What was I, do you ask? I’ll tell you. I was one of ten children whose father had been a clergyman, and the income “from all sources” of that same clergyman had never exceeded £230 a year. I was a lumbering, hulking lad, without friends, and, as I am now perfectly sensible, without brains, without any kind of taste for any pursuit, execrating the notion of clerkships, and perfectly willing to make away with myself sooner than be glued to a three-legged stool. But enough of this. The long and short is, I was thirsting to get out to Australia, never doubting that I should easily make my fortune there.
I sat in my corner in the Brunswick Hotel, scowling at the floor, with my long legs thrust out, and my hands buried deep in my breeches pockets. Presently I was sensible that some one stood beside me, and, looking up, I beheld a young fellow staring with all his might, with a slow grin of recognition wrinkling his face. I seemed to remember him.
“Mr. William Peploe, ain’t it?” said he.
“Why yes,” said I; “and you—and you——?”
“You don’t remember Jem Back, then, sir?”
“Yes I do, perfectly well. Sit down, Back. Are you a sailor? I am so dead beat that I can scarcely talk.”
Jem Back brought a tankard of ale to my table, and sat down beside me. He was a youth of my own age, and I knew him as the son of a parishioner of my father. He was attired in nautical clothes, yet somehow he did not exactly look what is called a sailor man. We fell into conversation. He informed me that he was an under-steward on board a large ship called the Huntress, that was bound out of the Thames in a couple of days for Sydney, New South Wales. He had sailed two years in her, and hoped to sign as head steward next voyage in a smaller ship.
“There’ll be a good deal of waiting this bout,” said he; “we’re taking a cuddy full of swells out. There’s Sir Thomas Mason—he goes as Governor; there’s his lady and three daughters, and a sort of suet” (he meant suite) “sails along with the boiling.” So he rattled on.
“Can’t you help me to find a berth in that ship?” said I.
“I’m afraid not,” he answered. “What could you offer yourself as, sir? They wouldn’t have you forward, and aft we’re chock-a-block. If you could manage to stow yourself away—they wouldn’t chuck you overboard when you turned up at sea; they’d make you useful, and land you as safe as if you was the Governor himself.”