I daresay that much of the fairyland feeling was due to weather. There is no weather on earth like Australian weather for making holiday in--that is, when it is good. What fell to us on this memorable occasion was as good as good could be--fine and fresh by day, calm and beautiful by night, with various effects of moonlight, each sweeter than the rest. The beginnings of the days were the best of them, perhaps. We went to bed betimes--in that not too spacious chamber of ours between the big and the little masts--and so were ready to see the sunrise, to bathe ourselves in the clean, sharp, early morning air, to set about clearing up the cabin, airing the mattresses on deck, frying the eggs and bacon or newly caught fish, and cooking the coffee over the spirit stove, before the land people were astir, every vein in our bodies thrilling to the salt breeze, tingling with health, and our appetites keen as razors. Later, we would visit the shore for provisions, for newspapers, for a hotel meal, to send inquiring telegrams to our family and await replies, to amuse ourselves with a ramble in the bush or through the bay watering-places whose summer season had ebbed away from them. Later still, I lay prone on deck, snoozing over a novel, while Tom and the crew sailed the boat, and smoked, and talked shop in contented growls, a couple of sentences at a time. Then tea, and washing up, and the fishing lines got out; and the sweet twilight that, when it became darkness, was too cold to sit in; and the lamp lit in the little cabin--yawns--bed--the stirless sleep of nerves at peace and digestion in perfect order. It was almost the same "outside" as in--not a cat's-paw squall molested us. There was sea enough for good sea-sailing, but not enough to wet me or my little house below--not till we got to Warrnambool, where, being weather-bound for a day or two, we had the joy of seeing great breakers again. They thundered on the rocky shore like cannons going off; they flung foam over the breakwater; they would not let the Flinders come in. We sat on a brown boulder a whole morning and a whole afternoon to look at and listen to them, as one would listen to some archangel of a Paderewski.