The man who squatted opposite to me was also a man to be noticed. He likewise had evidently been a sailor, belonging to that class that is now extinct, and looking at him as he swallowed his food my thoughts at once flew back to Drake, Morgan and the Buccaneers, and I easily pictured to myself my new comrade serving on some old-time ship that hoisted the Jolly Roger. He was about five feet ten inches in height, but of enormous breadth of shoulder and chest; the latter, like his face and immensely long and muscular arms, burnt mahogany colour, were covered with cicatrices of ancient knife and bullet wounds, while with an enormous hand grasping an iron spoon, which it almost hid, he shovelled his food into his capacious jaws with an enjoyment and sound that reminded me of a half-starved hound gulping at a trough. Still, when he all of a sudden paused and looked at me I saw he had the wide-open blue eye, the frank, fearless look, and the determined mien that stamped him as a chip of the old English block grown in Devon, that county that has bred so many gallant hearts, gentle and simple, who have done so much for the honour of our glorious old flag. Yes, Jack Williams was a Devonshire man who, having been born within sound of the sea, had taken to it, and followed it all his life, most of which had been passed on the South Seas. Jack had put in many and very wicked years among the Islands, upon the Pacific slope, and even as far north as China. He had been a sandalwood trader, an opium smuggler, with more than likely a turn of piracy added, a blockade runner, a blackbird catcher, and had shipped in every desperate and bloody adventure that had been perpetrated on the coast, and in Central America, till at last he had drifted over to New Zealand and brought up in the Forest Rangers. Of the other two members of the mess, one, named Buck, was a typical digger, who had followed the gold for years, and was now putting in a few months with the Rangers on the chance of striking something good in the hitherto unprospected country over which he might be called on to scout or fight during his service. He was a quiet, reserved man, but a good comrade, who seldom went on the bust, and was not rowdy when he did so. He had been brought up as a gamekeeper in Sussex, and had emigrated to Australia during the great gold rush to that country in 1856.