Part 13 (1/2)
Fate must have chuckled. She is fond of practical jokes. The next time she tried one on me, I was in Cairns. Having entered Australia on the ground floor, Melbourne, I suppose Cairns might be said to be the fifth-story window. I left the s.h.i.+p the moment she was made fast, keyed up with expectation of seeing the tropics again. Ash.o.r.e, the spirit hovering about tropical villages took me in hand. No better guide can be found on earth. With a voice subdued, it urged me to pa.s.s quickly through the town, which was still asleep except for the saloons and their keepers. The spirit leading me complained of that other spirit which leads and captures most men in the tropics. My spirit, happy to have a patron, offered me luxurious scenes, melodious sounds, and mellow colors,--happy in receiving a grateful stranger. While pressing through the little village, I noticed the mission type of architecture of the post-office; the concrete columns guarding the entrance of the newspaper office; the arched balconies of a hotel; the delicate, dainty cottages raised on wooden piles, the verdure hiding defects, and the main building lost in a ma.s.sive growth of yellow flowers overgrowing roof and all. A small opening for entrance and a pugnacious corner were the only indications of its nature as a residence. Then there were a ”School of Arts” and a double-winged girls' school. The whole town was pretty and in concord with the scenes about.
But I was not held. I pressed on toward the hills, to the open road.
_Allons!_ But alas! I betrayed myself by doubting the ”spirit of the tropics” which was guiding me. I resorted to a tiny mortal for information, and in that way angered the spirit, which instantly deserted me. Not content with whisperings, I had sought definition, asked for distance,--Where? Whence? How? And I lost!
He was a little man, with worn shoes from the holes of which peeped stockingless feet. In the early morning he had slipped on shoes which would not deprive him of the dew. He had covered his little legs with a dark pair of dirty trousers, his body with a soiled white coat, and his mind with misunderstood scripture. His bulging eyes betrayed his inward confusion.
Upon inquiring, he informed me that the road led to the hospital and would take me fifteen minutes to negotiate. Then he wanted to know if I came off the _Eastern_. ”Any missionaries on board?” he asked. ”I don't know,” I answered. ”I suppose that is something you don't trouble much about.” I agreed. ”Ah, that's just it. Don't you know the Bible says, 'Be prepared to meet thy Maker?' How do you know but what any moment you may be called?” ”Well, if I am, I have lived well enough to have no fear.” ”Yes, that is just it. You live in carnal sin. You have no doubt looked upon some woman with l.u.s.tful eyes this very morning. I sin, too, every moment.” Heaven knows I had not been tempted. I hadn't seen any woman to look at, and nothing was further from my mind just then. And so it was,--sin, a.s.sumption and condemnation. I talked with him a few minutes, a.s.serted my fearlessness, the consciousness of a reasonably good life. But nothing would do. The poison of fear with which he contrived to wound me I now had to fight off. I had come out all joy and happiness in the new day, the loveliness of life. If wors.h.i.+p was not on my lips it was in my heart, and he had tarnished it. He brought thoughts of sin and death to my mind, which, at that moment, if at any time in my life, was free from selfishness and from unworthy desires.
I cut across to the sea,--not even an open avenue being fresh enough for me now. It was as though I had suddenly inhaled two lungfuls of poison gas and struggled for pure air. I turned back to the boat, not caring to go too far lest she leave port. A tropical shower poured its warm water over me as though the spirit of the tropics felt sorry, and forgave me.
I returned to the s.h.i.+p, and quarter of an hour later we were moving out into the open sea again.
4
The next and last time that I landed on Australian soil was at Thursday Island, one of the smallest of the Prince of Wales group, north of Cape York Peninsula, in the Torres Strait. German New Guinea (now a British mandatory) lies not far away. There is not much of a village and most of the buildings are made of corrugated iron. But there was not at that time that stuffy, damp odor which pervades Suva; nor, in fact, was there much of that mugginess that is Fiji. Yet it is only eleven degrees from the equator, whereas Fiji is thirteen. The street is only a country road, and dozens of goats and kids pasture upon it. The few stores (closed on Sunday) were not overstocked. There are two large churches.
One was built from the wreckage of a s.h.i.+p that had some romantic story about it which I cannot recall. There was also another inst.i.tution, the purpose of which I could not discern. It was musty, dirty, dilapidated, with shaky chairs and shelves of worm-eaten books. I suppose it was a library. Hotels there were galore, and though bars were supposed to be closed on Sunday, a small party of pa.s.sengers succeeded in striking a ”spring.”
I wandered off by myself. Slowly the great leveler, night, crept into the heart of things, and they seemed glad. Orientals and natives from New Guinea lounged about their little corrugated iron houses, obedient to law and impulse for rest. j.a.panese kept off nakedness with loose kimonos. One of them lay stretched upon the mats before the open door, reading. Others squatted on the highway. Tiny j.a.panese women walked stiffly on their wooden _geta_ as they do in j.a.pan. Tiny babies wandered about alone like wobbling pups. Upon the sea-abandoned beach groups of New Guinea natives gathered to search for crabs or other sea-food. A cow waded into the water to cool herself. And the sail-boats, beached with the receding tides, lunged landward.
