The Janet's Crew.

I went aboard the Janet Nicoll when she arrived. She was an iron screw-steamer of some six hundred tons, square-rigged on her foremast; every steamer carried some sail in those days. There was trouble about the inexperienced crew; most of whom were “black” in a labour union sense. Two or three men, white hands in the stokehold, came to the “Star” office to complain about the inefficiency of the others; they mentioned, among other matters, that the chief officer had to lay aloft himself and go out on the foretopsail yard to furl sail because there were no deckhands who would venture up when it blew hard.

The men made a long statement which I took down; it was sworn to by them before a Justice of the Peace and published; and the chartering firm made a reply to it next day. But there were all manner of shipping troubles then which had to be got over in some way or another; ships must sail, with any kind of crew they could get. The Janet's hands were right enough, once the ship got away and the officers got them into sailorly shape. They were Line Islanders, and better hands in a surf-boat than Europeans.

She got away, she visited more than thirty islands on that cruise, as far up as the low-lying Gilberts and Marshalls, where one island is very much like another. It was now, after leaving Auckland and getting shaken down on board, that the Stevensons' party came to know their commerce-chasing shipmates. Of the six, but one is still living, Lloyd Osbourne.