ashore some day out of sheer cussedness. But not she! She was going to last for ever. She had a nose to keep off the bottom.’

Jermyn made a grunt of approval.

‘A ship after a pilot’s own heart,’ jeered the man in tweeds, ‘eh? Well, Wilmot managed it. He was the man for it, but even he, perhaps, couldn’t have done the trick without that green-eyed governess or nurse or whatever she was to the children of Mr and Mrs Pamphilius.

‘They were passengers in her from Port Adelaide^* to the Cape.^* Well, the ship went out and anchored outside for the day. The skipper—a hospitable soul—had a lot of guests to a farewell lunch, as usual with him. It was five in the evening before the last boat-load left the side, and the weather looked ugly and dark in the gulf. There was no reason for him to get under way. However, as he had said he would go that day, he imagined it was proper to do so anyhow. But as he had no mind after all these festivities to tackle the straits in the dark with a scant wind, he gave orders at nine o’clock to keep her under the lower topsails and foresail as close as she would lie, dodging along the land till daylight. Then he sought his virtuous couch, I suppose. The mate was on deck having his face washed very clean with hard rain- squalls. Wilmot relieved him at midnight. The Apse Family had, as you observed, a house on her poop …’

‘A big—white—thing—sticking up,’ Jermyn murmured sadly at the fire.

‘That’s it; a companionway for the cabin stairs and chart-room combined. The rain drove in gusts on the sleepy Wilmot. The ship was then surging slowly to the southward along the shore, close hauled, with the coast within three miles or so on her port side. There was nothing to look out for in that part of the gulf, and Wilmot went round to dodge the squalls under the lee of the chart-room whose door on that side was open. The night was black like a barrel of coal-tar. And then he heard a woman’s voice whispering to him.

‘That confounded green-eyed girl of the Pamphilius people had put the kids to bed long time ago, of course, but it seems she couldn’t sleep herself. She heard eight bells struck and the chief mate come below to turn in. She waited a bit, then got into her dressing-gown, and stole into the empty saloon and up the stairs into the chartroom. She sat on the settee near the open door to cool herself—perhaps. I couldn’t make it out when Wilmot was telling me; he would break off to swear at every second word. We were standing on the quay, and he had an apron of sacking up to his chin and a big whip in his hand. Driver of a wool-wagon. Glad to do anything not to starve. That’s what he had come to.

‘I suppose it was as if somebody had struck a match in the fellow’s brain. There he was with his head inside the door, on the girl’s shoulder as likely as not—officer of the watch! and meantime the wind was hauling aft in gusts. The helmsman, when giving his evidence afterwards, said that he shouted several times that the binnacle-lamp^* had gone out. He couldn’t use the compass-card, but it didn’t matter to him, because his orders were to sail her close. “I thought it funny,” he said, “that the ship should keep falling off in squalls like this, but I luffed^* her up every time as close as I was able. It was so dark I couldn’t see my hand before my face, and the rain come in bucketfuls on my head.”

‘It seems that at every squall the wind hauled aft a little, till gradually the ship came to be heading straight for the coast without a single soul in her being aware of it. Wilmot himself confessed that he had not been near the standard compass for an hour. He might well have confessed! The first thing he knew was the man on the lookout shouting blue murder forward there.

‘He tore his neck free, he says, and yelled back at him: “What do you say?”

‘ “I think I hear breakers ahead, sir,” howled the man, and came rushing aft with the rest of the watch in the “awfulest blinding deluge that ever fell from the sky,” Wilmot says. He wasn’t a good officer, but he had in him the making of a seaman. For a second or so he was so scared and bewildered that he could