Why he did not stay there, why he did not run away into the wilderness
to find at least some easier death than to have his bones broken by the
cruel captain, he often wondered afterwards. He was so much quicker and
braver than the boys they commonly got, that the old sailor kept a sharp
watch over him with his one eye whilst they were ashore; but one day he
was too drunk to see out of it, and John Broom ran away.

It was Christmas Day, and so hot that he could not run far, for he was
at the other side of the world, where things are upside down, and he sat
down by the roadside on the outskirts of the city; and as he sat, with
his thin, brown face resting on his hands, a familiar voice beside him
said, "Pretty Cocky!" and looking up he saw a man with several cages of
birds. The speaker was a cockatoo of the most exquisite shades of cream
colour, salmon and rose, and he had a rose-coloured crest. But lovely as
he was, John Broom's eyes were on another cage, where, silent, solemn,
and sulky, sat a big white one with sulphur-coloured trimmings and
fierce black eyes; and he was so like Miss Betty's pet, that the poor
child's heart bounded as if a hand had been held out to him from home.

"If you let him get at you, you'll not do it a second time, mate," said
the man. "He's the nastiest tempered beast I ever saw. I'd have wrung
his neck long ago if he hadn't such a fine coat."

But John Broom said, as he had said before, "I like him and he'll like
me."

When the cockatoo bit his finger to the bone, the man roared with
laughter, but John Broom did not draw his hand away. He kept it still
at the bird's beak, and with the other he gently scratched him under the
crest and wings. And when the white cockatoo began to stretch out his