ASTRIDE THE EQUATOR
_The Second Side of The Triangle_
Dark is the way of the Eternal as mirrored in this world of Time:
God's way is in the sea, and His path in the great deep.--Carlyle.
1
More than a year went by before I began drawing in the radial thread
that held me suspended from the North Star under the Southern Cross,--a
year replete with lone wanderings and searching reflections. During all
those months not a single day had passed without my surveying in my
mind's eye the reaches of the Pacific that lay between me and the
Orient. Roundabout New Zealand I had become familiar with the Tasman Sea
looking toward Australia, on the shores of which I had spent some of the
most mysterious nights of my life; on Hawkes Bay looking out toward
South America; and across the surging waters of Otago Harbor at Dunedin,
looking in the direction of the frozen reaches of Antarctica.
Once staid Dunedin was thrilled by a wireless S.O.S. from the direction
of the South Pole. The _Aurora_, Shackleton's ship which had gone down
to the polar regions, was calling for help. She had snapped the cables
which tied her to land when the ice-packs gave way and had drifted out
to sea. Fortunately, most of the officers and crew were at the moment on
board, but sixteen men were left marooned. To add to the prospect of
tragedy, the ice smashed the rudder, and a jury-rudder, worked by hand
from the stern deck, had to be improvised. With these handicaps the
vessel made her way slowly till within five hundred miles of New
Zealand, the reach of her wireless. Here she was rescued by a Dunedin
tug and brought to Port Chalmers.
[Illustration: THE S. S. _AURORA_
Just arrived at Port Chalmers, N. Z., from the South Pole]
[Illustration: MOUNT COOK OF THE NEW ZEALAND ALPS IN SUMMER]
[Illustration: CIRCULAR QUAY, SYDNEY, AUSTRALIA
A whirl of pleasure-seeking and business]
[Illustration: MONUMENT TO CAPTAIN COOK
At Botany Bay, Australia]
I made friends with the mate and the chief engineer and gained access to
their superb collection of Emperor Penguin skins and an unusual number
of photographs. Months afterward they wanted four men to complete the
crew necessary for another journey south and I was tempted to join them,
but tallow and bladder and a repressed pen were the negatives, while
China and Japan were the positives. So I sailed away with the rising sun
in the direction of the great West that is the Far East. Crisp and clear
in the bright morning air shone the towering peaks of the New Zealand
Alps as I sailed toward Australia and to Botany Bay,--not, however,
without being nearly wrecked in the fog which had gathered in Foveaux
Strait, which separates Steward Island from the South Island in New
Zealand. Bluff, the last little town in New Zealand, is said to have the
most southerly hotel in the world. I saw it.
2
Four days from Bluff to Melbourne on a sea that seemed on the verge of
congealing into ice. It was not cold, yet autumn-like. And the
passengers seemed the fallen leaves. The stewards maintained the
reputation for impudence and unmannerliness of the Union Steamship
Company crews, but I had grown used to that, and thanked my stars that
this was the last coupon in the ticket I had purchased in Honolulu more
than a year before. Of human incidents there was therefore none to
relate.
But chill and melancholy as that Southern sea was, there hovered over it
a creature whose call upon one's interest was more than compensating.
Swooping with giant wings in careless ease, the albatross followed us
day in and day out. Always on the wing, awake or asleep, in sunshine or
in storm, the air his home as the water is to fish, and earth to mammal.
Even the ship was no lure for him by way of support. He followed it,
accepted whatever was thrown from it, but as for dependence upon it,--no
such weakness, you may be sure. His sixteen feet of wing-spread moved
like a ship upon the waves, like a combination of a ship and sails.
Swift, huge, glorious, unconsciously majestic, he is indeed a bird of
good omen. How he floats with never a sign of effort! How he glides atop
the waves, skims them, yet is never reached by their flame-like
leapings; simulates their motion without the exhaustion into which they
sink incessantly.
The albatross had left us, and now the swarming is his artistry, so
refined his "table manners." He does not gorge himself as does the
sea-gull, nor is he ever heard to screech that selfish, hungry,
insatiable screech. Silent, sadly voiceless, rhythmic and symbolic
without being restrained by pride of art, he exemplifies right living.
He is our link between shores, the one dream of reality on an ocean of
opiate loveliness wherein there is little of earth's confusion and pain.
For the traveler he keeps the balance between the deadly stability of
land life and the dream-like mystery of the sea. But for him it were
impossible to come so easily out of an experience of a long voyage. Away
down there he is the only reminder of reality. Which explains the
reverence sailors have for him and their superstitious dread of killing
him. It is like the dread of the physician that his knife may too
sharply stir the numbed senses of his patient under anæsthesia.
