Page:While the Billy Boils, 1913.djvu/277

 It was not long before a woman turned round and asked:

'Was that the place where the Dunbar was wrecked, please?'

We said 'Yes,' and she said 'Lor,' and beckoned to a friend.

We went for'ard and met an old sailor, who glared at us, jerked his thumb at the coast and growled:

'That's where the Dunbar went down.'

Then we went below; but we felt a slight relief when he said 'went down' instead of 'was wrecked.'

It is doubtful whether a passenger boat ever cleared Sydney Heads since the wild night of that famous wreck without someone pointing to the wrong part of the cliffs, and remarking:

'That's where the Dunbar was wrecked.'

The Dunbar fiend is inseparable from Australian coasting steamers.

We travelled second-class in the interests of journalism. You get more points for copy in the steerage. It was a sacrifice; but we hope to profit by it some day.

There were about fifty male passengers, including half-a-dozen New Zealand shearers, two of whom came on board drunk―their remarks for the first night mainly consisted of 'gory.' 'Gory' is part of the Australian language now―a big part.

The others were chiefly tradesmen, labourers, clerks and hard-up bagmen, driven out of Australia by the hard times there, and glad, no doubt, to get away. There was a jeweller on board, of course, and his Q