narrow that I used to watch for his entrances and exits to see how he managed them. Then he had a very violent temper, very ready to be roused. “Ought to have been on deck a bit earlier,” I was told one morning, “and seen old Tim a-kicking his bread-sponge round the deck, because it hadn’t rose.” Yet at the same time no one aboard, not even Mr. Anstruther, could more positively scintillate with good humour, nor could any one ever be gentler or more patient with women, children, and dumb animals. Easily elated, again, by some very little thing, he was equally capable of enduring fits of depression. “I’d a sister once,” he told me; “she was my mainstay—it was before I married—and she died. Straight off on the bust I went, and drank for seven solid months after.” Blessedly clean about his work was Tim, and a really clever cook, too, and proud of his job. Much of our domestic harmony aboard the Tikirau was probably due to him; for although we were soon “down to tins and salt tucker,” and our meals were simple, as all meals at sea anyway ought to be, yet they were both nourishing and varied, and always interesting.
Oh! those meals aboard the Tikirau! They have not lost their relish yet. I have but to close my eyes, and the whole scene comes back to me—that little, artless saloon, fairly filled by its long centre table, with the swing tray of glasses above, and the filter in one corner: the sweet, bright air and sunshine gushing freely through the open skylight, and down the two or three steps of the companion—interrupted there, however, at times, by the massive form of Tim descending with a load of steaming dishes, or that tea-can of phenomenal size—and,