Land may be said to begin where the albatross is seen to depart. He
knows, and off he swoops, ship or no ship to follow and to guide; back
over the thousand miles of watery waste, to measure the infinite with
his sixteen-foot wings, glide by glide, with the speed of a twin-screw
turbine. Only when the female enters the breeding season does she seek
out a lost island to rear her young. Independent of the sea, these birds
are utterly confined to it, a mystery floating within mystery.
The albatross have left us, and now the swarming gulls abound. Why they
are dignified with the Christian name "Sea" when they are such homely
land-lubbers, is a question that I cannot answer. Pilots, rather, they
come to see us into the harbor, or, with their harsh screeching, to
frighten us away.
But something within me would not know Australia, nor any lands, just
then. Perhaps it was that my unconscious self was still with the
albatross; for strange as it may seem I could not sense any forward
direction at all that day, but only one that pointed backward,--toward
home. Try as I would to realize myself on my way to Australia, still my
mind persisted in pointing toward America. Not until we got the first
sight of land ahead was my soul set right. Then it was the Sister
Islands, Wilson's Promontory, the Bass Straits, with Tasmania barely in
sight, Cape Liptrap, and finally Port Phillip. And Australia was on all
fours, veiled in blue,--a thin rind of earth steeped in summer splendor.
Flag signals were exchanged with the lonely pilot-ship that hung about
the entrance. All being well, we passed on, crossing that point at the
entrance where five strong water-currents meet and vanquish one another,
turning into a smooth, glassy coat of treachery. The _Wimmera_ hugged
the right shore of the largest harbor I have ever seen. In places the
other shore could not be seen with the naked eye. But it is very shallow
and innumerable lights float in double file to guard all ships from
being stranded.
Just as we entered, the sun set. A stream of color unconstrained
obliterated all detail as it poured over the point of the harbor,
filling the spacious port. Clots of amber and orange gathered and were
dissipated, softened, diffused, till slowly all died down and were
gone. Darkness and the blinking lights of the buoys remained.
Two big ships, brilliantly lighted, flinging their manes of smoke to the
winds, passed, one on its way to Sydney, the other to Tasmania and
Adelaide in the south. Far in the distance ahead we could see the string
of shore lights at Port Williamson. It took us three hours to overtake
them, and we arrived too late to receive pratique. For half an hour the
captain and the customs carried on a conversation with blinking lights.
The winches suddenly began their rasping sound, and the anchor dropped
to the bottom. We did not debark that night.
3
I spent nearly six months in Melbourne and Sydney, those two eastern
eyes of that wild old continent, and for the first time in a twelvemonth
the sense of security from the sea obtained. For a fortnight I occupied
a little shack on Manly Beach, near Sydney, but oh, how different it was
there from the sand-dunes on the shores at Dunedin, in New Zealand! In
the Dominion one had to hide within the interior to get away from the
sea: on the beach one felt about to slip into Neptune's maw. But at
Manly, Bondi, Botany Bay, the sea might hammer away for another eternity
without putting a landlubber off his ease.
But we shall return to Australia in another section. The sea is still
much in the blood, there is still a vast length that lies close to Asia
and marks off another line of our imaginary triangle. Here are no
landless reaches, but all the way to Japan one passes strip after strip,
as though some giant earthquake had shattered part of the main.
Months afterward I took passage once more, this time on the _Eastern_,
bound for Japan.
There was no mistaking the side of the world I was on and the direction
of my journey from the moment I stepped upon the pier to which the
_Eastern_ was made fast. Hundreds of Chinese, with thousands of boxes
and bundles, scurried to and fro in an ant-like attention to little
details. Then as the steamer was about to depart, mobilization for the
counting of noses took place, and veritable regiments of emaciated
yellow men lined the decks. Here and there a fat, successful-looking
Chinese moved round the crowd, an altogether different-looking species,
more as one who lives on them than as one who lives with them. On the
dock stood several groups waiting to wave farewell to their Oriental
kin. One of these groups was composed of a stout white woman with two
very pretty Eurasian daughters,--as handsome a pair of girls as I saw in
Australia. Their father was a well-to-do Chinese merchant taking one of
his regular trips to China. In Australian fashion they were ready for a
mild flirtation, spoke Australian English with Australian slang, and,
aside from their pater, they were native to all intents and purposes.
And in Australia they remained.
