IT WAS Christmas morning in Southern latitudes. The thermometer stood at 80 degrees in the shade, and we had just finished a really splendid run across the Pacific, right away from the Cape, without touching, and we were all delighted to be once more about to stand on terra firma. I had signed articles in London, at a shilling a month, as surgeon, to the good ship “Teneriffe,” the Company naturally considering the said shilling good pay in addition to a free passage for myself, and at a reduced rate for my wife, to Sidney.

We were passing a lighthouse, and could see the smoke rising from the little settlement at King George’s Sound. The houses and harbour itself were hidden by the first of the many headlands that were between us and the narrow opening to the anchorage. There was the usual bustle on deck and tramping to and fro of the sailors, who were getting the anchor clear and the decks in readiness to let go.

My wife and her sister were making certain changes in their dress that they might be ready the moment we dropped anchor to go ashore. I could hear my wife ask her sister Rosie if she could really believe “this everlasting voyage was over?” as I was hurriedly finishing off my letters in the saloon to take ashore. I had just fastened and sealed up a long letter to my friend H. at “Bart’s,” and another to my mother in peaceful Devonshire, and had done the same for some half dozen or more of my wife’s, when I heard the orders, “Hard a-port,” “Ease her,” “Slow,” passed to the wheel and engine room as the pilot’s boat came alongside. It was manned by four rowers in man-o’-war’s-man dress, and a tiny golden-haired boy, who didn’t look more than ten, in the stern holding the tiller ropes in his little brown fist, and keeping his eyes fixed on the pilot’s movements till he was safe on deck. Then he said authoritatively, “Let go the rope; fall astern,” rolling the “r” and giving it “starn” in the approved style.

I ran down the companion-way again, and knocked at our state-room to tell my women-folk to come up and see him—they both are so fond of children. On going in I found my wife standing in the midst of open portmanteaus, fastening on her sister’s white veil or puggery, attired herself in shore-going garments, and with another long red-and-white-striped puggery shading her own neck. My wife insists on considering Australia tropical!

“Do they wear gloves, do you suppose, in this place?” she said, taking a long pair of grey ones off the cabin sofa, with a somewhat scornful emphasis on the “this place” which expressed her private feeling about Australia generally.

“Of course they do; life in Australian towns is the same as life anywhere else,” I said, proud of my information, derived from the blue-books of the Agent-General.

My wife smiled. She has a peculiarly sweet way of smiling sometimes, instead of answering one, which is equivalent to her to having the last word, and is far more than equivalent to me, and very trying, as I have to conjecture what the last word would have been.

We all went on deck. The pilot’s boat was already some distance astern, and we could hardly see the little boy. We found we were steaming slowly through the blue water, past the swelling furze-covered headlands, the one we had just passed being crowned by a white lighthouse, with what looked at the distance a tiny white cottage, with neat palings and outhouses round it.

The pilot was in command on the bridge. We could see his figure against the sky, standing on the narrow strip of a platform, from which the officer of the watch rules his seagirt kingdom with an even more absolute despotism than that of the sultans of the “Arabian Nights.” His broad back, upright figure, and strong hands grasping the rail in front, gave one a sense of security, though the quick clear enunciation of the necessary orders was not quite that of a sailor, or at least did not sound so, after the jolly roar to which we were accustomed in our skipper.

For all that, we soon found ourselves safely anchored well in sight of the tiny jetty of the straggling collection of wooden and corrugated iron buildings that form the town of Albany.

The ship was at once surrounded by a swarm of copper-coloured savages—lads and men, from apparently ten years old to about thirty—more or less nude, who proceeded, one out of each pair in their rough boats, to dive into the clear blue water after the coins the passengers threw in, and which they came up holding in their white teeth, shaking the water out of their close black curls.

We were watching two of these chattering gleaming “bronzes,” as my wife called them, averring that unless you looked upon them as statuary they were really not proper, when the captain came up to us, as we leant over the bulwarks, to introduce the pilot, who stood just behind him with an amused smile at my wife’s last remark.

