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."