Of those who departed, the major number likewise remained native--though
to China--despite years and years of residence in Australia. It is a
one-sided argument to maintain that because of that the Chinese are
unassimilable. There is no ground for such a deduction, because they
arrived mainly after maturity, and the Chinese could challenge any white
man to become one of them after he has fully acquired his habits and
prejudices. But we had not been many minutes at sea before it was our
misfortune to find that we had among us a Chinese boy who was born and
brought up in New Zealand and was just then going to China for the first
time. Here I had ample opportunity of observing the assimilability of
the Oriental. And here I bow before the inevitable.
He had assimilated every obnoxious characteristic of our civilization,
the passion for slang, the impertinence, the false pride, the bluff
which is the basis of Western crowd psychology. He was not a
Chinese,--that he denied most vehemently,--he was a New Zealander, and
by virtue of his birth he assumed the right to impose his boyish
larrikinism upon all the ship's unfortunate passengers. He banged the
piano morning, noon, and night; he affected long, straight black hair,
which was constantly getting in his way and being brushed carefully back
over his head; and he took great pains to make himself as generally
obnoxious as possible. He was not that serious, struggling Chinese
student who comes to America afire with hope for the regeneration of his
race. He was a New Zealander, knew no other affiliations, had no
aspirations, and lorded it over "those Chinese" who occupied every bit
of available space on the steamer.
In his way he was also a Don Juan, for he hovered over the young
half-Australian wife of a middle-aged Chinese merchant who was taking
her back to China for her confinement. She was morose, sullen, as
unhappy a spirit as I have seen in an Oriental body. Obviously, China
held few fine prospects for her. She was seldom seen in her husband's
company, for he was generally below playing fan-tan or gambling in some
other fashion. And the Australian half of her was longing for home. It
seemed to devolve upon our young Don Juan to court this unhappy
creature, and court her he did. But she had no resilience, no flash, her
Chinese half-self offering him as little reward for his pains as a cow
would offer the sun for a brilliant setting.
I expected any hour of the day to see that woman throw herself into the
sea, or that husband stick a knife into the bold, bad boy, but nothing
happened; the husband and the wife were seemingly oblivious of the
love-making, and all went well.
Besides the Chinese crew and passengers there were perhaps a dozen white
people, including the officers. An old English army captain whose
passport confirmed his declaration that he was seventy-three years old,
was taking a little run up to Japan. His only reason was that Japan was
an ally, hence he wanted to see it. Such is the nature of British
provincialism. Otherwise, there were but two or three young Australians
bound for Townsville, and the stewardess. Somewhere along the coast we
picked up a Russian peasant, who with his wife had been induced to
emigrate to Australia, but who was now going home to enlist. As though
there weren't already enough men in Russia armed with sticks and stones!
At still another port we commandeered a veritable regiment of Australian
children, colloquially called larrikins. These were bound for the
Philippines, where their father had preceded them some months before.
Their exploits deserve an exclusive paragraph.
Suddenly, out of a clear sky, there would be a shriek like the howl of a
dingo on the Australian plains. There would be a rush to the defenses by
an excited female,--the mother. There would follow such a slapping as
would delight the English Corporal Correction League, except that it
wasn't done cold-bloodedly enough. And thereafter for half an hour there
was bedlam all around. After exhaustion, a new series of pranks set in.
This time they were playing a "back-blocks" game which entailed a
hanging. One of them needs must be hanged, and was rescued just in time
by an ever-swooping mother. After hours of hunger-stimulating escapades
on deck, the dinner-bell sent them scurrying down into the saloon.
Before any of us had time to be seated all the fruit on the table was
divided according to the best principles of individual enterprise.
Beginning with the first thing on the menu, they went down the sheet,
leaving nothing untasted; nor did it matter much whether it was
breakfast or dinner,--steak enough for a meal in itself comprised the
entrée. And the littlest kept pace with the biggest. Nor did afternoon
and morning tea escape them. Fully stoked up, they were ready for
another beating and another hanging on deck.
In contrast were the little Chinese children,--quiet, shy, never
spanked; and though they put away enough within their Oriental
bread-baskets, one never saw that same wild struggle for existence which
told the tale of life on an Australian station better than anything I
wot of.
We had now reached Brisbane, 519 miles from Sydney, a distance which
took the _Eastern_ from noon of the 8th to sunrise of the 10th of
October to negotiate. And from the outer channel to the docks on the
Brisbane River we steamed till half-past one in the afternoon. Here we
were "beached" in the mud when the tide went out and had to wait
twenty-four hours before floating out again. In the meantime we picked
up two more gems,--mature larrikin this time. One of them was so drunk
he couldn't see straight, the other was sober enough to bring him on
board. Unfortunately for me, they were placed in my cabin, and from then
on, after the youngsters had turned the day into chaos, these two would
come in to sleep, and the cursing, the spitting, the reference to women
with which they consoled their souls, would have shocked the most
hardened beach-comber, I am sure.
