which could learn the most. Now Bastin, although simple and even
stupid in some ways, was a good scholar, and as I knew at
college, had quite a faculty for acquiring languages in which he
had taken high marks at examinations. Bickley, too, was an
extraordinarily able person with an excellent memory, especially
when he was on his mettle. The result was that before we ever
reached a South Sea island they had a good working knowledge of
the local tongues.

As it chanced, too, at Perth we picked up a Samoan and his wife
who, under some of the "white Australia" regulations, were not
allowed to remain in the country and offered to work as servants
in return for a passage to Apia where we proposed to call some
time or other. With these people Bastin and Bickley talked all
day long till really they became fairly proficient in their soft
and beautiful dialect. They wished me to learn also, but I said
that with two such excellent interpreters and the natives while
they remained with us, it seemed quite unnecessary. Still, I
picked up a good deal in a quiet way, as much as they did
perhaps.

At length, travelling on and on as a voyager to the planet Mars
might do, we sighted the low shores of Australia and that same
evening were towed, for our coal was quite exhausted, to the
wharf at Fremantle. Here we spent a few days exploring the
beautiful town of Perth and its neighbourhood where it was very
hot just then, and eating peaches and grapes till we made
ourselves ill, as a visitor often does who is unaware that fruit
should not be taken in quantity in Australia while the sun is
high. Then we departed for Melbourne almost before our arrival