“Doctor, let me introduce Dr. Gladman, our pilot, to you,” said our skipper. “Mrs. M. and Miss N., this is our parish doctor, health officer, and pilot—Dr. Gladman.”

The pilot bowed, and holding his peaked cap in his left hand stood with his close curling grey hair uncovered in the glowing Australian sunshine, while he shook hands with my wife and her sister. “Welcome to Australia, ladies,” said he, still holding his cap.

“Thank you, doctor,” said my wife. “But are you not afraid to remain uncovered in this dreadful sun?”

“Not for a short moment, madam,” he replied, and added, glancing at her delicate pale face and the more blooming cheeks of her sister, “We naturalised Australians long ago gave up all hope of having your beautiful English complexions,” replaced his cap.

“Naturalised?” echoed Rosie, looking ready to shake hands over again. “Are you really an Englishman, Dr. Gladman? Oh! I am so glad. I was afraid every one would be Australian—Colonial now.”

Dr. Gladman laughed. “A good colonist,” he said, “but not a Colonial. No, it certainly seems a very long time ago, but I did originally come from ‘Home,’ as we say out here. I was born in Buckinghamshire, and bred at Bart’s.”

The magic word Bart’s—my beloved hospital!—completed the charm Dr. Gladman’s fine head, clever face, and quick cheery speech had worked.

Here was a brother in arms, at the first push off! As we made the tour of the ship together, necessary before he could give us our clean bill of health and a soul could leave the ship, I found he had known several of the older men of my time who were youngsters in his. He had qualified fifteen years before I did, but by the time we had reached the cabin to go over the ship’s papers with the captain he seemed an old friend. There is something in the air of strange lands that draws Englishmen together. I had been sent out for my health; so had he, he told me with a jolly laugh, “quite a wreck, they said, ten years ago!” I told him the latest medical news from England, and found he was only a fortnight behind me! and saw his Medical Journal and Lancet as regularly as I did. As we sat down to the saloon table, I asked him how they managed for a pilot, supposing a ship should come in and signal for one, while he was away across the bay, or over on the bush, in his capacity of doctor.

“Oh,” said Dr. Gladman, “it doesn’t often happen. You see the regular liners—the P. and O. and Orient boats—don’t require a pilot, they come in so often. I don’t quite know why you signalled for one, skipper,” he added, turning to the captain, who had ordered sherry to be put on the table, and was sitting with his elbows well squared putting his very black and inky signature to the ship’s papers.

“I’ve never been in here as skipper before. Why, it must be four years since I was here at all, Gladman. I was chief officer on the ‘Regulus,’ don’t you remember, when I last came into the Sound? Let’s see, in 1880 it was.”

“Ay, so you were,” returned the pilot; “but,” he added, turning to me, “one of my boat’s crew has a pilot’s license too, and can take a boat in quite as well as I can. If they don’t care to have him, they have to wait till I get back, if I am out. Once or twice I’ve been run very hard though, doing pilot and doctor at the same time almost.”

“I remember, Gladman, just this very day, eight years ago,” struck in the captain, “you took in the ‘Badger’ for Captain D——. I was his mate then, just before that awful gale of wind when the old jetty was nearly washed to pieces. It was the first time I ever saw you, and you were off then to some good lady—do you remember?”

“Yes, I remember that,” said the pilot, balancing his silver pencil-case on his finger. “I hadn’t my little coxswain with me then, had I, skipper?”

“Hadn’t you? Oh! no—of course you hadn’t”—and the skipper laughed. “He was only born that night, was he? Dear, dear, how time flies! So he is eight years old to-day! Here’s to him!” And the skipper raised his glass, and so did the doctor, saying to me, “It’s the little chap you noticed in my boat—my little coxswain.”

I drank my glass also to the little fellow’s health, and then the captain said:

“Tell the doctor, Gladman, how you came to take him.”

