LAND AND WATER 
February 24, 1916. 
expedition was blown upon, and he was filling up before 
receiving his marching orders. 
But Screed, when he entered the cabin, appeared quite 
unconcerned, in fact he was smiling. 
" I've brought a friend of yours on board." said he, 
" Captain Hull ; he has asked to join this e.xpedition and 
1 have let him. He is saihng with you as supercargo— this 
is him." 
Hull, entering the cabin last, stood for a moment gazing 
11 Macquart, who was now standing up, a smile gradually 
beaming across his broad face. One might have fancied 
Macquart to have been his long lost brother. 
" Why, it's me dear friend Joe," said Captain Hull, 
" or do me eyes deceive me ! Why, Joe, you've grown fat 
since I lost y' last, fat you've grown and bustin' witli pros- 
perity you look — well, if this don't beat all! " 
Macquart's face shewed nothing of what was going on 
inside of him. He held out his hand to Hull. 
" This is unexpected," said he. " So you're going with 
us ? Well, that's to the good ; a capable navigator is always 
useful even if we are a bit crowded." 
He sat down and helped himself to another sardine, and 
in that moment Screed seemed to glimpse the full formid- 
ableness of this man who had suddenly received such a 
knockout blow in such a manner. 
Jacky had followed them down .with a huge dish of fried 
bacon and eggs, and the whole crowd now took their places 
at the table, a terrible squeeze, whilst Jacky, skipping on 
deck again, fetched the coffee. Houghton was the only one 
at that breakfast party who did not understand the new 
development. It astonished him that Screed should have 
sprung this stranger upon them at the last moment ; he 
remembered vaguely Hull's face, which he had glimpsed that 
morning more than a fortnight ago, but he said nothing. 
It was some move of Screed's, and if Tillman was satisfied 
it was not for him to complain. 
" Well, gentlemen," said Screed, as the meal drew to- 
wards an end, " we'll soon have the pilot on board now and 
the wind is favourable. One last word to you. This ex- 
pedition means a lot to us all. Captain Hull here knows 
what we are after, and his share will be arranged between 
him and Mr. Macquart without touching either your shares 
or mine ; let there be no dissensions between any of you ; 
work for the common end, for only in that wav will you pull 
the thing off to a profit. When you come back here with 
what you are going in search of you will find no worrv, no 
difficulty in taking your profits. Once I have touched and 
. told the stuff, I will give each of you a cheque for your amount. 
You may think my share in this business only consists in 
fitting out this vessel and starting you off. Far from that, 
my real help comes in when you are back with the stuff. 
Remember this, if you had the Barracuda up to the hatches 
in sovereigns, you would be poor men, simply because you 
could not convert your sovereigns into credit at a bank ; 
to no port in the world could you take them with safety and 
without being sniffed over by money-changers or customs — 
that's all I have to say." 
He rose from the table ; he had narrowly watched 
Macquart's face during this speech and fancied he had caugl t 
the faintest trace of a smile, the vaguest ghost of a hint at 
derision. He could not be sure, but the fancy made him 
more than ever satisfied that Hull was in this business. 
They came on deck just as the pilot came alongside in 
his petrol launch. Tillman, who had taken on the duties 
of skipper, knowing more about the management of small 
craft even than Hull, had arranged the watches in a general 
conference on the day before, picking Jacky to act with him 
as port watch, and Houghton and Macquart for the starboard. 
The advent of Hull would not disturb this arrangement. Hull 
declared himself ready and willing to act as spare hand and 
to assist in any way that might be useful. 
" I ain't particular," said he. " I've all my life been 
used to masts and yards and a quarter deck a body can turn 
on. I'm free to admit this soap-dish is a new thing to me 
and this pocket handkerchief work with gaffs and booms is 
outside my line. If Mr. Tillman here has a better clutch on 
'em than me, well, then, he's my skipper ; if he's a bit dicky 
on the navigatin', well then he can reckon on me to lend him 
a hand." 
He meant it. Hull on board the Barracuda was as much 
out of his element as a trout in a child's aquarium. He had 
been used to space ; fore and aft rig confused him ; though 
used to vast spaces of canvas, the mainsail of the Barracuda 
seemed to him vast in proportion to the hull, the swing of 
the main boom agitated him. He was obsessed, in fact, 
with the idea of the smallnoss of the craft, an obsession that 
would wear off in time. The pilot was a friend of Tillman's 
who supposed they were off to the islands, and he came, not 
because he was wanted, but to give them a send off. 
