Tourmalin's Time Cheques by Thomas Anstey Guthrie

_On Deck_. -- _Curry and Culture_. -- _Alternative Distractions_. -- _A Period of Probation_. -- _The Oath and the Talisman_. -- _Wavering_. -- _A Chronological Error_. -- _The Time Bargain_. -- _Tourmalin Opens an Account._

Mr. Peter Tourmalin was sitting, or rather lying, in a steamer-chair on the first-class saloon-deck of the P. and O. steamer _Boomerang_, which had not been many days as yet on the voyage home from Sydney. He had been trying to read; but it was a hot morning, and the curry, of which he had partaken freely at breakfast, had made him feel a little heavy and disinclined for mental exertion just then, particularly as Buckle's _History of Civilisation_, the first volume of which he had brought up from the ship's library, is not exactly light literature at any time.