There was more in the same vein, but this much comes back to me as though it were yesterday that I heard the words. I see the mate's hard blue eye, and crisply curling beard; I see the upward tilt of the same beard as he spat over the rail, and my father's little retreating movement at his gesture. (My father never lost his sensitiveness about such things, though I doubt if he ever allowed it to appear to eyes less familiar with his every movement than my own.) It seems to me that my father talked of the derelict--we did not know her name then, and spoke of her simply as 'the ship'--for the rest of the day, and for days afterwards; and the key to his thoughts was given in one of his earliest remarks: 'What a home a man might make of that ship--all ready to his hand for the asking! The sea, trees--there were plenty of trees--sunshine, solitude, and space. Think of the peacefulness of that sun-washed bay. Nothing nearer than fifteen miles away, and that a mere hamlet, probably. Werrina--not a bad name, Nick--Werrina. Aboriginal origin, I imagine. And all that for the mere taking; open to the poorest--even to us. You liked the _Ariadne_, Nick. What would you think of a ship of our own?' Assuredly, we were the strangest pair of emigrants.... II Naturally, my father's suggestion, thrown out as it were in jest, whimsically, fired my fancy instantly. 'How glorious!' I said. 'But can we, really, father?' It was less than a week later that we walked out of Werrina's one street into the bush to the westward of that township, accompanied by Ted Reilly and a heavily-laden pack-horse--Jerry. Ted was one of Werrina's oddities, and, in many respects, our salvation. The Werrina storekeeper shook his grizzled head over Ted, and vowed there wasn't an honest day's work in the man.