When he came on board. Screed shook hands all round 
and departed for shore. Then the anchor was hove short- 
Hull, Houghton and Jacky at the windlass, the jib and 
mainsail was set and the anchor brought home. 
The live feel of the little craft when she was free 0;' 
the mud sent a thrill through Tillman who was at the wheel, 
the way she answered to lier helm delighted him. Followed 
by the pilot boat, she passed cove after cove of the lovely 
harbour, gliding like a gull on the wind she opened the Heads 
and, now, before them, like an enchantress holding the gifts 
of death or fortune, stretching towards them the lure of 
youth, lay the blue and boundless Pacific. 
CHAPTER VIII. 
The Argonauts. 
THEY had dropped the pilot, the Heads were passed 
and the white digit of Macquarie lighthouse lay 
behind them and on the port quarter. 
Tillman, at the wheel, was feeling more and 
more the fine qualities of the Barracuda as a sea boat, for out 
here the sea was fresh and strong, the tide coming up against 
the wind and foam caps breaking across the hard shoreward 
green and meadows of distant azure. 
The old Greeks knew seas like this when they spoke ot 
the sea as a country haunted by Proteus shepherding the (locks 
of ocean, and Jason might have steered the Argo through the 
same blue fresh weather when he set out on the same old 
quest of treasure and adventure. 
If Tillman had ever heard of Jason and the Golden 
Fleece, he had, no doubt, forgotten them, nor would he have 
been in a humour to draw parallels even had he remembered 
that far-off adventure. Yet the Argo departing on her won- 
derful voyage was a sister ship of the Barracuda spreading her 
sails to the winds of the Pacific, freighted with dreamers, 
and bound on a business equally adventurous — and almost 
equally fantastic. 
Houghton was standing holding on to the weather rail 
and talking to Hull. Macquart had taken his seat plump on 
deck by the galley and was engaged with a needle and thread 
on a rent in his coat, which he had taken off. Jacky, the 
native, was in and out of the tiny fo'c'sle putting things in 
order, and as Tillman looked at his companions, at the bound- 
less sea and the receding Heads, for the first time the true 
inwardness of 'his business broke upon him and the true nature 
of the responsibility he had taken up so lightly. 
Bobby Tillman had been one of the Sydney Boys. Spend- 
ing money, yacht and horse-racing, living too well and recover- 
ing from the elfects, lial been amongst his main occupations 
in life. An adventure to a New Guinea river for the puj-pose 
of recovering half a mi lion of gold there cached had seemed 
to him a gorgeous and light-hearted business. Out here, 
faced by the sea and his companions, the full knowledge of 
the fact that this was an undertaking of all undertakings the 
most desperate and dangerous, was now coming to him, and 
with it the sense of his responsibility. 
Had the crew of the Barracuda consisted of religious 
sailormen, and had the oijject of their quest been a cache of 
Bibles for distribution amongst the heathen, this voyage 
would not have been destitute of danger. But the quest was 
gold, and gold in its most dangerous form — abandoned 
treasure. 
Tillman was not thinking of this as he steered. He was 
reviewing his dubious companions, seeing them as though it 
were for the first time Houghton he knew and could trust, 
Macquart he guessed to be a scoundrel, both from Screed's 
words about him a 'i from the promptinj^s of a vague instinct ; 
and about Macquart the most disturbing fact was this peep 
of the devil through a fascinating personality. Hull was much 
more understandable. Hull, sp.ung on them at the last 
moment by Screed as a check upon Macquart, carried his 
certificate of character in his face, and it was not a first-class 
certificate by any means. Still, instinctively Tillman felt 
Hull to be far more reliable than Macquart. 
Jacky, the black fellow, was an entirely unknown 
quantity. 
This, then, was the crowd, small in number, yet full of 
possibilities which Tillman had to deal with and hold tog'.ther, 
and with which he had to face tiie sia, the weather, unknown 
natives and the passions possibly to be roused through the 
nature of the quest and the natures of the seekers. 
Tillman never turned a hair. This irresponsible and light- 
hearted optimist, this trifler with life, this haunter of race- 
courses and main prop of Lami)?rts, recognised all the difh- 
culties and dangers of his ])osition to the full, yet heeded them 
not. He felt himself standing on a sure rock,. and that rock 
was the fact that the Barracuda was proving herself a splendid 
sea-boat. So he stood, twirling the wheel, till, Macquarie 
Lighthouse wiped away by distance, he called Jacky to the 
helm, gave him the course and joined Hull and Houghton at 
the weather rail ; then the three sat down on deck by Macquart, 
20 
