Apropos of the stars in the tropics, one is always told that there is no twilight in these regions. This is not quite an accurate way of expressing it. What is accurate, is Coleridge’s line in “The Ancient Mariner,” when he says, “The Sun’s rim dips; the stars rush out.” He adds, “At one stride comes the dark.” The moment the sun goes down, you do see the stars at once; but the darkness that comes is not dark; the red afterglow down on the horizon, and above it the luminous mauve haze, which is peculiar to the tropics, lingers a long time, and against this the great shapes of the clouds stand out inky and black. It is a wonderful sight. The football boys used to train twice a day. A large swimming-bath, made out of a sail, had been fixed up on the deck, so that after toying with a little amateur training, one could take off one’s clothes and splash about in the salt water. I do not think I ever enjoyed baths so much. In the afternoon many of us used to take sunbaths, and lie half stripped on the upper deck in the sun, till our skin turned first red and then brown. At Sydney everybody takes these sunbaths, and this accounts for the bronzed complexion of the Australians. The football boys had appetites which I have rarely seen equalled and never seen surpassed. When I was at school at Eton, there was a phrase which was peculiar to the place, namely, “a brozier” (I am not certain that this is the right spelling). “A brozier” or “to brozier” meant when the boys ate all the food provided for them and clamored for more, until there was nothing left in the house. There was, once upon a time, a much-venerated lady at Eton, called Miss Evans, who ruled over a house of boys. One day the boys settled on “a brozier,” and ate everything in the house, but Miss Evans was not to be defeated. She produced a large, evil-smelling cheese, and set it before the boys, and this cheese defeated them. The football boys seemed capable of doing this every day, and the stewards were walked off their feet by the amount of fetching and carrying of dishes which they had to perform. As soon as the bugle blew, one heard a stampede of feet going down to the saloon. One felt inclined to quote Browning’s celebrated poem, and say,-- “Dinner’s at seven-- All’s right with the world.” It is a curious thing that I got to know more about Australia and New Zealand after having left it than I did when I was there, by the presence and companionship of these football boys from New South Wales. Most of them were Australians, some had come from New Zealand. Besides being some of the best amateur football players in the world, they were the very best of good fellows, and to live with them was like being transported back again to Oxford or Cambridge and the days of one’s youth. After dinner in the evening choruses used to be sung, and singing in chorus is the crown of good-fellowship.