UP AND AWAY 261 



feet long and three inches thick, can pass through a 

 half-inch space, constricting its bulging body during 

 the progress. 



The mangroves of the islet provided the best of fuels 

 for the preservative smoke. The fortnightly steamer 

 passed not so very far out, so that it would be possible 

 to send away a couple of tons at a time without leaving 

 the locaUty or suspending work for more than an hour 

 or two. 



With cheerfulness and enthusiastic haste all started 

 to work. No irritating odour, no vexing tune, was 

 perceptible or audible. Boys brought in such quantities 

 of fish that the mates could hardly cook and cure them. 

 Money was being coined, and the making of money 

 begat dreams. Seamen do not invariably build castles 

 in the air. They devise aerial fleets. They build 

 bigger, better, and faster boats to sail on bluer seas 

 into more prosperous and happy havens than belong 

 to this too substantial world. Each sketches out the 

 boat of his desire, and fits her with wondrous comfort 

 and conveniences. He glances, approving head thrown 

 back, up her tall, tapering, well-oiled masts, silver- 

 topped with golden trucks. He paints her in rival 

 colours, rigs her with silken sails, names her after a 

 sweetheart, and sails away to lands fairer than any of 

 the isles of the Pacific — those isles of dreams where in 

 coral groves the gold-lip is embarrassed with pearls 

 of ineffable lustre and of excessive size. 



As they day-dreamed they gathered in actual riches, 

 for the lazy fish were big and almost overlying each 

 other in their crowded spaces. 



Never was there a happier beche-de-mer cruise, for 

 the prospects of good wages soon and a quick return 

 to accustomed camps overladen with the spoils of the 

 Cooktown stores made each boy as joyful as a cherub 



