Page:While the Billy Boils, 1913.djvu/191

 This reminds us that we once found a lost half-sovereign in the bowl of a spare pipe six months after it was lost. We wish it had stayed there and turned up to-night. But, although when you are in great danger―say, adrift in an open boat―tales of providential escapes and rescues may interest and comfort you, you can't get any comfort out of anecdotes concerning the turning up of lost quids when you have just lost one yourself. All you want is to find it.

It bothers you even not to be able to account for a bob. You always like to know that you have had something for your money, if only a long beer. You would sooner know that you fooled your money away on a spree and made yourself sick than lost it out of an extra hole in your pocket and kept well.

We left Wellington with a feeling of pained regret, a fellow-wanderer by our side telling us how he had once lost a 'fi-pun-note'―and about two-thirds of the city unemployed on the wharf looking for that half-sovereign. Well, we hope that some poor devil found it; although, to tell the truth, we would then have by far preferred to have found it ourself.

A sailor said that the 'Moa' was a good sea-boat, and, although she was small and old, he was never afraid of her. He'd sooner travel in her than in some of those big cheap ocean liners with more sand in them than iron or steel You know the rest. Further on, in a conversation concerning the age of these coasters, he said that they'd last fully thirty years if well painted and looked after. He said that this one was seldom painted, and never painted