A couple of hours afterwards, the steamer was very close to land, and I saw some houses on the beach. A boat was lowered and manned by sailors, and I was told to get in. But so benevolent did the captain prove, that they bundled in after me a lot of flour, tea, sugar, and meat, also a tent. I felt completely crushed: I sat in the boat and dared not look around; only after they put me ashore I waved my handkerchief, and there, yes, they were waving their handkerchiefs back to me. There seemed to be a big lump in my throat. Was I in love? Perhaps I was, I do not know, but I felt very sure that if just then I had thought that I could have obliged either the captain or the lady on board by drowning myself, I would have done it. They had put me ashore in a place where the houses which formed the settlement were hidden from my view, and I was glad of it, because I did not want to see everybody. I found a little stream of water close by, then I pitched the tent and laid myself down outside, looking after the smoke of the steamer as long as I could see the slightest sign of it. An unspeakable longing for home, a craving for sympathy, was all over me. I suppose most people have felt the same emotion. I did not go up to town for two or three days after; I remained lying on the beach all day looking out over the sea, and half the night I would walk up and down thinking, or, perhaps it would be more correct to say, _feeling_ all sorts of things. If we would all only always remember the value of a kind word, or a little genuine sympathy, how much better the world would be! Who shall say what I might have been to-day, or into what channels my mind might have been led, if the captain had acted towards me as he would have been quite justified in doing--that is, if he had given me in charge of the police when we came to a shore, and if I had been just a week or two in the lock-up? I had been wronged in Townsville, and afterwards I had received the impression that it was a case of each man for himself without fear or favour. What this impression would have led to if it had not been in this happy way checked in the very beginning, is hard to say, but when at last I bent my steps towards the dozen or two of houses which formed the township of Cardwell, it was with a resolution to do my best, but not to sail again under false colours. CHAPTER VI. ON THE HERBERT RIVER.