I
The inhabitants of Sandakan are still talking about it. You can corner
any one, native or trader, and get a first-hand account of the amazing
spectacle which saluted the eyes of the awaking town on a certain morning
late in March. If the drinks are on you, and all the circumstances of the
hour conspire toward your informer’s temporal well-being, you will hear
with the full vividness of which a Bornean is capable, when in the mood,
how the slumbering sea delivered up a couple of over-crowded life-boats
with “Skipping Goone” badly stencilled on the sides. You will hear also
how a bald impresario, bewailing incoherently the loss of a certain black
toupee, clad only in a night shirt and blanket, but hugging to his breast
a huge leather wallet in which reposed all the receipts from the Manila
engagement, led a bedraggled lot of songbirds up into the town. It was
a visitation such as never before was heard of—at once so tragic and so
screamingly funny. There was much wailing and gnashing of teeth. Most
of the women were in hysterics. The captain of the outfit, drenched but
dressed like an admiral in honour of the flying moor which never came
off, walked a little by himself with chin plunged despondently into the
fiery midst of such splendid whiskers as the town had never seen till
now. It became a matter of waterfront gossip that the captain of the
vanished schooner was something of a pariah.
But the town recovered from its amazement and opened its arms. Within
twenty-four hours there wasn’t a single surviver of this the most
picturesque disaster in the history of the China sea who couldn’t sit up
and give a wholly original version of the affair.