the night.

"Oh Jim, Jim, dear Jim! I wish Uncle Tom had never come to Marumbah. He
must be a godless and wicked man to take you away from me when I love
you. I hate him, I hate him!"

Gerrard went back to his room, lit his pipe and walked out on to the
verandah, and paced slowly up and down, thinking.

"I wish I had 'em both," he said to himself.

CHAPTER VI

The charming little town of Bowen, on the shores of the beautiful
harbour named Port Denison, was in the zenith of its glory and
prosperity. There were certainly other towns in the north of
Queensland--Mackay for instance--which enjoyed the advantage of being
nearer the capital, and so obtaining more consideration from the
Treasury; but Bowen, although six hundred miles from Brisbane, was the
most thriving town in the north, and affected a haughty indifference to
her rivals for supremacy, such as the "sugar" growing towns of Bundaberg
and Mackay to the south, and the vulgar, upstart, and newly-founded
Townsville to the north.

"With our matchless harbour, surpassed only on this island continent by
that of Sydney," said the Port Denison _Clarion_, in one of its inspired
and lofty-languaged leaders, "we can regard with a serene, yet not
discourteous or contemptuous indifference, the statements of our
esteemed, though hasty contemporary, the Mackay _Planters' Friend_, that
Bowen may yet find that the newly-founded hamlet of Townsville on the
shores of Cleveland Bay will ere long usurp the claim of beautiful Bowen
to be the natural _entrepot_ for all that vast extent of territory to
the northward and the westward of Port Denison, and which, ere many
decades have passed, will, through its marvellous agricultural,
pastoral, and auriferous resources, add not a jewel but a confiscation
of blazing and lustrous gems of the most priceless value to the already
glorious crown of that noble lady upon whose Empire the sun never sets.
Townsville is simply a collection of humpies and shanties built upon an
ill-smelling mud bank. We have personally satisfied ourselves that
unless some enterprising British capitalist can convert the only
available possession of Townsville (which is mud, and bad mud at that)
into bricks, which, perhaps, may be used for the minor classes of
buildings which must of necessity soon be built for the accommodation of
the poorer classes of working men who, in their thousands, will soon be
established in Bowen, Townsville will no more prove a fa