XV
DR. GLADMAN, A SKETCH OF COLONIAL LIFE.
IT WAS Christmas morning in Southern latitudes. The thermometer stood at 80 degrees in the shade, and we had just finished a really splendid run across the Pacific, right away from the Cape, without touching, and we were all delighted to be once more about to stand on terra firma. I had signed articles in London, at a shilling a month, as surgeon, to the good ship “Teneriffe,” the Company naturally considering the said shilling good pay in addition to a free passage for myself, and at a reduced rate for my wife, to Sidney.
We were passing a lighthouse, and could see the smoke rising from the little settlement at King George’s Sound. The houses and harbour itself were hidden by the first of the many headlands that were between us and the narrow opening to the anchorage. There was the usual bustle on deck and tramping to and fro of the sailors, who were getting the anchor clear and the decks in readiness to let go.
My wife and her sister were making certain changes in their dress that they might be ready the moment we dropped anchor to go ashore. I could hear my wife ask her sister Rosie if she could really believe “this everlasting voyage was over?” as I was hurriedly finishing off my letters in the saloon to take ashore. I had just fastened and sealed up a long letter to my friend H. at “Bart’s,” and another to my mother in peaceful Devonshire, and had done the same for some half dozen or more of my wife’s, when I heard the orders, “Hard a-port,” “Ease her,” “Slow,” passed to the wheel and engine room as the pilot’s boat came alongside. It was manned by four rowers in man-o’-war’s-man dress, and a tiny golden-haired boy, who didn’t look more than ten, in the stern holding the tiller ropes in his little brown fist, and keeping his eyes fixed on the pilot’s movements till he was safe on deck. Then he said authoritatively, “Let go the rope; fall astern,” rolling the “r” and giving it “starn” in the approved style.
I ran down the companion-way again, and knocked at our state-room to tell my women-folk to come up and see him—they both are so fond of children. On going in I found my wife standing in the midst of open portmanteaus, fastening on her sister’s white veil or puggery, attired herself in shore-going garments, and with another long red-and-white-striped puggery shading her own neck. My wife insists on considering Australia tropical!
“Do they wear gloves, do you suppose, in this place?” she said, taking a long pair of grey ones off the cabin sofa, with a somewhat scornful emphasis on the “this place” which expressed her private feeling about Australia generally.
“Of course they do; life in Australian towns is the same as life anywhere else,” I said, proud of my information, derived from the blue-books of the Agent-General.