THE

GENTLEMAN'S MAGAZINE.

IT

AUGUST 1887.

DR. GLADMAN:

A SKETCH OF COLONIAL LIFE.

BY E. HARRISON CLUBbe.

T was Christmas morning in Southern latitudes. The thermometer stood at 80° in the shade, and we had just finished a really splendid run across the Pacific, right away from the Cape, without touching, and we were all delighted to be once more about to stand on terra firma. I had signed articles in London, at a shilling a month, as surgeon, to the good ship "Teneriffe," the Company naturally considering the said shilling good pay in addition to a free passage for myself, and at a reduced rate for my wife, to Sydney.

We were passing the lighthouse, and could see the smoke rising from the little settlement at King George's Sound. The houses and harbour itself were hidden by the first of the many headlands that were between us and the narrow opening to the anchorage. There was the usual bustle on deck and tramping to and fro of the sailors, who were getting the anchor clear and the decks in readiness to

let go.

My wife and her sister were making certain changes in their dress that they might be ready the moment we dropped anchor to go ashore. I could hear my wife ask her sister Rosie if she could really believe "this everlasting voyage is over?" as I was hurriedly finishing off my letters in the saloon to take ashore. I had just fastened and sealed up a long letter to my friend H. at "Bart's," and another to my mother in peaceful Devonshire, and had done the same for some half dozen or more of my wife's, when I heard the orders, "Hard a-port," "Ease her," "Slow," passed to the wheel and engine room as the pilot's boat came alongside. It was manned by four VOL. CCLXIII. NO. 1880.

I

rowers in man-o'-war's-man dress, and a tiny golden-haired boy, who didn't look more than ten, in the stern holding the tiller ropes in his little brown fist, and keeping his eyes fixed on the pilot's movements till he was safe on deck. Then he said authoritatively, "Let go the rope; fall astern," rolling the "r" and giving it "Starn" in the approved style.

I ran down the companion again, and knocked at our state room to tell my women folk to come up and see him-they both are so fond of children. On going in I found my wife standing in the midst of open portmanteaus, fastening on her sister's white veil or puggery, attired herself in shore-going garments, and with another long redand-white-striped puggery shading her own neck. My wife insists on considering Australia tropical!

"Do they wear gloves, do you suppose, in this place?" she said, taking a long pair of grey ones off the cabin sofa, with a somewhat scornful emphasis on the "this place" which expressed her private feeling about Australia generally.

"Of course they do; life in Australian towns is the same as life anywhere else," I said, proud of my information, derived from the blue-books of the Agent-General.

My wife smiled. She has a peculiarly sweet way of smiling sometimes, instead of answering one, which is equivalent to her to having the last word, and is far more than equivalent to me, and very trying, as I have to conjecture what the last word would have been.

We all went on deck. The pilot's boat was already some distance astern, and we could hardly see the little boy. We found we were steaming slowly through the blue water, past the swelling furze-covered headlands, the one we had just passed being crowned by a white lighthouse, with what looked at the distance a tiny white cottage, with neat palings and outhouses round it.

The pilot was in command on the bridge. We could see his figure against the sky, standing on the narrow strip of a platform, from which the officer of the watch rules his seagirt kingdom with an even more absolute despotism than that of the sultans of the "Arabian Nights." His broad back, upright figure, and strong hands grasping the rail in front, gave one a sense of security, though the quick clear enunciation of the necessary orders was not quite that of a sailor, or at least did not sound so, after the jolly roar to which we were accustomed in our skipper.

For all that we soon found ourselves safely anchored well in sight of the tiny jetty of the straggling collection of wooden and corrugated iron buildings that form the town of Albany.

The ship was at once surrounded by a swarm of copper-coloured savages—lads and men, from apparently ten years old to about thirty -more or less nude, who proceeded, one out of each pair in their rough boats, to dive into the clear blue water after the coins the passengers threw in, and which they came up holding in their white teeth, shaking the water out of their close black curls.

We were watching two of these chattering gleaming "bronzes," as my wife called them, averring that unless you looked upon them as statuary they were really not proper, when the captain came up to us, as we leant over the bulwarks, to introduce the pilot, who stood just behind him with an amused smile at my wife's last remark.

"Doctor, let me introduce Dr. Gladman, our pilot, to you," said our skipper. "Mrs. M. and Miss N., this is our parish doctor, health officer, and pilot-Dr. Gladman."

The pilot bowed, and holding his peaked cap in his left hand stood with his close curling grey hair uncovered in the glowing Australian sunshine, while he shook hands with my wife and her sister. "Welcome to Australia, ladies," said he, still holding

his cap.

"Thank you, doctor," said my wife. "But are you not afraid to remain uncovered in this dreadful sun ?”

"Not for so short a moment, madam," he replied, and added, glancing at her delicate pale face and the more blooming cheeks of her sister, "We naturalised Australians have long ago given up all hope of having your beautiful English complexions," replaced his cap.

"Naturalised?" echoed Rosie, looking ready to shake hands over again. "Are you really an Englishman, Dr. Gladman? Oh! I am so glad. I was afraid every one would be Australian-Colonial now."

