order to throw my commercial-venture overboard. I believe he would
have refused point blank to obey my lawful command. An
unprecedented and comical situation would have been created with
which I did not feel equal to deal.

I welcomed the coming of bad weather as no sailor had ever done.
When at last I hove the ship to, to pick up the pilot outside Port
Philip Heads, the after-hatch had not been opened for more than a
week and I might have believed that no such thing as a potato had
ever been on board.

It was an abominable day, raw, blustering, with great squalls of
wind and rain; the pilot, a cheery person, looked after the ship
and chatted to me, streaming from head to foot; and the heavier the
lash of the downpour the more pleased with himself and everything
around him he seemed to be. He rubbed his wet hands with a
satisfaction, which to me, who had stood that kind of thing for
several days and nights, seemed inconceivable in any non-aquatic
creature.

"You seem to enjoy getting wet, Pilot," I remarked.

He had a bit of land round his house in the suburbs and it was of
his garden he was thinking. At the sound of the word garden,
unheard, unspoken for so many days, I had a vision of gorgeous
colour, of sweet scents, of a girlish figure crouching in a chair.
Yes. That was a distinct emotion breaking into the peace I had
found in the sleepless anxieties of my responsibility during a week
of dangerous bad weather. The Colony, the pilot explained, had
suffered from unparalleled drought. This was the first decent drop