Bickley, too, was an extraordinarily able person with an excellent memory, especially when he was on his mettle.

The result was that before we ever reached a South Sea island they had a good working knowledge of the local tongues.
As it chanced, too, at Perth we picked up a Samoan and his wife who, under some of the "white Australia" regulations, were not allowed to remain in the country and offered to work as servants in return for a passage to Apia where we proposed to call some time or other.

With these people Bastin and Bickley talked all day long till really they became fairly proficient in their soft and beautiful dialect.

They wished me to learn also, but I said that with two such excellent interpreters and the natives while they remained with us, it seemed quite unnecessary.

Still, I picked up a good deal in a quiet way, as much as they did perhaps.
At length, travelling on and on as a voyager to the planet Mars might do, we sighted the low shores of Australia and that same evening were towed, for our coal was quite exhausted, to the wharf at Fremantle.
Here we spent a few days exploring the beautiful town of Perth and its neighbourhood where it was very hot just then, and eating peaches and grapes till we made ourselves ill, as a visitor often does who is unaware that fruit should not be taken in quantity in Australia while the sun is high.