puppies adored Mr. Anstruther. Cats have no sense of humour, and poor Tib did not.
Of the foremast hands the Tikirau carried three; Phil, Tom and Fritz. Tom was steady and sturdy; a silent, fair-haired fellow, and one of the best workers aboard. Phil was tall and dark, and loved a jest; he was now making his last trip down the coast—as a seaman, at least; for on the death of a relative he had lately “come into a bit of land,” and intended to turn farmer. He was a good-natured, friendly fellow, but everybody has his limit, and poor Phil’s shared his watch, wore a stout Teutonic form, and answered to the name of Fritz. None of us, I think, knew Fritz very well; he had what is known as “a queer temper.” I ventured one day to ask him about his friends in the old country. “Fräulein,” he replied, almost it seemed to me with sour satisfaction, “I haf not one friend in de vorld.” “Won’t choke nobody to swallow that,” was Phil’s comment, when he heard this sad statement. The pair were continually at loggerheads. The last time I heard of Fritz, he, too, had quitted the sea, had got married to a portly Maori dame with some land of her own, and, like Phil, had turned farmer. What a frightful thing it would be if those two farms touched!
Last of all, though by no means least important, comes Tim, the cook-steward. Tim was a half-caste, and a picturesque creature, full of contradictions and contrasts. To begin with, he had the physique of a warrior—over six feet tall he was, and broad in proportion—a noble figure of a man; yet he spent his days contentedly in housewifely dealings with pots and pans, and within quarters so
