rent
of a tidal river as broad as the Thames at Westminster Bridge. On the
south side of the bar, from the sleepy town itself to the pilot station
on the Signal Hill, there rises a series of smooth grassy bluffs, whose
seaward bases touch the fringe of many small beaches, or start sheer
upward from the water when the tide is high, and the noisy swish and
swirl of the eager river current has ceased.

As you stand on the Signal Hill, and look along the coast, you see a
long, long monotonous line of beach, trending northward ten miles from
end to end, forming a great curve from the sandspit on the north side of
the treacherous bar to the blue loom of a headland in shape like the
figure of a couchant lion. Back from the shore-line, a narrow littoral
of dense scrub, impervious to the rays of the sun, and unbroken in its
solitude except by the cries of birds, or the heavy footfall of wild
cattle upon the thick carpet of fallen leaves; and then, far to the
west, the dimmed, shadowy outline of the main coastal range.

* * * * *

It is a keen, frosty morning in June--the midwinter of Australia--and as
the red sun bursts through the sea-rim, a gentle land breeze creeps
softly down from the mountain forest of gums and iron-barks, and blows
away the mists that, all through a night of cloudless calm, have laid
heavily upon the surface of the sleeping ocean. One by one the doors of
the five little white-painted, weather-boarded houses which form the
quarters of the pilot-boat's crew open, and five brown, hairy-faced men,
each smoking a pipe, issue forth, and, hands in pockets, scan the
surface of the sea from north to south, for perchance a schooner, trying
to make the port, may have been carried along by the current from the
southward, and is within signalling distance to tell her whether the bar
is passable or not. For the bar of the Port is as changeable in its
moods as the heart of a giddy maid to her lovers--to-day it may invite
you to come in and take possession of its placid waters in the harbour
beyond; to-morrow it may roar and snarl with boiling surf and savage,
eddying currents, and whirlpools slapping fiercely against the grim,
black rocks of the southern shore.

Look at the five men as they stand or saunter about on the smooth,
frosty grass. They are sailormen--one and all--as you can see by their
walk and hear by their talk; rough, ready, and sturdy, though not so
sturdy nor so square-