Page:My Life in Two Hemispheres, volume 2.djvu/149

 share in the Freeman's Journal in order to adventure in the new and happy land.

On the first Sunday at sea I may be said to have begun my Australian career. The bell was rung at ten o'clock in the morning, and the captain read passages from the Book of Common Prayer to the bulk of the cabin passengers. When he finished I came out of my cabin and asked him if there was an Established Church on board the Ocean Chief. "Certainly not," he said. "Well, have the goodness to have the bell rung again, and I will read prayers for some hundred Irish Catholics in the second class and steerage." The captain complied, and I got through the business fairly well, and continued the practice till the end of the voyage.

For the first fortnight the good ship never got beyond a day's sail from Ireland. Up to the Equator we had as bad a passage as could be conceived—a head wind for a longer time than the captain had ever heard of in the North Atlantic, and then a longer calm than he ever remembered at sea. But when we crossed the line a favourable wind filled the sails for eight thousand miles almost without interruption, and we saw the new land lying on the lap of the Pacific within eighty days, during which we passed through two winters and two summers. All voyages are alike, and the recreations identical bets on the day's sail, sweepstakes on the date of reaching Port Phillip, deck billiards in the morning and loo and spoil five in the evening, and in the end concerts and amateur theatricals duller than a Dutch sermon. Some of us aimed to learn a little navigation, or at least to understand the ropes, and to make some acquaintance with Jack Tar. Jack was a comical fellow; he had a quarrel with the black steward, and one morning we heard the crew hauling at the ropes with a loud chorus, "I don't love a nigger, I'll be d—d if I do. Haul, haul away for the Black Ball Line." Daily confabulations with Wilson Gray on the destiny of the new country, and all we hoped to do and achieve there, gave a little flavour to life, and relieved the monotony of the wearisome amusements.

When we sailed into the noble land-locked harbour of Port Phillip, entered by a natural gateway called the Heads, the health officer who visited the ship brought me a letter