My old Christmas friends on Bundooro seemed to be up and moving when I came the second time by their cape, and we exchanged signals again, while the sloop sailed along as before in a smooth sea and close to the shore.
The weather was fine, with clear sky the rest of the passage to Port Jackson (Sydney), where the _Spray_ arrived April 22, 1897, and anchored in Watson's Bay, near the heads, in eight fathoms of water.
The harbor from the heads to Parramatta, up the river, was more than ever alive with boats and yachts of every class.

It was, indeed, a scene of animation, hardly equaled in any other part of the world.
A few days later the bay was flecked with tempestuous waves, and none but stout ships carried sail.

I was in a neighboring hotel then, nursing a neuralgia which I had picked up alongshore, and had only that moment got a glance of just the stern of a large, unmanageable steamship passing the range of my window as she forged in by the point, when the bell-boy burst into my room shouting that the _Spray_ had "gone bung." I tumbled out quickly, to learn that "bung" meant that a large steamship had run into her, and that it was the one of which I saw the stern, the other end of her having hit the _Spray_.

It turned out, however, that no damage was done beyond the loss of an anchor and chain, which from the shock of the collision had parted at the hawse.

I had nothing at all to complain of, though, in the end, for the captain, after he clubbed his ship, took the _Spray_ in tow up the harbor, clear of all dangers, and sent her back again, in charge of an officer and three men, to her anchorage in the bay, with a polite note saying he would repair any damages done.