CHAPTER I.
I DETERMINE TO TAKE A HOLIDAY.—SYDNEY, AND WHAT BEFELL ME THERE.
First and foremost, my name, age, description, and occupation, as they say in the Police Gazette. Richard Hatteras, at your service, commonly called Dick, of Thursday Island, North Queensland, pearler, copra merchant, bêche-de-mer and tortoise-shell dealer, and South Sea trader generally. Eight-and-twenty years of age, neither particularly good-looking, nor, if some people are to be believed, particularly amiable, six feet two in my stockings, and forty-six inches round the chest; strong as a Hakodate wrestler, and perfectly willing at any moment to pay ten pounds sterling to the man who can put me on my back. And big shame to me if I were not strong, considering the free, open-air, devil-may-care life I've led.
Why, I was doing man's work at an age when most boys are wondering when they're going to be taken out of knickerbockers. I'd been half round the world before I was fifteen, and had been wrecked twice and marooned once before my beard showed signs of sprouting. My father was an Englishman, not very much profit to himself, so he used to say, but of a kindly disposition, and the best husband to my mother during their short married life that any woman could possibly have desired. She, poor soul, died of fever in the Philippines, and he went to the bottom in the schooner "Helen of Troy," a degree west of the Line Islands, that same year; struck the tail end of a cyclone, it was thought, and went down, lock, stock, and barrel, leaving only one man to tell the tale. So I lost father and mother in the same twelve months, and that being so, when I put my cabbage-tree on my head it covered, as far as I knew, all my family in the world.
Any way you look at it it's calculated to give you a turn, at fifteen years of age, to know that there's not a living soul on the face of God's globe that you can take by the hand, and call relation. That old saying about "blood being thicker than water," is a pretty true one, I reckon: friends may be kind—they were so to me—but after all they're not the same thing, nor can they be as your own kith and kin.
However, I had to look my trouble in the face and stand up to it as a man should, and I suppose this kept me from brooding as much over my loss as I should otherwise have done. Anyway, ten days after the news reached me, I had shipped aboard the "Little Emily," trading schooner, for Papeete, booked for five years among the islands, where I was to learn to water copra and lay the foundation of the strange career that I am going to tell you about in this book.
After my time expired and I had served my Trading Company on half the mudbanks of the Pacific, I returned to Australia and went up inside the Great Barrier Reef to Somerset—the pearling station that had just come into existence on Cape York. They were good days there then, before all the new-fangled laws that now regulate the pearling trade had come into force, and days when a man could do almost as he liked among the islands in those seas. I don't know how other folk liked it, but it just suited me—so much so that when Somerset proved inconvenient and the settlement shifted across to Thursday, I went with it, and, what was more to the point, with money enough at my back to fit my self out with a brand new lugger and full crew, and go pearling on my own account.
For many years I went at it head down, and this brings me up to four years ago, to 1888, we'll say, when I was a grown man, the owner of a house, two luggers, and as good a diving plant as any man could wish to possess. What was more, just before this, I had put some money into a mining concern which had, contrary to most ventures of the sort, turned up trumps, giving me as my share the nice round sum of £5,000. With all this wealth at my back, and having been in harness for a good number of years on end, I made up my mind to take a holiday and go home to England to see the place where my father was born, and had lived his early life (I found the name of it written in the fly leaf of an old Latin book he left me), and to have a look at a country I'd heard so much about but never thought to have the good fortune to set my foot upon.
Accordingly I packed my traps, let my house, sold my luggers and gear, intending to buy new ones when I returned; said good-bye to my friends and shipmates, and set off to join an Orient liner in Sydney. You will see from this that I intended to do the thing in style! And why not? I'd got more money to my hand than most of the swells who patronise the first saloon, had earned it honestly, and was resolved to enjoy myself with it to the top of my bent and hang the consequences.
I reached Sydney a week before the boat was advertised to sail, but I didn't fret much about that. There's plenty to see and do in such a big place, and when a man's been shut away from theatres and amusements for years at a stretch, he can put in his time pretty well looking about him. All the same, not knowing a soul in the place, I must confess there were moments when I did think regretfully of the tight little island hidden away up north under the wing of New Guinea, of the luggers dancing to the breeze in the harbour, and the warm welcome that always awaited me among my friends in the saloons. Take my word for it there's even something in being a leader on a small island. Anyway it's better than being a deadbeat in a big city like Sydney, where nobody knows you, and your next-door neighbour wouldn't miss you if he never saw or heard of you again.
I used to think of these things as I marched about the streets looking in at shop windows, or took excursions up and down the Harbour. There's no place like Sydney Harbour in the wide, wide world for prettiness, and before I'd been there a week I was familiar with every part of it. Still, it would have been more enjoyable, as I hinted just now, if I had had a friend to tour about with me; and by the same token I'm doing one man an injustice.
There was one fellow, I remember, who did offer to show me round: I think I fell across him in a saloon in George Street. He was tall and handsome, and as spic and span as a new pin till you came to look under the surface. He winked at the girl who was serving us, and when I'd finished my drink asked me to take another with him. Seeing what his little game was, and wanting to teach him a lesson, I lured him on by consenting. I drank with him, and then he drank with me. Oh, a perfect gentleman he was, as far as manners went, I can assure you!
"Been long in Sydney?" he enquired casually, looking at me, and, at the same time, stroking his fair moustache.
"Just come in," was my reply.
"Don't you find it dull work?" he continued. "I shall never forget my first week in it."
"You're about right. It is dull! I don't know a soul bar my banker and lawyer in the town."
"Dear me!" (more curling of the moustache). "If I can be of any service to you while you're here, I hope you'll command me. For the sake of 'Auld Lang Syne,' don't you know. I believe we're both Englishmen, eh?"
"It's very good of you," I replied modestly, affecting to be overcome by his condescension. "I'm just off to lunch. I am staying at the 'Quebec.' Is it far enough for a hansom?" As he was about to answer, a lawyer, with whom I had done a little business the day before, walked into the room. I turned to my patronising friend and said, "Will you excuse me for just one moment, I want to speak to this gentleman on business; I'll join you outside."
He was still all graciousness.
"I'll call a hansom and wait for you in it."
When he had left the saloon I spoke to the new arrival. He had noticed the man I was talking to and was kind enough to warn me against him.
"That man," he said, "bears a very bad reputation. He makes it his trade to meet new arrivals from England—weak-brained young pigeons with money. He shows them round Sydney and plucks them so clean that when they leave his hands, in nine cases out of ten, they haven't a feather left to fly with. You ought not, with your experience of rough customers, to be taken in by him."
"Nor am I," I replied. "I am going to teach him a lesson. Would you like to see it? Then come with me."
Arm in arm we walked into the street, watched by Mr. Hawk from his seat in the cab. When we got there we stood for a moment chatting, and then strolled together down the pavement. Next moment I heard the cab coming along after us—my friend hailed me in his silkiest tones—but though