New Zealand intercourse is more marked and more charming than this trait. A princess aboard the Tikirau? No, thank you! I was something infinitely more to be envied—an equal, a comrade, a shipmate; to be freely talked to, listened to, helped, confided in or laughed at, as occasion demanded—And have I ever enjoyed myself more?
A word or two now as to the individual members of the ship’s company. Skipper first, of course. Captain Fletcher was a short, wiry man, with a beard already turning grey—for a seaman ages early as to looks; essentially active both in mind and body, and in manner rather reserved, although he was excellent company when you knew him. As a man, he bore a well-merited reputation for kindliness, integrity, and, best of all, scrupulous justice; as a seaman, he had often been proved both skilful and wary. “Never knew the old man’s equal for dodging weather,” was an approving sentence that I often heard aboard the Tikirau. He had an extreme dislike to being better off in any way than his men; and, to the scandalisation of Tim, the cook-steward, who considered such a state of things “unnatural,” afterguard and foremast hands upon that democratic vessel took their meals together; nor would the skipper even permit, to Tim’s extra disgust, the least additional luxury at his end of the table. He often worked side by side with his crew; and I have known him fret at having to set one of the hands to do what he would have disliked doing himself. At the same time, so safely and completely, other things being equal, is position secured by character, he was in every conceivable way the master of his ship, and possessed, moreover, the unqualified
