or in the steerage, for I don't like such a human cargo; no sailor does, for they are always in the way. However, that's neither here nor there, for though Will got too much to drink every two days or so on the passage out, nothing happened then that has any concern with the story. It was only when we got to Sandridge that the yarn begins, and it began in a way that rather took me aback; for though I had always thought Will a man who didn't care much for women, or, at any rate, enough to marry one, our anchor hadn't been down an hour before a lady came off in a boat. It was Will's wife, as he explained to me in a rather shamefaced way when he introduced her, and a fine-looking woman she was—of a beautiful complexion with more red in it than most Australians have, two piercing black eyes, and a figure that would have surprised you, it was so straight and full.
She shook hands with me very firmly, and looked at me in such a way that it seemed she saw right through me.
"I am very pleased to see you, Mr. Ticehurst," she said; "I know we shall be friends, you are so like your brother."
Now, somehow, that didn't please me, for I could throw Will over the spanker boom if I wanted to; I was much the bigger man of the two; and as for strength, there was no comparison between us. Besides—however, that doesn't matter; and I answered her heartily enough, for I confess I liked her looks, though I prefer fair women.
"I am sure we shall," said I; "my brother's wife must be, if I can fix it so."