I met Billy Harman on Circular Wharf, Sydney, so many years ago that I
think he must be dead. He is the chief person in the first six stories
of this book, which have appeared illustrated in an English, an
American and a Canadian magazine, in all of which the illustrator
depicted Billy as a young, rather good-looking man. That he was not.
Billy, when I met him, was well over forty, big and scrubby-bearded, a
shell-back with a touch of the Longshoreman, blue far-seeing eyes,
the eyes of a child—and an innocence none the less delightful because
streaked with guile.
Only the sea could have produced Billy, and the Islands and the
Beaches and the life which the Pacific makes possible for an Ocean
Tramp.