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had turned a blind eye they might say I was as bad as them. A man always has to be on the lookout if he is not to end up back inside. We opened fire and shot up all the sails and thenthe hull of the pirate ship and the whole lot of them surrendered and that was that.
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    By now I was getting rich enough and somewhat tired of all the sailing around so I set up house in Cambridge Street in the Rocks district of Sydney and arranged to deal in goods coming off the ships. I had 2 servants. There was the woman Charlotte Pugh who does for me and every now and then I return to the idea of setting up together but she had other thoughts. You wd think she wd have taken up a good offer as she has the 2 children by Samuel Garside who done her wrong. I had too a manservant, the convict called Samuel Browne who helped with unloading when the ships were in port. Samuels must be her undoing for I found them in the alleyway one night her with her skirt around her waist and him up to the hilt.
    Well I said don’t stop for me for neither seemed too keen to carry on and him not knowing where to look. So they was stuck there in the alleyway and I thought I might as well get to see what he has on offer for her. I said come now Samuel and took him by the shoulder so that he must step back and what I saw was nothing much but perhaps it had had a fright.
    Charlotte covered herself up quick though I saw she had a fine head of hair peeking out. I laughed then and said it doesn’t take much to satisfy you Charlotte Pugh. I could give you twice as much but I won’t. It makes a man thirsty seeing another man in the drink but I did not want to mix good seed with bad. Be sure to wipe it clean I said to Samuel.
    But it was enough to send a man off to sea again what with her brats at her heels and the smell of her ripe cunt in the kitchen. Enough to put a man off his tucker. And then she was in the family way again.
    I’m ready to go to sea again I told Captain Underwood for I had heard he was hoping to send the Harriet to sea for sealing in the Auckland Islands. Not that I knew much about them.
    They is far away Underwood told me in the half-light of theAntarctic sea. The cold winds come in off the ice. You need to keep warm and look sharp.
    At least I knew the Harriet . This was a ship I was coming to know as if she was my own. She turned this way and that at my command. I wished that I knew a woman like her. What happened down south is something I must set down here and put to rights although there is some does not have a good word to say for me on the subject.
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    Today we hit heavy weather worse than usual. I see that day clearly in my mind. Heavy NW gales with extreme squally wind and rain driven by heavy gusts is what I wrote in my log book that day. We took shelter in the North Arm beneath Mt Raynal, a high peak on that empty land which is bare in the way of the desert I have seen in Australia, but grey and barren like a virgin spinster. The trees, what there are of them, are bent towards the earth. We dropped anchor and it held fast and that was lucky for us. The wind died off although the rain kept falling. Alongside of us comes a boat with 2 men aboard.
    We come off the Sally says the older of the 2, a man I come to know as John Wilson.
    I know a bit about the Sally , it is a schooner that usually trades in timber and coal, but had put out to sea with the idea of quick money without knowing what they was letting themselves in for down there in the south. I know the Sally is sealing in the nearby Western Arm of Carnley Harbour under a Captain Lovatt. He is a good enough man but I do not think he has done much sealing.
    Things is not too good over there said the other man who I find out soon is Mark Shaw.
    You’d best come aboard I said and the 2 men come on board the Harriet .
    So what is the trouble then.
    They tell me the rum rations are cut and the food is bad because they have not put in enough provision. To make matters