“What is his name?” I said. “I saw a curly-headed little fellow in the stern of your boat, and also that you had four men besides. That is a good large crew, isn’t it, simply to pull you out to a ship and back?”

“It isn’t a man too much, either, doctor, and when you have seen our Breaksea in a storm of wind and rain you’ll agree with me. Besides, that gig is all I have to take me to my patients across the bay, up the harbour to the town. Of course there is a path to the town round the cliffs from the lighthouse, where I live.”

“You saw it as we passed, doctor. Gladman is lighthouse-keeper, among other things,” put in the skipper.

“But,” went on the pilot, smiling at the interpolation, “it is a long way round, and I haven’t time for long ways round. We get all our provisions, too, by the boat, and my wife goes to church and pays her calls in it. She is a first-rate sailor, isn’t she, skipper? And as for that monkey, Jack—my little coxswain—he’s a far better pilot than I am.”

“Is he now?” said the captain. “Tell the doctor how you came to take him,” he said, with a sailor’s love of a good yarn.

“He is not your son, then?” I said, a little surprised; for I had noticed that the child was more carefully dressed than one would expect one of the crew’s lads to be.

“Well, he is, and he isn’t. My wife and I adopted him. We lost our little one—it was a girl though—the day he was born. Yes, it is eight years ago to-day our little one was down with scarlet fever. She was nearly two. There had been an epidemic of it in the town, but I never knew how the child got it, up there miles away, unless, you know, doctor,” he said a little sadly, “I took it up to the cottage myself—I always feared so. I used, before then, to think if I had been to any infectious cases in the town, that after the couple of hours’ row across and round the point I should be safe and not take anything up to the cottage. Anyhow, the little thing had it, and badly; I hadn’t much hope in the morning. My poor little wife—she was one of your Bart’s sisters before I married her—literally fought the disease inch by inch, and we both of course did all that could be done. I had sat up half the night—Christmas Eve—with the little maid. It was one of those bad throat cases, doctor,” said the pilot, a little gruffly, turning to me.

I nodded, and he went on: “About seven, one of the men at the lighthouse came to say a pilot was signalled for by a ship off the head.”

“That was the ‘Badger’—ay. I remember you coming aboard in the cool of the morning, as well as if it was to-day,” said the captain.

“The other fellow was away,” continued the pilot; “so I had a bath and changed all my things, and left the poor wife, who was beginning to lose hope, sitting with the baby on her lap. I hardly thought it would live till I got back. Just as I rounded the headland—or was it a bit farther on, skipper—?”

“Thereabouts,” said the skipper.

“We met a boat from the town, and one of the boatmen called out to know if I was aboard, because I was wanted in Albany. His wife was taken bad.

“You know what that means, doctor!” grinned the skipper.

“I ought to, captain,” I said, hearing as he spoke a smothered murmur from our state-room, from which I guessed that the dead silence which had till then prevailed therein was only another proof of the truth of the saying, that women are curious beings.

Wholly unconscious that he had any other hearers than myself and the captain, the pilot went on:

“We were steaming into the harbour as quick as we could, so I told the man to fall astern, and we towed them behind us. When I got to Mrs. Rogers, I found that she was better, and that I shouldn’t be wanted probably that day at all; but I did not intend to go back home—I thought it best not; but after an hour or two I saw my boat run in alongside the jetty, and one of the fellows come ashore. In a few moments, Rogers brought me a note from my wife begging me to come back if I possibly could; she was frightened about the child.

“I knew I could do nothing, but I couldn’t bear the thought of the wife’s being all alone up there and looking for me—and perhaps, later on, I shouldn’t be able to go—so, as I found when I went up to Rogers’ cottage that everything was put off, and my patient preparing her husband’s tea, I set off home again.

“The day had clouded over, and the hot wind that had blown off the land all day had died down, and there was that dead silence we always have before a black squall of wind and rain comes up from the sea.

