On this "more magnificent" craft, we would carry out our original programme of cruising up the Queensland coast to the islands of the northwest Pacific, and so home via Java, Colombo, and the Suez Canal, thereby avoiding the monotonous passage between the Friendlies and Australia. Rather clever, I thought. Nevertheless, I prefer to draw a veil over the communication of this brilliant scheme to the rest of the crew. Peter did not speak to me for the rest of the day. I verily believe she hates me, but not a tithe more than I hate myself. It is enough that we took our departure by steamer according to schedule, and without daring to look back on the good ship we had left behind. The heart had gone out of things; the dream was ended.
Or rather it had merged into a nightmare. We proceeded to rub shoulders with a horde of fellow-passengers who no doubt regarded us as unattractive as we regarded them; to consume beef-tea or ice-cream at eleven o'clock, and push lumps of wood about the deck with a stick for want of something better to do.
Is there anything more wearisome than a steamer voyage—after sailing your own ship? You sleep throughout the night instead of breaking the twenty-four hours into the sensible segments of four "on" and eight "off." You are called by a smug-faced steward instead of being gently squeezed or roughly shaken into life by the previous "watch"; and instead of commanding your own destinies at the tiller under the stars, you watch others doing it in brass buttons and electric light from a bridge. You begin to wonder if your tie is straight, if it would be permissible to rid your chafing neck of the unholy contrivance encircling it.
As for your fellow-passengers, they are—to a man, and to a woman—gross from over-indulgence of one form or another—mostly food and drink, and their interests are as far removed from yours as the stars. You begin to see how the average sailor-man feels in "polite society," and your heart goes out to him.
"How's the wind?" Ah, of course, it makes no difference to this smoke-belching machine that bears you at thirteen knots, and according to schedule, toward civilization. See that wave? The big fellow with the curling top! Isn't he twin brother to the one you met in the Caribbean when...
No, no. Give us the "sleepy" twelve-to-four watch, and even a "cooking week" aboard the dream ship that we may be content once more.
Already, we were changed to each other's eye. Oftentimes I stood with Steve on the promenade deck, and his well-known figure, camouflaged at the moment under a natty blue suit and collar and tie complete, would fade and merge like a dissolving view into a brown-skinned, happy savage in towel and sola topi. And as for Peter—she was no longer the Peter we had known for a happy ten-month, but a female slave to every twist and quiff of convention. And it was my doing ... all my doing. Or can I thrust the blame on other shoulders after the fashion of brother Adam? Is it not our women-folk who make convention necessary at all to men who, if they followed natural instincts, would revert to the enviable savage?
At Apia, Samoa, Steve was so heartily tired of his environment that he left the ship. He said he could scent civilization afar, and would have none of it. He had met a military official ashore who had offered him a post in the Government on the strength of his war services, and he had accepted. He would stay there in Samoa until I had found another dream ship, when he would join her on receipt of a cable, and continue with us over the remaining half of the world.
He made this promise with an ironical twinkle of the eye that puzzled me at the time, but which has since been abundantly and painfully accounted for.
He left in a native outrigger canoe, hugging his knees on a pyramid of bananas, while the remainder of "the crew" waved him farewell from the steamer's rail, and turned sadly away. A better mate for any venture calling on the best qualities of a man never breathed. Here's to him, "down under," and may that cable not be long delayed!