me a tidy allowance, and I determined to see life. My knowledge of drugs did not increase, it is true, but I became a wonderful judge of beer; my botanical studies were limited, but I culled the choicest flowers of speech that flourish on the cab-ranks, and had a large stock of chaff always on hand; and though I never paid much attention to anatomy, I have spent many a night over the bones. Now this sort of thing could not last. My old uncle was the style of man who does not object to outlay, but always expects a proportionate return; so that after I had been plucked a second time, he answered my application for a third payment of my debts by a letter, short but to the purpose. I remember it perfectly, so I’ll give it to you. “Sir,—I enclose you a check for 100l.; you won’t get any more when that is done, so you may go to the devil, or to Australia, which you like.” I liked the latter; so, as my creditors were troublesome, before a week had elapsed I found myself on board the Ocean King, 1200 tons register, A 1, and carrying a competent surgeon, bound for Port Phillip direct. When I went down to engage a berth, I found that they were all taken up. At the last moment, however, a large compartment in the second cabin, which had been reserved for a hospital, was objected to by the surgeon as not adapted for the purpose, so I got billeted in it along with three others, and arranged to mess in the chief cabin. While we were running down Channel the sea was as calm as a mill-pond, with a fine breeze on the quarter, and all sail set. I felt as jolly as a sandboy, smoked cigars, swaggered about the deck, and talked as if I had been accustomed to the ocean all my life—in fact, any one might have imagined that it had acted as my nurse, and rocked me in my cradle. But when we got into the Bay I soon changed my tone. I believe that in that disgusting portion of the world it generally manages to blow two ways at once, or something of the kind; but on this occasion, as the mate, who was a rough old fellow, with a face made of unpolished mahogany, informed me, it had been blowing hard from three different quarters within the last twenty-four hours. The consequences were extremely unpleasant. There was an awful sea on—not a good high steady one, each billow half a mile long or so, like you see at the Cape—but a lot of horrid, high, short waves, all jumbled together, one going one way and another another. First the ship got a tremendous rap on her starboard side, sending her over to port; then, before she could get any distance down, she was knocked violently back again; then she would jump over the top of a wave as steep as a house side, and plunge bows under, as if she suddenly remembered that she had a particular engagement under water, and was going down to keep it; then she would be steady for a moment, and then down she would go again to port, and when she was laying over so much that she appeared to be making the interesting but slightly dangerous experiment of how far she could heel over without capsizing, a second sea would give her a malicious knock, as if bent on making her lose her balance, till you held your breath for fear that the slightest movement on your part should send her then and there on her beam ends; and just as you had made up your mind that it was all over, and were regretting that you had neglected furnishing yourself with a life belt, up she would come again, shivering from stem to stern, as if terrified at the fate she had so barely escaped—or rather, perhaps, as a prosaic passenger put it, shaking all over with suppressed laughter at the jolly fright she had given every one on board. When to all this was added the cursing of the captain, the bawling of the sailors, the roaring of the wind through the rigging, the creaking of the wooden partitions between the cabins, and the perpetual rolling to and fro of chests, trunks, washstands, basins, cooking utensils, &c., &c., not one of which, as a matter of course, had been properly secured, you may think that the situation was by no means an agreeable one. I stuck by the deck as long as I could, for, frightfully sea-sick as I was, I had a horror of the close air below; but at last the seas began to break over the ship so fast that I was obliged to go down.
On entering my cabin I was struck with the strong odour of tobacco and whisky that pervaded the atmosphere. At a glance the cause was evident. My cabin-companions—three old diggers on their return to Australia—were tucked snugly in their bunks, each with a bottle of whisky and a tin pannikin wedged in behind his pillow, and a clay pipe in his mouth. Now, if there was any one thing I abhorred more than another, it was the smell of tobacco in a small room. Cigars I liked, but a pipe smoked immediately under my nose within doors, I hated. So to the kind invitations of my shipmates to turn in and do likewise, I returned no very polite reply, but begged to recall to their memories that smoking below was strictly forbidden; to which the biggest and ugliest of them replied, using a great many adjectives, which I shall omit, that I was a fool; that I didn’t think that they were going to be done out of their smoke for me,—did I? and that I had better go and complain to the captain, as he would be sure to leave the deck at that particular moment to put out their pipes if a swell, like myself, was to ask him. As I did not feel quite so sure of this, and had a sort of notion that I was being chaffed as well as smoked, I said nothing more, but turned in, in silence. For several hours I tossed and tumbled about, vainly endeavouring to get a few winks of sleep to alleviate the horrible pangs of sea-sickness, trebled by the stifling atmosphere and the fumes of bad tobacco, and worse spirits. At first I hoped that my companions would become stupefied by their incessant smoking and drinking, and would, at last, allow me a little repose. No such thing, such seasoned old chums as they, were not to be affected by a bottle of whisky or a few ounces more or less of bird’s-eye. At first they contented themselves with interminable tales of how Squinting Jack, or some such interesting person had struck a new lead on a kangaroo flat, and had had his claimed jumped by the Tipperary boys; and how when he objected to this operation—with regard to the meaning of which I was in the most perfect ignorance—they had argued with him by the