Legitime was the opposite of Hippolyte in all of his qualities. He was a bright, intelligent, progressive mulatto; well educated for a Haytien and with a good address and the manners of a gentleman. Intense loyalty was one of his strongest characteristics and he had visions of his country’s immediate future which have not yet, after twenty-five years, been in any degree realized. No one questioned his bravery, and while he to some extent lacked firmness and strength of character, I believed he would develop these vital traits with age, for he was then a comparatively young man. He had the elements of a first-class president, and had he ever become firmly established in that office Hayti would to-day be a very different country and a much more agreeable neighbor.

In the end I allied myself with Legitime, and in so doing incurred the bitter enmity of Hippolyte, who had told me something of his plans and had even gone so far as to suggest, without going into details, that I coöperate with him when the time for action arrived. The result was that when I went over to his hated rival he took it as a deadly insult, and the chances are that we would have taken a few shots at each other if my stay in the country had not been cut short. I was negotiating with Legitime to supply him with arms and take a commission in his army, and we were getting along famously toward a real revolution when suddenly, in the latter part of 1884, President Salomon ordered that he be expelled from the country for plotting against him. If Legitime had been less popular he would have been unceremoniously shot, but Salomon’s influence was already beginning to wane and he did not care to add largely to his enemies, so he contented himself with an order of expulsion. At the same time, through the instrumentality of Hippolyte, the suggestion was conveyed to me that the climate of Hayti was not suited to my health. Legitime boarded a ship for Jamaica, which was conveniently in the harbor when his expulsion was announced, and I accompanied him. He told me the time was not ripe for his revolt and that he proposed to wait until the conditions were more favorable for him. As a matter of fact he waited four years, and while he succeeded in overthrowing Salomon in the end, his rule was short-lived. I remained with him in Kingston for some time and then, as I saw no prospect of quick action, returned to Australia, by way of London, where I resumed my British name of George MacFarlane.

I reached Melbourne in 1885, after an absence of about four years, and went to Menzies’ Hotel, which was not the one I had stopped at before, when I was James Stuart Henderson. Of my three companions who had been sent to prison for stealing the “Ferret,” Leigh, the sailing master, had recently completed his term, while Nourse, who impersonated me, and Joe Wilson, had still nearly two years to serve. I located Leigh and put him to work for Nevins, a sail maker, and sent word to the others that I was there and would wait around until they came out. Then, fearing that I might be recognized by some of the officers who had suspected, during the trial, that Nourse was playing a part, with the probable result that I would be forced to again change places with him, which I had no wish to do, I went on to Sydney. There I met Montfort & Co., merchants and speculators, through whom I became financially interested in a group of silver properties known as the Sunny Corner Mines, in the Broken Hills district in New South Wales. We also laid claim to Mount Morgan, deceptively described as “A Mountain of Gold,” which was partly in Queensland. We plunged heavily on a question of title, which was in litigation, and stood, as we thought, to make many millions. When the decision of the highest court was finally announced the bottom fell out of our scheme, for we were knocked out at every point, and there was a void in my bank account which represented considerably more than one hundred thousand dollars.

From the time of my first visit to Australia the laboring men had been conducting an anti-Chinese agitation, to perpetuate and strengthen their power over capital. There were not then, nor are there now, nearly enough workers in the country to supply the demand. The native blacks are without question the laziest people under the sun. The notoriously indolent West Indian negro is an enterprising and ambitious citizen by comparison with them, for there is no power on earth by which they can be made to work. The Chinese, always on the lookout for a labor market, soon heard of the rich field and invaded it in droves, whereupon the white workmen of all grades set up a great hullabaloo; it was there I first heard the cry of the “Yellow Peril.” The employers, fearful of antagonizing their employees, either joined with them or let them have their own way. They urged England to put a stop to the importation of Chinese and when the mother country, which was extending its “sphere of influence” (meaning thereby the acquisition of territory) further and further into the Celestial Empire, declined to act, Victoria and New South Wales took the matter into their own hands and passed a Chinese exclusion law. It provided that any ship captain who brought Chinese into these Provinces should be compelled to return them, forfeit his certificate, and pay a fine of not more than three hundred pounds for each “Chinkie,” and he might also be sent to jail. Chinese were further prohibited from entering the restricted districts by the overland route, and while it was impossible to entirely shut them out, it was thought the new law would greatly reduce the number that entered the country.

It occurred to me that I might recoup my mining losses by importing Chinamen, without running any considerable risk of arrest, and I went into the business. It promised to be profitable, for the natural effect of the exclusion law was to intensify the desire of the “Chinkies” to get into the two Provinces, where the demand for them was the greater on account of their restricted number. I bought the old mission ship “Southern Cross,” which took Bishop Selwyn to Australia, a fore and aft schooner of about two hundred tons, and sent her across the bay to Balmain to be overhauled and put in shape for her new purpose. I had her fitted up as a private yacht, but all of her fittings below decks were so arranged that they could be knocked down and stored away, leaving the hold open. On the first trip to China I had tiers and rows of berths built on the same quickly removable principle, and with this arrangement there was enough space to enable us to carry more than two hundred passengers without discomfort.

