The Cruise of the Alerte · Chapter 9 (2/2)

The doctor volunteered to accompany me, and I decided to take him with me. It was indeed important that he should make himself acquainted with the pass, for it had been settled that whenever I remained with the yacht he should be in command of the party working on shore, and, as the only reliable water-supply I knew of was at the cascade, it might become necessary for him to lead the men across the mountains to it should a water-famine occur at Southwest Bay. Again, it was certain that bad weather would occasionally make the landing of boats at Southwest Bay impossible for weeks at a time, so that, if there were some urgent reason for communicating with the yacht, this could only be done by crossing to the pier landing-place, at which I am of opinion that one can land ten times with safety to once in Southwest Bay. It had been my intention to form a depot of stores at the pier, but this we found to be unnecessary.

After I had made the above explanations to my companions assembled in the saloon, our sportsman, who had been listening attentively, remarked: “Skipper, you have given us plenty of reason for taking Cloete-Smith with you tomorrow and teaching him the roads; but you have omitted the most important reason of all. Let me inform you that you won’t get us to do any work on shore on Sundays; so on every Sunday afternoon we will put on our best clothes and the doctor will have to take us over the pass to the pier, where we can do a sort of church-parade, and listen to the band. I suppose there will be a bar there, too, with Theodosius as barman presiding over the rum-barrel.”