Peace and evening. Nay, more. There is not only indolent forgetfulness here; there is more than mere ease in the tropics: there is affluence in ease. A something enters the bone and sinew of moving creatures which awakens and yet satisfies all the dearest desires. And nothing remains when night comes on but lamplight and wandering white shadows.
Late that night I returned to the s.h.i.+p. Deep, familiar sounds revived my memory of Fiji, on the other line of my triangle. A chorus of New Guinea voices,--rich, deep, harmonious, and rhythmic--rose from a little boat beside us. In it were a half-dozen natives, squatting round a lantern, reading and singing hymns in their own tongue. Such mingled sadness with gladness,--one does not know where one begins and the other ends. s.h.i.+ny black bodies crouching and chanting. Hymns never seemed more sincere, more earnest.
They were waiting there for midnight to come, when Sunday ends for them, and toil begins. The s.h.i.+p must be loaded. Then voices will rattle with words and curses. All night long they labored with good things for other men. When I came out in the morning they breakfasted on boiled yams and turtle, a mixture that looked like dough. Instead of using their fingers, they employed sharp pointed sticks, doubtless in imitation of j.a.panese chop-sticks. Progress!
Shortly afterward we struck across the Arafua Sea, and saw Australia no more.
CHAPTER IX
OUR PEG IN ASIA
1
Venturing round the Pacific is like reincarnation. One lives as an Hawaiian for a spell, enters a state of non-existence and turns up as a Fijian; then another period of selflessness, and so on from one isle to another. From such a period of transmigration I woke one morning to the sight of Zamboanga, and knew myself for a moment as a dual personality,--a Filipino and an American in one. All day long we hugged the coast of the islands of the group--Mindanao, Negros, Panay, Mindoro, Luzon--the cool blue surface of the choppy sea between us and reality.
After so many days' journey along the coast of Australia, through sea after sea, it seemed unreasonable to require a turn of the sun in which to outstrip a few Oriental islands. Then we swung to the right. Ahead of us, we were told, lay Manila, but even the short run to that city seemed interminable. At last the unknown became the known. A red trolley-car emerged from behind the Manila Hotel. Life became real again.
Our s.h.i.+p had hardly more than buoyed when a fleet of lighters surrounded her,--flat, blunt, ordinary skiffs; long, narrow, peculiar ones. The former I thought represented American efficiency; the latter, Filipino whimsicality. The Filipino craft were decorated in black, with flourishes and letters in red and white. Over their holds low hoods of matting formed an arch upon which swarmed the native owners. How business-like, yet withal attractive. And business became the order of the night.
From beneath the matted hoods of the lighters flickered glimmers of faint firelight. Life there was alert, though quiet. It hid in the shadows of night; confined in the holds, dim candles and lanterns quivered: peace reigned before performance. A quiet harbor; moon and stars and mast-lights above; a cool, refres.h.i.+ng breeze. That was my first night in Manila Harbor.
Morning. Not really having stretched my legs in nearly three weeks, since sailing from Sydney, Australia, I naturally felt in high spirits upon landing. The mists which hung over Manila quickened my pace, for I knew that before I could see much of that ancient town they would be gone, dissipated by the intense heat of the tropical sun. I was eager to put on my seven-leagued boots to see all that I had selected years before as the things I wanted to stride the seas to see. But I soon discovered that I was only a clumsy iron-weighted deep-sea diver. All round the Pacific I had traveled alone. I wanted no mate but freedom.
But the three weeks _en route_ from the Antipodes, on board a small liner whose major pa.s.senger list was made up of monosyllabic Oriental names drove me, w.i.l.l.y-nilly, into the companions.h.i.+p of the septuagenarian English captain.
2
On account of the keying down of my reactions to the tempo of seventy-three plus British sedateness, I wrote many things in my book of vistas that seem to me now mere aberrations. Just to indicate what the effect was I shall confess that as I approached the Walled City I conceived of myself as almost a full-fledged Don Quixote storming the citadel of ancient aggression. But my elderly Sancho Panza held me back lest the shafts of burning sunlight strike me down.
Standing before the gates of antiquity, even the most haughty of human beings moves by instinct back along the line of the ages, like a spider pulling himself up to his nest on his web. Round the black stone wall which encircles the old Spanish city, that which was once a moat is now a pleasant gra.s.s-grown lawn. The wall itself, still well preserved, has been overreached by two-story stone houses with heavy balconies which seem to mock the pretenses of their ”protector.” Outwardly, things look old; within change has kept things new. Mixed with surprised curiosity at two Antipodes so close together comes a feeling of contact with eternity, the present of yesterday linking itself with the antiquity which is to be.