I brought Leigh up from Melbourne and made him sailing master and again began preying on the Chinkies, but in a more friendly way than when I was plundering their pirate junks in the China Sea. The Chinamen furnished their own food, and Quong Tart, a rich Chinese merchant of Sydney, paid me one hundred and fifty dollars for every one I landed in Victoria or New South Wales. He arranged for their shipment, so, when I arrived at Amoy or Shanghai, where they all came from, I had only to wait for the requisite number to come on board, and he also took charge of them when they were put ashore. In a spirit of dare-deviltry I landed the first shipload less than five miles north of Newcastle, the second largest city in New South Wales. The subsequent cargoes I unloaded on the beach north of Newcastle or south of Sydney, without ever feeling that I was in any serious danger of being discovered. Each time I sent word to Quong Tart where the next load would be put ashore and about the time I was expected he sent spies to the spot to see if any officers were hanging around and signal to me if there was danger of running into a trap. No two cargoes were ever landed at the same place and only Quong Tart knew where to look for me on the next trip. When Nourse and Wilson were released from prison the former scurried across Bass Strait to his old Tasmanian home with the money I had paid him for so successfully impersonating me. He considered that he had been well compensated for his compulsory retirement from active life and expected to invest his capital in some small business, to which affluent position, under ordinary conditions, he never could have aspired with any degree of confidence. Wilson’s disposition was to go back to the sea with me, so I bought the “Nettie H,” a handy little steamer, and put her into the Chinese smuggling trade. I took command of the steamer, with Leigh as sailing master, and put Wilson in charge of the schooner, as I could trust him with the least anxiety. He had none of Leigh’s love for liquor and the result of his carelessness with the “Ferret” had made him as careful as a Scot. While the “Nettie H” was being fitted out, the authorities warned me that they knew what I was up to and it would go hard with me if they secured proof of their suspicions, but, knowing they were only shooting in the air, I laughed at them.

If this business of carrying Chinese under cover had been as productive of adventure as it was of profits, I would have stuck to it indefinitely, but it was so absolutely devoid of excitement that it palled on me. After we had made eight or nine trips, which more than repaid my financial losses ashore, I withdrew from the trade, with the idea of returning to the seductive West Indies, where I imagined there were higher-class operations to be conducted, and more thrilling times to be found. While I was disposing of my ships and finally closing up my Australian affairs, I was in Sydney for several weeks and stopped at the Imperial Hotel, where I met and became well acquainted with Guy Boothby, the English novelist. Though he dreamed away his inborn love of adventure, while I industriously practised mine and made it my life, he was a good deal of a kindred spirit, and in the course of our numerous long talks I told him enough about my experience with the Beautiful White Devil, without going into any of the detailed and intimate facts which have been told in these confessions, so that he subsequently wove a romance about her, using her sobriquet as a title for the story.

Accompanied by Leigh and Wilson, who were going only as far as England, I boarded a steamship for London, on my way back to New York. It would have been easier and quicker for me to have returned by way of San Francisco, but I involuntarily selected the roundabout way, to soon find that it led me into a unique and altogether unexpected experience.

CHAPTER XIII
ADVENTURES ON THE NILE

WHEN I finally forsook Australia, near the close of 1889, accompanied by Leigh and Wilson, who had paid a penitentiary penalty for my revengeful ambition and their own carelessness, I was in no particular hurry to get anywhere, but had no thought of stopping off at any point short of London until we reached Alexandria. Immediately on our arrival there I was suddenly seized with a freak of fancy, as we nonchalantly speak of the immutable decrees of Fate when we wish to show an independence of action we do not feel, to visit Cairo, and without waste of time and energy in mental argument I sent my dunnage ashore by one of the thousand or more small boats which viciously assaulted the ship from all sides. My two companions, after their trying times in Melbourne, were anxious to get back among their own people, so they went on to London, which decision was reached without the slightest effort to conceal their comments on my erratic disposition, while I proceeded to the ancient capital of the Kings of Egypt—those glorious old marauding monarchs who made despotism a fine art and graft a religion. There I was projected into a most alluringly adventurous undertaking. Though failing utterly of its high purpose, it was by no means devoid of compensations, for it initiated me far enough into the mysteries of departed days so that I considered myself at least an entered apprentice, and, furthermore, it carried me into close relationship with an exquisitely beautiful woman, which, next to plotting against peace and fighting out the plan, is always the thing most to be desired. As a matter of fact it is the rule in the Orient, where man is less virile and more devious and discreet than in the newer world, that a handsome woman is a part of every properly promoted plot, and this one was no exception.