smartest man at it. He had been very successful, made money, bought his own schooner, married quite a pretty little woman, "Promwooloomooloo," who wasn't very particular, not more so than most of her "lady friends" in that district, that is to say.
Shipping clerks and agents used to give him the time of day as they passed on the quay. Altogether Paul Dane was quite "somebody" along the water front of Sydney; amongst the Islands, he was a "terror."
I stood and looked at him, and he, puffing away at his pipe, squinted at me. I was rather a likely lad in those days, and as for sailoring—my heart was in it. From the hour I first put foot on board the old "Conway" in the Mersey, and in spite of many successes in other walks of life, will remain true to the sea till the day it stops beating. There is no life like the sea—none harder, none more thankless, none more precarious—but none so fascinating. I know lots of men who understand what I mean, and can say it better than I can; you may read all about it in their books (and the best sea books are those written by sailors), then you will know, too—and believe me, it is something worth knowing.
I think sailors get nearer to God than people ashore; I mean the real God, without all the trimmings and extras that fence him around on land; we haven't any churches and few parsons at sea.
I remember one old skipper I was with in a large passenger ship being worried by three different parsons in the second class, all different denominations, as to which should read the service on Sunday in the saloon. Each stood out for his own particular creed, and the "old man" at last lost his patience—and roared out: "I'll not have a second-class parson praising God in my first-class saloon, dam'me; gentlemen, I'll read the prayers myself!" And he did. We were under the Union Jack, and so the "old man" rolled out as best
