Back again to the ship in a great hurry, and punctually at the time appointed we steam out around Rottnest Island, and head for Cape Leeuwin, the "Horn" of Australia, where for the first time the sedate _Omrah_ begins to manifest symptoms of levity, evoking plaintive protests from those passengers who, spoiled by the persistently calm and uneventful passage we have made from Britain, have grown to resent any additional movement of the ship as a breach of faith on the part of the Company or a lack of seamanship on the part of the captain. We have with us as passengers to Adelaide the members of an Interstate Commission on Shipping Freights--gentlemen who all bear the distinguishing badge of membership of a State Parliament, a gold emblem on the watch-chain entitling them to free transit throughout the Commonwealth. They form a select coterie, holding severely aloof from all meaner folk, sitting together at a table of their own, and not deigning to recognise the genial captain, whose withers are quite unwrung by the neglect. It is impossible to avoid hearing their conversation in the smoking-room, for it is naturally of the aggressive order, one gentleman especially having a voice like a foghorn, with which he endeavours to drown any utterances of his colleagues. Yet--for the reflection will thus intrude itself--these are the men to whom, with their like, the destinies of this mighty continent are entrusted, and, judging by what I have already observed, with no small measure of success. Is it, I wonder, another proof of the dictum that man is better than his creeds, and that whatever irresponsibility may utter, responsibility will curb?
Now one thought dominates others--that I must leave this happy home of mine and launch into the vortex of shore life. Mentally I contrast this feeling with the time when I almost always hated the ship that I was in, and in any case was anxious to get ashore. But inevitably as fate the big ship breasts the mighty south-east swell, accompanied by a graceful cohort of albatrosses and mollymauks, until at daylight on Easter Monday she glides through Investigator Straits into the calm waters of St. Vincent Gulf, and punctually to the appointed minute lets go her anchor in Largs Bay off Port Adelaide.