He shipped on board a coaster, and went trips to Circular Head for potatoes; got bar-bound for weeks in eastern rivers looking for maize and fruit; sailed coal-laden, with pumps going clanketty-clank all down the land, and finally, after some months of this sort of work, found himself in Port Adelaide, penniless, and fresh from a gorgeous spree. Here he fell in with an old deep-water shipmate belonging to one of the vessels in harbour. ‘Come home with us, Jack,’ said his friend. ‘She ain’t so bad for a limejuicer—patent reefs, watch an’ watch, an’ no stun’s’ls for’ard. The mate’s a Horse. But the ole man’s right enough; an’ he wants a couple o’ A.B.’s.’ ‘No,’ said Jack Ashby, firmly, ‘I’ll never go deep water again. The coast’s the ticket for this child. I’ve got reasons, Bill.’ And then he told his friend of the dream. The latter did not appear at all surprised. Nor did he laugh. Sailors attach more importance to such things than do landsmen. All he said was,— ‘The _Dido’s_ a fine big ship. She’s a-goin’ home by Good Hope. Was it a ship or a barque, now, as you was on in that dream?’ ‘Can’t say for certain,’ replied Ashby, reflectively; ‘but, by the size o’ her spars, I should reckon she’d be full-rigged. Howsomever, if ever I clap eyes on his ugly mug again—which the Lord forbid—you may bet your bottom dollar, Bill Baker, as I’ll swear to that, with its big red beard, an’ the tip o’ the nose sliced clean off.’ ‘A-a-a-h!’ said the other, staring for a minute, and then hastily finishing his pint of ‘sheoak.’ And he pressed Ashby no more to go to England in the _Dido_. But the latter found it just then anything but easy to get another berth in a coaster. Also he was in debt to his boarding-house; and, altogether, it seemed as if presently he would have to take the very first thing that offered, or be ‘chucked out.’ ‘Two A.B.’s wanted for the _Dido_,’ roared the shipping master into a knot of seamen at his office door one day shortly after Jack and his old shipmate had foregathered at the ‘Lass o’ Gowrie.’ And the former, feeling very uncomfortable, and as a man between the Devil and the Deep Sea, signed articles. His one solitary consolation was that the _Dido_ was not bound round Cape Horn. He cared for none other of the world’s promontories. Also, as he cheered up a little, it came into his mind that it would be rather pleasant than otherwise once more to have a run down Ratcliffe Highway, a lark with the girls in Tiger Bay, and a look-in at the old penny gaff in Whitechapel. But the main point was that there was no Cape Horn. Had not Bill Baker told him so? ‘Falmouth and the United Kingdom,’ said the Articles. Certainly there was no particular route mentioned. But who should know if Bill Baker did not?