The Pacific Triangle

by Sydney Greenbie

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.