Captain Tancred welcomed me back to the _Utupua_ with a significant grin. "So ye didna find the outlook ashore to yer likin' lad?" he boomed boisterously, thumping me on the back. "Weel, dinna ye mind, since ye wasna nabbed. I'll be findin' a wa' to slip ye aff in Sydney sae they wan't be puttin' nose to yer trail till ye're clean awa'." The look on the old boy's face was a study when, a few days later, after the tugs had nosed his ship into her berth at the Circular Quay, I stalked brazenly off down the gangway, with no more regard for the two Bobbies guarding the dock gate than they had for me. He had exacted two promises from me before he let me go: one, that I was to take him to see my pictures, and the other, that I would not fail to let him know if there ever came a time when he could be of Service to me.... "Real sarvice, lad; you'll be twiggin' wha' I mean." I gave both promises freely, just as I kept them later--yes, both of them.
As I had trunks, with all the common accessories of civilization, stored at the _Australia_, my transformation from a beach-comber to a fairly correct imitation of a comfortably heeled artist was the matter of but a few hours. My appearance at the Exhibition could not have been better timed. The affair had been extremely well handled from the first. I had been sending pictures to Sydney from all parts of the South Seas for the last eighteen months, packing them up as completed and getting them off whenever opportunity offered. Two or three had been lost, but, on the whole, I reckoned the plan safer than trying to take them round with me in one lot, at the risk of losing the bunch.
Nothing had been further from my mind than an Australian exhibition. I cared little for the provincial approbation of the Antipodes, and I was hardly ready for Paris--not quite yet. It was only at the reiterated requests of friends (two of them were young Australian artists I had known in my student days in Paris), to whom I was under real obligations for their kindness in receiving and storing my pictures as they dribbled into Sydney, that I finally gave consent to a public showing. In doing this, I had stipulated particularly that they were to take all the troubles and responsibilities of the affair, and that under no circumstances was I to be expected to appear in person--unless, of course, it suited my convenience and inclination at the time.