LOST ISLAND
mind anything that comes along to be done, even if the ship is trying to stand on its head in a gale, but I do bar turning myself into a perambulating steam winch."
It was not merely the sheer hard work that Bruce Tempest objected to. There is a traditional feeling among sailors that dock laboring is not their job. Tempest disappeared several evenings in succession, saying he was looking for work. In reality he was earning good money with strenuous labor on those occasions, for funds to keep them going, but it was his whim not to mention that fact to Dave. Although a good many years the lad's senior, he found Dave a congenial companion in many ways, and was looking forward to the trip with him in the South Seas.
They had been in Sydney a week, and Dave and Tempest were walking along the wharves when the boy happened to notice an extremely fat man attempting the somewhat perilous feat of walking across a very narrow gangway to a steam tug.
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