And that reminds me of a trifle overlooked. During all my association with these my contemporaries on board the _Ariadne_, but with special keenness in the beginning, I was conscious of something outside my own experience, which they all shared. At that time it was to me just a something which they had and I had not; a quality I could not define. Looking back upon it I see clearly that the thing was in part fundamental, a flaw in my temperament; and, in part, the family sense. They all knew what 'home' meant, in a way in which I knew it not at all. They were more carelessly genial and less serious and preoccupied than I was. They all had mothers, too. I do not wish to say that they were necessarily much better off than I. They had certain qualities which I lacked, the product of experiences I had never enjoyed. And I had various qualities which they had not. On the whole, perhaps, I was more mature than they were; and they, perhaps, were more happy and care-free--certainly less self-conscious--than I was. There was a kind of Freemasonry of shared experience among them, and I had never been initiated. They were established members of a recognised order, to which I did not belong. They were members of families of a certain defined status. I was an isolated small boy, with a father, and no particular status. BOYHOOD--AUSTRALIA I It has often occurred to me to wonder why my recollections of our arrival and first days in Sydney should be so blurred and unsatisfactorily vague. One would have thought such episodes should stand out very clearly in retrospect. As a fact, they are far less clear to me than many an incident of my earlier childhood. What I do clearly recall is lying awake in my makeshift bunk for some time before daylight on the morning we reached Sydney, and, finally, just before the sun rose, going on deck and sitting on the teak-wood grating beside the wheel. There, on our port side, was the coast of Australia, the land toward which we had been working through gale and calm, storm and sunshine, for more than ninety days. Botany Bay, said the chart. I thought of the grim record I had read of early settlement here. And then came the pilot's cutter, sweeping like a sea-bird under our lee. The early sunshine was bright and gladsome enough; but my recollection is that I felt somehow chilled, and half frightened. That sandy shore conveyed no kindly sense of welcome to me.