“Would your Excellency permit me to endeavour to find three or four seamen myself? There is a transport ready to sail for England, and I may be able to get some men from her.”

“I doubt it. Unless you revealed the object of your voyage—which would be exceedingly foolish of you—you could not induce them to make a voyage in such a small vessel as yours to islands inhabited mostly by ferocious savages. But this much I can and will do for you. I will direct Captain Hunter of the Sirius, the only King’s ship I have here, to set his carpenters to work on your vessel as soon as ever you careen her; I will supply you at my own private cost with arms and ammunition and a new suit of sails. Provisions I cannot give you—God knows we want them badly enough ourselves, although we are not now in such a bad plight as we were ten months ago. Yet for all that I may be able to get you a cask or two of beef.”

“That is most generous of you, sir. I will not, however, take the beef, your Excellency. But for the sails and the repairs to my poor little vessel I thank you, sir, most heartily and sincerely. And I pledge you my word of honour, as well as giving you my written bond, that I will redeem my obligations to you.”

“And if you fail I shall be content, for I well know that it will be no fault of yours. But stay, Mr. Corwell; I must have one condition.”

“Name it, sir.”

“You too must pledge me your honour that you will not reveal the secret of your discovery of gold to any one in the settlement. This I do not demand—I ask it as a favour.”

Then the Governor took him, guardedly enough, into his confidence. With a thousand convicts, most of them utter ruffians, guarded by a scanty force or marines, the news of gold having been found would, he was sure, have a disastrous effect, and lead to open revolt. The few small merchant ships which were in port were partly manned by convict seamen, and there was every likelihood of them being seized by gangs of desperate criminals, fired with the idea of reaching the golden island. Already a party of convicts had escaped with the mad idea of walking to China, which they believed was only separated from Australia by a large river which existed a few hundred miles to the northward of the settlement. Some of them died of thirst, others were slaughtered by the blacks, and the wounded and exhausted survivors were glad to make their way back again to their gaolers.

Cornell listened intently, and gave his promise readily. Then he rose to go, and the Governor held out his hand.

“Good evening, Mr. Cornell. I must see you again before you sail.”

II

One evening, three weeks later—so vigorously had the carpenter’s mates from the old frigate Sirius got through their work—the Ceres was ready for sea. She was to sail on the following morning, and Corwell, having just returned from the shore, where he had been to say goodbye to the kind-hearted Governor, was pacing the deck with his wife, his smiling face and eager tones showing that he was well pleased.

He had reason to be pleased, for unusual luck had attended him. Not only had his ship been thoroughly and efficiently repaired, but he had replaced six of his untrustworthy Malays by four good, sturdy British seamen, one of whom he had appointed mate. These men had arrived at Sydney Cove in a transport a few days after his interview with the Governor; the transport had been condemned, and Corwell, much to his delight, found that out of her crew of thirty, four were willing to come with him on what he cautiously described as a “voyage of venture to the South Seas.” All of them had served in the navy, and the captain of the transport and his officers gave them excellent characters for sobriety and seamanship. Out of the sixty or seventy pounds which still remained to him he had given them a substantial advance, and the cheerful manner in which they turned to and helped the carpenters from the frigate convinced him that he had secured decent, reliable men, to whom he thought he could reveal the real object of his voyage later on.

Two years before Cornell had been mate of a “country” ship employed in trading between Calcutta and the Moluccas. The Ternate agent of the owners of the ship was an Englishman named Leighton, a widower with one daughter, whose mother had died when the girl was fifteen. With this man the young officer struck up a friendship, and before six months had passed he was the acknowledged suitor of Mary Leighton, with whom he had fallen in love at first sight, and who quickly responded to his affection. She was then twenty-two years of age, tall and fair, with dark hazel eyes, like her English mother, and possessed of such indomitable spirit and courage that her father often laughingly declared it was she, and not he, who really managed the business which he controlled.

And she really did much to help him; she knew his weak, vacillating, and speculative nature would long since have left them penniless had he not yielded to her advice and protests on many occasions, Generous and extravagantly hospitable, he spent his money lavishly, and had squandered two or three fortunes in wild business ventures in the Indian Seas instead of saving one. Latterly, however, he had been more careful, and when Corwell had made his acquaintance he had two vessels—a barque and a brig—both of which were very profitably engaged in the Manila-China trade, and he was now sanguine or mending his broken fortunes.

Isolated as were father and daughter from the advantages of constant intercourse with European society, the duty of educating the girl was a task of love to her remaining parent, who, before he entered “John Company’s” service, had travelled much in Europe. Yet, devoted as he was to her, and looking forward with some dread to the coming loneliness of life which would be his when she married, he cheerfully gave his consent to her union with John Cornell, for whom he had conceived a strong liking, and who, he knew, would make her a good husband.

They were married at Batavia, to which port they were accompanied by Mr. Leighton, who, during the voyage, had pressed Corwell to leave his then employment and join him in a venture which had occupied his mind for the past year. This was to despatch either the barque or brig, laden with trade goods, to the Society Islands in the South Pacific, to barter for coconut oil and pearl shell.

Leighton was certain that there was a fortune awaiting the man who entered upon the venture, and his arguments so convinced the young man that he consented.

On arrival at Batavia they found there the officers and crew of a shipwrecked English vessel, and one of the former eagerly took Corwell’s place as chief mate, his captain offering no objection. A few weeks after Mr. Leighton hired the Ceres to take himself, his daughter, and her husband back to Ternate, eager to begin the work of fitting out one of his vessels for the voyage that was to bring them fortune. He, it was arranged, was to remain at Ternate, Mary was to sail with her husband to the South Seas.

But a terrible shock awaited them. As the Ceres sailed up to her anchorage before Mr. Leighton’s house, his Chinese clerk came on board with the news that the barque had foundered in a typhoon, and the brig had been plundered and burnt by pirates within a few miles of Canton. The unfortunate man gave one last appealing look at his daughter and then fell on the deck at her feet He never spoke again, and died in a few hours. When his affairs came to be settled up, it was found that, after paying his debts, there was less than four hundred pounds left—a sum little more than that which Corwell had managed to save out of his own wages.

“Never mind, Jack,” said Mary. “‘Tis little enough, but yet ‘tis enough. And, Jack, let us go away from here. I should not care now to meet any of the people father knew in his prosperity.”

Cornell kissed his wife, and then they at once discussed the future. Half an hour later he had bought the Ceres from her captain (who was also the owner), paid him his money and taken possession. Before the week was out he had bought all the trade goods he could afford to pay for, shipped a crew of Malays and Chinese, and, with Mary by his side, watched Ternate sink astern as the Ceres began her long voyage to the South Seas.

After a three weeks’ voyage along the northern and eastern shores of New Guinea the Ceres came to an anchor in the harbour which Cornell had described to the Governor. The rest of his story, up to the time of his arrival in Sydney Cove, the reader knows. *****

Steadily northward under cloudless skies the high-pooped, bluff-bowed little vessel had sailed, favoured by leading winds nearly all the way, for four-and-twenty days, when, on the morning of the twenty-fifth, Corwell, who had been up aloft scanning the blue loom of a lofty island which lay right ahead, descended to the deck with a smiling face.

“That is not only the island itself, Mary, but with this breeze we have a clear run for the big village in the bay; I can see the spur on the southern side quite clearly.”

“I’m so glad, Jack, dear. And how you have worried and fumed for the past three days!”