To avoid annoyances I explored every nook and corner of the vessel. At
last I discovered a sanctuary on the roof of the unused hospital. It
could not be called a model of order and comfort, for various air-tanks
and stores of sprouting potatoes belittered it. But it was like the holy
of holies to me, for there I might just as well have been on a lone
craft of my own. No sound reached me from any living thing,--except an
occasional extra-loud shriek from the youngsters. Above and about me
there was nothing to obstruct my view, and within, absolute peace.
On the following day we were on the Great Barrier Reef, grayish green in
color, languid in temperament, shallow and therefore dangerous in
make-up. Numerous islands, neutral in color and sterile of vegetation,
seemed to stare at us and at one another in mute indifference. For the
first time the storied reality of being stranded on a desolate island
came home to me. As I sat watching this filmy show, I became conscious
of a familiar something in the world about me, be it warmth or color, a
something which immediately brought the picture of Santa Anna Valley in
California back to mind. Sometimes we come across a face we feel certain
we have seen before: that was the case with the atmosphere along the
Great Barrier Reef. The setting is that of the island home of _Paul and
Virginia_. Near and far, lowly and majestic, in generous succession on
each side, were islands and continent,--an avenue wide, spacious, and
clear. Occasional peaks along the mainland recalled old-fashioned
etchings,--dense clouds, heaven-reaching streaks and shafts of
twice-blended astral blue; rain-driven mountain fiords.
Early one day, an hour before dawn, the _Eastern_ moored before Magneta
Isle with her stern toward Townsville, as though ready for instant
flight, if necessary. With an early-morning shower of filthy words, one
of my cabin-mates pulled himself together and dressed. Shortly afterward
he slipped over the side of the ship into a tossing and pitching launch
and was rushed to Townsville. His rousing me at that hour was the only
thing I had reason to be grateful to him for in our short acquaintance.
For the world was exquisitely beautiful in its delicate gown of night.
Dawn was but waking. Four-o'clock stupor superintended the easy
activities. A few lights in a corner, a bolder and more purposeful flash
from a search-light, and all set in twilight. A ring of islands--the
Palm Isles--stones set in a placid bay. That was all I saw of
Townsville.
And perhaps it is just as well. It may have been "ordained" that my
ignorance obtain, be the city's virtues and its right to fame what they
may. What if I had gathered closer impressions, added meaningless
statistics or announced the prevalence of diphtheria throughout
Queensland, or discovered the leading citizen of Townsville to an
apathetic world? But it may be of interest to hear that Townsville
claims one distinction. It is the Episcopal See of Australia and the
seat of the Anglican Bishop and possesses a cathedral.
4
On the afternoon of the following day a heavy wind or squall came up.
This time the ship did not defy it. No foolhardy resistance here. The
reefs are too near and they stretch for thirty miles seaward. Again we
anchored. The horizon contracted like a noose of mist; it stifled one.
The ship seemed to crouch beneath the winds. An hour, and the anchor was
heard being lifted and the propellers were slowly revived to action. A
little later we anchored again. A light was hoisted to the stern mast
and twilight lowered on a calm gray sea. Distant little flat islands
loomed through the mist. Two sailing-vessels at anchor, moored in
companionship, rested within an inlet. A gentle swish, a murmur of human
voices, and our little world was swaying gently upon a curious world.
And there we remained all night.
As the sun gave notice of day, we moved off, and all day the sea was so
still that but for the vibration of the screws it would have been hard
to realize that the ship was in motion. Here we came to where the jagged
coastline has run down. Tiny islets, flat and low, most of them but a
landing-place for a few tropical trees. Summer calm, with barely a
ripple of the sea. That night we anchored again, having come, it was
said, to the most dangerous pass on the reefs.
Ten days after having left Sydney we arrived at the last port in
Australia, Thursday Island. A cloudy morning had turned clear for us,
but on ahead to the northwest hung heavy mists. Because of these, I was
later told by two soldiers on guard atop the mountain fortification,
they could not see us coming. They saw our smoke, but the steamer was
hidden from them by mist. Then suddenly we shot into view. All the while
we had been in the clearest sunshine, the sea glassy and the flying-fish
darting about. It was no place for speed. We moved just fast enough to
leave the scene undisturbed. And thus we stole into Torres Straits.
