My wife, an Australian girl by birth, had not been home to see her family since she left them something over ten years ago, and naturally was very anxious to get home and see her many brothers and sisters who had grown up and married since she left. In fact, she had talked of nothing else for the past several years. Each year I promised that we would make the visit "next year," but something or other would show up and spoil my plans. I had given up the sea about six years ago for a "shore job," and was so well pleased with the change that I did not care to go back to the sea again, fearing that I would not be able to change from the sea to the shore life again, as there is something about the sea that gets into the blood and makes it difficult to stay away from it. It was only then an unusual chain of circumstances that left me foot loose at this particular time to take charge of the _Beluga_ on this trip. The fact is, it was what my wife called the "Scotch Jew" in me that finally decided me to take this means of making money out of visiting the mother-in-law. Each day at noon when I placed the vessel's position on the chart, my wife was a very interested spectator and used to measure the distances that remained for us to go. Then she would figure out just how long it would take, under various weather conditions, before she would be able to see her beloved Australia again. Some days when we had a favourable wind and had made a good day's run in the right direction, she would be as happy as could be and singing all the time, but other days when we had made but little progress she would be away down in the dumps, and it would be extremely difficult to get a smile. On July 9th I was having some work done aloft on one of the masts, when about two o'clock in the afternoon Fritz, a Norwegian sailor working aloft, shouted down, "Smoke, oh, on the port beam." I had a look through my binoculars, and, sure enough, on the horizon to the southwest I could make out the smoke of a steamer. The weather at this time was fine and clear, with a light breeze from the south and we were making only about four knots per hour. In a short time it became evident that the steamer was coming in our direction, as she was gradually getting larger and more plainly seen. I shouted down the cabin skylight to my wife to come on deck and see the steamer, as she was the only vessel of any description we had seen since leaving San Francisco, almost two months before. She and Juanita, my six-year-old daughter, scampered on deck and were very much interested in watching her. It soon became evident that the steamer was going to pass close to us, and thinking it just possible that she would speak us, my wife and Nita went below to change their frocks.