The officer said rude things, and added that he had better go aloft and watch the ghost from there. Another man was sent to replace the craven, and all was calm for a while, when suddenly this second sailor came back, pale with fear, and said that a woman was rising through the mist from the sea. Some one else was sent to replace this man, and the ghost had such an effect upon him that he fell down and broke his leg. Then the captain came on deck and the officer reported the state of affairs to him. He went forward and came back saying, “It is a ghost.” Then, being a religious man, he fetched a Bible and tried to exorcise the ghost by reading the Scripture. While this was going on, the officer who told me the story went forward, and there, as plain as a pikestaff, in the murky mist, he saw a white woman slowly rise in the swell and then disappear. Paralysed with horror, he stood looking at the sea, and the woman rose once more; and then, his fear left him, and he realized that it was the figurehead of the ship which had got knocked off. But I have spoiled that story. I have merely told the bare facts; what you want is the whole thing; the dialogue, the details; the technical terms. From Colombo to Fremantle is probably the most monotonous part of the voyage. The only object of interest is the albatross, but as nobody shot one, with a crossbow, no untoward events happened. _Fremantle: July_ Fremantle is the least attractive of ports. You are not meant to stay there. You are meant to go on to Perth. Nevertheless, it was my first sight of an Australian city. It struck me as being in some ways rather like a Russian provincial town; this is not odd, because Russia is a country of colonists. What differentiates a Russian city from an Australian--and indeed from any other city--is the churches with their gilded spires and blue cupolas and their Byzantine shape. At Fremantle the firemen went on shore--against orders. They drank to their hearts’ content, and came back in a state of truculent inebriation, as did many of the steerage passengers. We left Fremantle in the evening. There was a strong wind blowing. Two little tugs were doing their best to pull us out of the narrow harbour. They could scarcely pull their own weight; and then one of the hawsers broke. We drifted to port where alongside of the wharf some cargo steamers lay at anchor. “Hullo!” said somebody; “we shall only just do it.” The passengers became interested. Then it became evident that we weren’t going just to do it; and we went--_crunch! crunch!_--into the steamers alongside the wharf, carrying away the wooden gear they had to put cattle in.