Sailor and beachcomber Confessions of a life at sea, in Australia, and amid the islands of the Pacific

How it all happened I don’t know, but I had made a mistake and placed a hundredweight of turnip and cabbage seed into the choice flower packets, and when I went off to Paramatta...

That same night as I walked down the street on the way to the dancing saloon, I met Crane and the bereaved Captain. I felt a bit uncomfortable at first, and so did the Captain a...

I crept into my bunk heartsick and wretched. The affair got about the ship. I was chaffed a good deal by the whole crew. Real old sea-salts they were. I can see them now as I dr...

Before I left the Islands I went off on a schooner to Ellice Islands and then on to Santa Cruz and called at the Islands of the Solomon Group. In a typhoon that struck us fifty...

Such is my experience of life, and I have been obliged to be pretty observant and have not travelled this world over without noticing the special points that influence existence...

In my wattle hut by Maffalo I lie nor can I sleep, Deep waters beat against my heart, thro’ my head the night winds sweep, For the brown one sleeps by the forest track with the...

I must tell you of a gentleman I met one night who came across the Pacific from the Island of Pitcairn where the mutinous crew of the _Bounty_ landed years ago. They are all dea...

ALAS, a good many of those brown men and women of the old days have passed away for ever, and in their place, over the islands of the South Seas, roam the varied offspring of me...

The American tenderly picked her up, gave her physic, and did all that was best for the infant, then whispered some hopeless opinion to R.L.S., who tenderly bent over the little...

It was on that tramp that the great drought struck the country; forests that were green shrivelled to grey and then to brown, as the fiery blast from the white hot sun day after...

I shall never forget that bush tramp. For three weeks we toiled along, our swags on our backs, from steep to steep, and from plain to plain, nothing but vast solitude and swelte...

I became acquainted at that feast with a young Island princess, the daughter of one of the Samoan or Tonga kings, I really forget which. She was very beautiful, and was one of t...

I was naturally very depressed after the death of M’Neil; I had only known him a few days, but in those few days I seemed to know more of his true character than you could see t...

Stevenson was one of those men with a keen face that made you feel a bit reticent until he spoke, and then you discovered a human note in the voice that put you thoroughly at yo...

Two of them had fine voices; their songs were old folk-lore chants telling of South Sea heroes. I would get them to sing to me and so learnt them off by heart and played them on...

I tramped enviously onward. I was very happy that day. Somehow the scent of the sea-winds stirring the forest flowers intoxicated my brain as I trudged along and I felt as thoug...

After coming ashore from my stowaway trip, I lodged in a small top room in Lower George Street, which was very different to Upper George Street. By my dwelling-house the Chinese...

Produced by Chris Whitehead, Linda Cantoni, Barry Abrahamsen, and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously...

Often out on those lonely tracks my comrades and I passed deserted shafts and heaps of empty meat tins with the weeds already covering up the remains of recent mushroom civilisa...