Of all the numerous harbors I have entered in the Pacific, none, with
the exception of the Inland Sea in Japan, is more picturesque than that
at Thursday Island. Shelter, space, and depth, and stillness! One's eyes
sweep round this pearly promise with greed for its beauty. Seventy-five
sail-boats, their sailless masts swaying with the swells, are anchored
on the reefs. It is Sunday and they are at rest, but what enchantment
lies hid in those folded sails! I wish for the power to utter some word
which could put them to flight; but that remains for Monday, when "the
word" is spoken.
And on Monday, too, immediately upon leaving port at ten o'clock, the
ship's time was returned to standard time, leaving Australia and its
"bunkum" daylight-saving time behind. Thence we lived again by "dinkum"
time. The ship about-faced and left the channel the same way it had
entered, and shortly afterward we struck across the Arafua Sea.
5
From that day until I reached Japan it was all I could do to keep track
of the seas we passed through,--Arafua, Banda, Molucca, Celebes, Sulu,
China, and the Inland Sea.
As we neared the equator again, there was nothing to disturb the
peaceful splendor of life, except the little hoodlums on board. About
sixty miles south of it a tiny creature, like a turtle, sailed along the
still surface; the flying-fish blistered the water, the scars broadened
and healed again just as the sportive amphibians pierced it and
disappeared. What a contrast to the albatross!
Then the miracle occurred. From the west, hidden from me by the ship,
the sun reached to the eastern clouds, dashing them with pink and bronze
and blue. I could not tell where the horizon went to, and was roused to
curiosity as to what kind of sunset could effect such lovely tints. It
wasn't a sunset, but a sunfall, a revelation. Where suggestion through
imitation glistened on the eastern side, daring prodigality of color
swept away emotion on the western side. It was neither saddening nor
joyous. It was a vision of a consciousness in nature as full of
character, as definitely meaningful and emotional as a human face. There
was something almost terrifying in the expression of that sunset face.
One could read into it what one felt in one's own soul. And a little
later a crescent moon peeped over the horizon.
At about midnight of the seventeenth day after leaving Sydney we crawled
over the equator, and no home-coming ever meant more to me than seeing
the dipper again and the Northern stars. During all those days nothing
wildly exciting had happened at sea; but just after we left the equator
we passed a series of water-spouts--six in all--which formed a
semi-circle east, south, and west. The spout to the east seemed to me to
be at least two or three hundred feet high, and tremendous in
circumference. It drew a solid column of water from the sea far into a
heavy black cloud. On the sea beneath it rose a flutter of water fully
fifty feet high, black as the smoke produced by a magician's wand. Weird
and illusive, the giants beggared description as they stalked away to
the southeast, like animated sky-scrapers.
Then we reached Zamboanga, the little town on the island of Mindanao of
the Philippines. From there, for twelve hours, we crept long the coast
till we entered Manila Harbor.
There remained but two days' voyage before I would reach Asia, the
object of my interest for years, and of all my efforts for two. But it
was not so easy as all that, for two days upon the China Sea are worth a
year upon the Atlantic. Riding a cyclone would be riding a hobby-horse
or a camel compared with the Yellow Sea, and though I was the only
passenger who missed only one meal during the whole period, I was beaten
by the seventy-three-year-old English captain,--who managed all but half
a meal. The sea would roll skyward as though it were striving to stand
on end and for a moment the ship would lurch downward as though on a
loop-the-loop. Sometimes it seemed as though the world were turning
completely over. Yet I was told this was only normal, and that typhoons
visit it with stated regularity. The China Sea is "the very metropolis
of typhoons."
A month had well-nigh gone before we reached Hong-Kong, the British
portal to Cathay, a month of dreamy weather. Only one thing more,--a
thing more like a scene in the Arabian Nights. Toward the end of the
journey I discovered where the five hundred Chinese whose noses had been
counted when we left Sydney had gone. Going forward, I looked over into
an open hatchway, down into the hold, and there was a sight I shall
never forget. These hundreds of deck passengers were all in a muddle
amid cargo, parcels, hundreds of birds in cages, parrots, a
kangaroo,--yet oblivious of everything. For the entire voyage nothing
that I tell of could possibly have come within their ken, as during
those days their minds were bent on one thing and one alone,--on playing
fan-tan. There in the bottom of the hold hundreds of gold sovereigns
passed from hand to hand in a game of chance. And at last they were to
be released, to spread, a handful of sand thrown back upon the beach.
As for myself, with my arrival at Hong-Kong and a visit to Shanghai
ended the longest continuous voyage I had made upon the Pacific, and the
second side of that great Pacific Triangle was drawn. But meanwhile let
me review in detail the outposts of the white man in the far
Pacific--the lands I had passed on the white man's side of the triangle,
ending in Hong-Kong, where white man and Oriental meet.