e place till I came back on the _Spray_ thirty-one years later.
And now I saw coming into port the physical wrecks of miners from New
Guinea, destitute and dying. Many had died on the way and had been
buried at sea. He would have been a hardened wretch who could look on
and not try to do something for them.

The sympathy of all went out to these sufferers, but the little town
was already straitened from a long run on its benevolence. I thought
of the matter, of the lady's gift to me at Tasmania, which I had
promised myself I would keep only as a loan, but found now, to my
embarrassment, that I had invested the money. However, the good
Cooktown people wished to hear a story of the sea, and how the crew of
the _Spray_ fared when illness got aboard of her. Accordingly the
little Presbyterian church on the hill was opened for a conversation;
everybody talked, and they made a roaring success of it. Judge
Chester, the magistrate, was at the head of the gam, and so it was
bound to succeed. He it was who annexed the island of New Guinea to
Great Britain. "While I was about it," said he, "I annexed the
blooming lot of it." There was a ring in the statement pleasant to the
ear of an old voyager. However, the Germans made such a row over the
judge's mainsail haul that they got a share in the venture.

Well, I was now indebted to the miners of Cooktown for the great
privilege of adding a mite to a worthy cause, and to Judge Chester all
the town was indebted for a general good time. The matter standing so,
I sailed on June 6,1897, heading away for the north as before.

Arrived at a very inviting anchorage about sundown, the 7th, I came
to, for the night, abreast the Claremont light-ship. This was the only
time throughout the passage of the Barrier Reef Channel that the
_Spray_ anchored, except at Port Denison and at Endeavor River. On the
very night following this, however (the 8th), I regretted keenly, for
an instant, that I had not anchored before dark, as I might have done
easily under the lee of a coral reef. It happened in this way. The
_Spray_ had just passed M Reef light-ship, and left the light dipping
astern, when, going at full speed, with sheets off, she hit the M Reef
itself on the north end, where I expected to see a beacon.

She swung off quickly on her heel, however, and with one more bound on
a swell cut across the shoal point so quickly that I hardly knew how
it was done. The beacon wasn't there; at least, I didn