The said crew was one such as I am thankful to say I never had to deal with as a skipper. Almost without exception they were men holding Board of Trade certificates of competency, having been runaways or something of the sort. There was one man whom I had seen in command of a sailing-ship in Adelaide, the _Jessie Heyns_, he was working his passage in order to buy a ship in London. He did so, and afterwards wanted me to go as second mate with him. Fine seamen as they were, the men knew too much to be tractable. Their _bête noire_ was the third mate. Now there are various ways of annoying officers. One punishment that can be served out by a crew is not to sing out when hauling upon the ropes in the night time. By the tone of the men’s voices it can usually be learned in the dark what they are doing, but to shorten sail with silent men was an ordeal that was spared me as an officer, I am thankful to say. I learned a lot on that trip, however. For one thing I cultivated the art of chewing tobacco, so that I might be able to demonstrate undeniably to my people at home the fact that I was an A.B., and could, therefore, spit brown with a clear conscience. It is a curious thing how trifling incidents come back to the memory when dealing with past events. There was one night the third mate had already given rather more trouble than we thought he ought to have done, when he put the finishing touch by giving the order to set a lower studding-sail. The night was pitch dark, and we were being as awkward and as slow as we knew how to be. The captain was on deck, and ordered the third to go forward and see what the delay was caused by. He did so promptly, and got a ball of spun yarn thrown at his head by a hand unknown, on which he retired aft and told the skipper. Now Captain Attwood was a man who feared nothing or no one, and he promptly came to inquire who had “thrown a ball of spun yarn at his third mate’s head?” Such was the temper of the men that the betting was very even as to what he was likely to get himself; but after some talk of more or less lurid hue, Davies solved the difficulty by saying, “Look here, Captain Attwood, if you want the work done we can do it, but we are not going to be humbugged round by that third mate of yours; now we’ll show you how to set a stunsail.” And we did. But, as I said before, I am glad that I never had such a crowd to deal with. This little incident will serve to explain the temper of crews on the southern seas during the ’sixties.