there my fellow-passengers were landed, all except the Quins. It was a picturesque little place. Mountains, clothed to the summit with thick virgin Bush, ran in a long, unbroken wall parallel with the shore, from which they were separated by a narrow stretch of tableland, treeless and low. The sea-line of this stretch was broken by the jutting forth of a small promontory, above which the white spire of a little church, a noticeable landmark, rose up from among the low clustered roofs of a native settlement. Tumbled fragments of black rock studded the foot of the promontory; the wind had fallen, and the sun, although gradually brightening, was veiled in haze; it was a morning of mauve and lavender, and the water lifted and sank in long even glassy swells, so pale as to be almost colourless.
While the whaleboat was making her first trip ashore with passengers and luggage, the rest of the crew busied themselves in preparing the next load, and the ship showed, so to speak, another side of herself, and turned, as she swung comfortably at anchor, into a market-place. The hatches were off, and all kinds of household riches began to come up out of the holds—white bags of flour, brown ones of sugar, boxes of soap and candles, cases of drapery and provisions, and “sundries” of all sorts, shapes, and sizes. The mate’s voice came up thin and distant from the main hold, deep in the depths of which he was singing out the various items as the winch hauled them up; while on deck, the purser, seated upon a cask, kept a careful tally. Everybody, I observed, engineer and cook included, was “bearing a hand” in this business of discharging; it was never, aboard that boat, natural to