“Before we got across the bay, gusts of wind dead in our teeth caught us once or twice and curled the water round her bows; and just as I jumped ashore, the first dash of rain came. As I stepped on to our verandah, a great roaring gust nearly swept me away.

“I went up to the windows, and took down one of the outside shutters my wife had put up to protect the glass, and saw her sitting with the little one in her arms. She was relieved to see me, and beckoned to me to go round and come in. But, you know,” said the pilot, clearing his throat, “I couldn’t go in, going back, as I was, to the good woman in labour over at Albany. It wouldn’t have been safe.”

“No,” I said, “I suppose not;” but I wondered if I should have been so conscientious if it had been I.

“It may have been hard of me, perhaps,” said the pilot, looking straight in front of him; “but I thought it right; and I could do nothing; I knew that when I left in the morning. I opened the window and told the wife how it was. She was very good; she wanted me to come in, of course, if only to kiss the little thing before it died. But I told her I did not think I ought. I couldn’t do anything for the child; it was dying then.”

The good honest fellow stopped a moment, and again I heard a movement, and I thought a stifled sob, from our cabin; but the captain broke in in a rather unnecessarily loud voice:

“You were quite right, doctor. It was very good of you. I couldn’t have done it myself, I should have felt so for the missis.”

“I felt for my wife,” said the pilot, in rather a hard voice; “but I couldn’t have done any good,” he repeated, as if afraid to trust himself to say anything else. Then he went on:

“She sent the girl out with some food for me in the verandah; and we watched the little one, she inside and I out. I couldn’t hear anything in the room, the wind roared and shook the verandah so; but I could see the child was breathing slower. Then my wife put her hand under the wrap to feel its little feet.” He broke off, and then added:

“I didn’t see the end. One of the men came up to say they had signalled for the doctor from the town. So I had to start back. The gig tore through the black seas before the gale. It was a pitch dark night, about eight when I started. I got to Mrs. Rogers just in time. The youngster was born about midnight. The mother did very well, and when I left, about four in the morning, the bay was like a sheet of glass, and the sun rising without a cloud over the cliffs. The jetty had been washed away, all but the stonework, and my men had had to beach our boat right up on the road.

“When I got back, I found the wife on the lookout by the lighthouse. She had heard nothing of us, of course, since I left the night before.”

“That was a hardish day’s work,” said the skipper—”thirty hours of it.

“Well, I was not sorry to get my boots off, and get some sleep, before I started on my round. I’d a longish ride that day to the telegraph construction camp, over the hill there,” said Dr. Gladman, getting up from the table and taking his cap.

“And your little girl—doctor?” said my wife, suddenly appearing at her cabin door, tears on her cheek and a little gasp in her voice.

“It was dead, ma’am,” said the father, and turned to the companion and went on deck.

We saw very little more of Dr. Gladman while we were in Albany. My wife and her sister went up to the lighthouse and called on his wife. They came away charmed with her and the dainty little household she reigned over. My wife was enthusiastic over the trim garden, cool little parlour, and “exquisitely clean kitchen,” and “would you believe it,” she said, “she has only one maid-servant, and that a girl of seventeen!”

“I think,” she said impressively, stopping in our walk up and down the deck, as we were taking our last turn that night after leaving Albany, gliding past the shadowy coast under the wonderful Southern Cross—”I think they are both splendid, those Gladmans.”

A burly figure leaning over the bulwarks, puffing clouds of smoke into the still night air, turned round, and the captain’s voice said:

“That’s what they are, ma’am. That’s the sort of colonist this country wants; a man like Gladman is worth a whole shipload of the ne’er-do-wells they’re so fond of sending out. As for such like!—” he pointed with his elbow, as he replaced his pipe, to a group of dissipated-looking youngsters coming up from the bar, whose determination to drink more than was good for them had been a source of worry to him all the way out—”As for such like,” he said, with a look it would do many intending emigrants good to have seen, “I ask you, doctor, what’s the good of them?”

—Gentleman’s Magazine.