Festival Headdress of Torres Straits Islanders;
The Japanese Club
I boarded twelve in all, and examined them from truck to keelson. In some cases one could scoop the dry-rot out of their timbers in handfuls; in others—— But why continue? In all of them the head-room was practically nil because of their light draught for negotiating reefs and sand-bars, and because the Japanese have no manner of use for head-room. When below, they live, move, and have their being on their heel-supported haunches. It would be necessary for the average Anglo-Saxon to crawl on all fours to escape a permanent crick in the neck and stooped shoulders aboard a pearling lugger.
It was in that hour that I realized my final defeat. Peter and Steve were right—there never would be another dream ship. I resigned myself to the inevitable, and settled down on Thursday Island to await the next southern-bound steamer in two weeks' time. I wandered amidst sweltering corrugated iron and herds of cavorting goats, thinking my own sad and secret thoughts, until taken under the wing of two as bright lads as one could wish to meet. We "batched it," if you please, and I am consequently in a position to state precisely how one may live on T.I. in this year of grace.
Taking it in turns to leave your sagging camp bed a trifle before dawn, you steal forth into the iron-bound forest of the settlement, and stalk your prey. It is a simple process. You offer the most appetizing-looking kid in sight a lump of sugar with one hand, and, seizing its hind leg with the other, smother its cries with a towel. Half an hour later it has been converted over a Primus into something that looks like shoe-leather and tastes like kerosene.
In the alleged "cool" of the evening, you may play lawn tennis. We did, in shorts and a vest, and with diver's-suit rubber an inch thick glued to the soles of our shoes by way of protection against the heat and hardness of the court. In five minutes you are a dripping rag of perspiration, but no matter, it is tennis, and the bright lads could play, though argument across the net seemed their strongest point. One of these resolved itself into a bet as to who would win a game played in diver's helmet and boots respectively. It was put to the test with the utmost gravity, and resulted in a dead heat, the man in the helmet being unable to see through his three glass windows quickly enough to take the ball, and the booted competitor being unable to move.
Such were some of the social amenities of T.I., interspersed with delightful evenings spent with the haute monde, consisting of military authorities and owners of pearling fleets, in their charming bungalows situated behind and above the settlement. But for the most part we kept to the beach. It was more interesting—and kids were more plentiful.
As for the industries of this queer little island with a white population of five hundred and a black-and-tan one of unknown dimensions, pearling predominates, as different a form of pearling from that of the Paumotus as can well be imagined. Here machinery is permissible, and with the up-to-date motor compressor keeping up a mechanically uniform and unfailing air supply, great depths are attained, and shell of a prodigious size and lustre obtained.
"I don't know," mused a pearling-lugger owner of my acquaintance; "I'm beginning to think it's the survival of the fittest, after all. The Japs are the best machine divers in the world. They don't seem to put the same value on life that we do, and maybe they're right; I don't know.
"But I can tell you this: they work as no white man would ever work—day and night for two weeks without shutting an eye; then they bring the stuff in, sleep two days and nights on end, and are ready for another two weeks.
"I used to go out with a crew now and then, and I've seen them go down fifty-two fathoms, and be hauled up dead, and another man climb into his suit and be 'down' inside of ten minutes.