Dr. Gladman laughed. "A good colonist," he said, "but not a Colonial. No, it certainly seems a very long time ago, but I did originally come from 'Home,' as we say out here. I was born in Buckinghamshire, and bred at Bart's."

The magic word Bart's-my beloved hospital !--completed the charm Dr. Gladman's fine head, clever face, and quick cheery speech had worked.

Here was a brother in arms, at the first push off! As we made the tour of the ship together, necessary before he could give us our clean bill of health and a soul could leave the ship, I found he had known several of the older men of my time who were youngsters in his. He had qualified fifteen years before I did, but by the time we had reached the cabin to go over the ship's papers with the captain he seemed an old friend. There is something in the air of strange

lands that draws Englishmen together. I had been sent out for my health; so had he, he told me with a jolly laugh, "quite a wreck, they said, ten years ago!" I told him the latest medical news from England, and found he was only a fortnight behind me! and saw his Medical Journal and Lancet as regularly as I did. As we sat down to the saloon table, I asked him how they managed for a pilot, supposing a ship should come in and signal for one, while he was away across the bay, or over on the bush, in his capacity of doctor.

"Oh," said Dr. Gladman, "it doesn't often happen. You see the regular liners-the P. and O. and Orient boats-don't require a pilot, they come in so often. I don't quite know why you signalled for one, skipper," he added, turning to the captain, who had ordered sherry to be put on the table, and was sitting with his elbows well squared putting his very black and inky signature to the ship's papers.

"I've never been in here as skipper before. Why, it must be four years since I was here at all, Gladman. I was chief officer on the 'Regulus,' don't you remember, when I last came into the Sound? Let's see, in 1880 it was."

"Ay, so you were," returned the pilot; "but," he added, turning to me, "one of my boat's crew has a pilot's license too, and can take a boat in quite as well as I can. If they don't care to have him, they have to wait till I get back, if I am out. Once or twice I've been run very hard though, doing pilot and doctor at the same time almost."

"I remember, Gladman, just this very day, eight years ago," struck in the captain, "you tcok in the 'Badger' for Captain D

you,

I was his mate then, just before that awful gale of wind when the old jetty was nearly washed to pieces. It was the first time I ever saw and you were off then to some good lady-do you remember?" "Yes, I remember that," said the pilot, balancing his silver pencilcase on his finger. "I hadn't my little coxswain with me then, had I, skipper ? "

'Hadn't you? Oh! no-of course you hadn't"--and the skipper laughed. "He was only born that night, was he? Dear, dear, how time flies! So he is eight years old to-day! Here's to him!" And the skipper raised his glass, and so did the doctor, saying to me, "It's the little chap you noticed in my boat-my little coxswain."

I drank my glass also to the little fellow's health, and then the captain said:

"Tell the doctor, Gladman, how you came to take him."
"What is his name?" I said. "I saw a curly-headed little fellow

in the stern of your boat, and also that you had four men besides. That is a good large crew, isn't it, simply to pull you out to a ship and back?"

"It isn't a man too much either, doctor, and when you have seen our Breaksea in a storm of wind and rain you'll agree with me. Besides, that gig is all I have to take me to my patients across the bay, up the harbour to the town. Of course there is a path to the town round the cliffs from the lighthouse, where I live."

"You saw it as we passed, doctor. Gladman is lighthouse-keeper, among other things," put in the skipper.

But," went on the pilot, smiling at the interpolation, "it is a long way round, and I haven't time for long ways round. We get all our provisions too by the boat, and my wife goes to church and pays her calls in it. She is a first-rate sailor, isn't she, skipper?

And as for that monkey, Jack-my little coxswain-he's a far better pilot than I am."

"Is he now?" said the captain.

"Tell the doctor how you

came to take him," he said, with a sailor's love of a good yarn. "He is not your son, then?" I said, a little surprised; for I had noticed that the child was more carefully dressed than one would expect one of the crew's lads to be.

Yes,

“Well, he is, and he isn't. My wife and I adopted him. We lost our little one-it was a girl though-the day he was born. it is eight years ago to-day our little one was down with scarlet fever. She was nearly two. There had been an epidemic of it in the town, but I never knew how the child got it, up there miles away, unless, you know, doctor," he said a little sadly, "I took it up to the cottage myself I always feared so. I used, before then, to think if I had been to any infectious cases in the town, that after the couple of hours' row across and round the point I should be safe and not take anything up to the cottage. Anyhow, the little thing had it, and badly I hadn't much hope in the morning. My poor little wife-she was one of your Barts' sisters before I married her-literally fought the disease inch by inch, and we both of course did all that could be done. I had sat up half the night-Christmas Evewith the little maid. It was one of those bad throat cases, doctor," said the pilot, a little gruffly, turning to me.

I nodded, and he went on: "About seven one of the men at the lighthouse came to say a pilot was signalled for by a ship off the head."

"That was the 'Badger'-ay. I remember you coming aboard in the cool of the morning, as well as if it was to-day," said the captain.