lay hands which should afford mankind another start.
Why, the busy brains of England were already unconsciously preparing
every device and implement, that could be useful to the rise of the New
World. We make ready in the dark for the light.'

At Cape Town, the halfway house to Australia, Sir George chartered a
schooner for detailed exploring work. In it, a trifle on the water, he
completed a voyage which never lost its charm to him, notwithstanding the
rude hardships. He wished to make all kind of inquiries into natural
history, and when the weather fell calm he would go off in a boat and
shoot sea birds. Not the airy albatross, perhaps, for in it he realised
the melody of motion, and it was not rare to naturalists. To shoot, from
a boat, needed practice.

'You were,' he laid down the conditions, 'at issue with a heavy roll of
the sea, even in glorious weather. Fortunately, I had always been an
expert shot, and I quickly suited myself to the motion. You found your
chances when the skiff sank into the trough of the waves, and a bird flew
screaming over their tops; or, again, when you rose on the surge and had
a wider target.' Thus at sea, and subsequently on land, he bagged many a
fresh fact of natural history, and sent it home to enrich the British
Museum. His word on that point was crisp. 'You had only to walk or row a
little, and you secured a new living thing. The cry of the outlook was
something discovered. The child waiting for the toy, of whom I spoke, was
not half so happily situate as we. It was all surprises.'

His heart fell somewhat when he espied the land at Hanover Bay--the
Promised Land, but naked and unkindly. What a contrast to the bouquet of
Brazil! Still, why should there not be acres rich and worthy, behind
those dull grey rocks? The idea of an incorrigible country was not to be
entertained, for overcrowded England stood, with her hand for ear-
trumpet, and the question on her tongue, 'What is the message?' Adventure
followed adventure in the effort to secure it.

'Somehow,' quoth Sir George, 'we didn't seem to mind the risks, and I
imagine that is the experience of everybody who has encountered any. A
man is zealous upon some task, it quite occupies him, and the dangers are
just details. Afterwards, his friends make him out to be a bit of a hero,
and he has leisure to fancy so himself, which is all entirely harmless.
Now, I had to swim across an arm of the sea, where a violent tide ran,
and where