Cumner's Son & Other South Sea Folk: An Epic in Yellow

An Epic in Yellow

There was a culminating growth of irritation on board the Merrie Monarch.
The Captain was markedly fitful and, to a layman's eye, unreliable at the
helm; the Hon. Skye Terryer was smoking violently, and the Newspaper
Correspondent--representing an American syndicate--chewed his cigar in
silence.

"Yes," Gregson, the Member of Parliament, continued, "if I had my way I'd
muster every mob of Chinamen in Australia, I'd have one thundering big
roundup, and into the Pacific and the Indian Sea they'd go, to the crack
of a stock-whip or of something more convincing." The Hon. Skye Terryer
was in agreement with the Squatting Member in the principle of his
argument if not in the violence of his remedies. He was a young
travelling Englishman; one of that class who are Radicals at twenty,
Independents at thirty, and Conservatives at forty. He had not yet
reached the intermediate stage. He saw in this madcap Radical Member one
of the crude but strong expressions of advanced civilisation. He had the
noble ideal of Australia as a land trodden only by the Caucasian. The
Correspondent, much to our surprise, had by occasional interjections at
the beginning of the discussion showed that he was not antipathetic to
Mongolian immigration. The Captain?

"Yes, I'd give 'em Botany Bay, my word!" added the Member as an
anti-climax.

The Captain let go the helm with a suddenness which took our breath away,
apparently regardless that we were going straight as an arrow on the
Island of Pentecost, the shore of which, in its topaz and emerald tints,
was pretty enough to look at but not to attack, end on. He pushed both
hands down deep into his pockets and squared himself for war.

"Gregson," he said, "that kind of talk may be good enough for Parliament
and for labour meetings, but it is not proper diet for the Merrie
Monarch. It's a kind of political gospel that's no better than the creed
of the Malay who runs amuck. God's Providence--where would your Port
Darwin Country have been without the Chinaman? What would have come to
tropical agriculture in North Queensland if it had not been for the same?
And what would all your cities do for vegetables to eat and clean shirts
to their backs if it was not for the Chinkie? As for their morals, look
at the police records of any well-regulated city where they
are--well-regulated, mind you, not like San Francisco! I pity the morals
of a man and the stupidity of him and the benightedness of him that would
drive the Chinaman out at the point of the bayonet or by the crack of a
rifle. I pity that man, and--and I wash my hands of him."

And having said all this with a strong Scotch accent the Captain
opportunely turned to his duty and prevented us from trying conclusions
with the walls of a precipice, over which fell silver streams of water
like giant ropes up which the Naiads might climb to the balmy enclosures
where the Dryads dwelt. The beauty of the scene was but a mechanical
impression, to be remembered afterward when thousands of miles away, for
the American Correspondent now at last lit his cigar and took up the
strain.

"Say, the Captain's right," he said. "You English are awful prigs and
hypocrites, politically; as selfish a lot as you'll find on the face of
the globe. But in this matter of the Chinaman there isn't any difference
between a man from Oregon and one from Sydney, only the Oregonian isn't a
prig and a hypocrite; he's only a brute, a bragging, hard-handed brute.
He got the Chinaman to build his railways--he couldn't get any other race
to do it--same fix as the planter in North Queensland with the
Polynesian; and to serve him in pioneer times and open up the country,
and when that was done he turns round and says: 'Out you go, you
Chinkie--out you go and out you stay! We're going to reap this harvest
all alone; we're going to Chicago you clean off the table!' And
Washington, the Home of Freedom and Tammany Tigers, shoves a prohibitive
Bill through the Legislature, as Parkes did in Sydney; only Parkes talked
a lot of Sunday-school business about the solidarity of the British race,
and Australia for the Australians, and all that patter; and the Oregonian
showed his dirty palm of selfishness straight out, and didn't blush
either. 'Give 'em Botany Bay! Give'em the stock-whip and the rifle!'
That's a nice gospel for the Anglo-Saxon dispensation."

The suddenness of the attack overwhelmed the Member, but he was choking
with wrath. Had he not stone-walled in the New South Wales Parliament for
nine hours, and been placed on a Royal Commission for that service? "My
word!" But the box of cigars was here amiably passed, and what seemed
like a series of international complications was stayed. It was perhaps
fortunate, however, that at this moment a new interest sprang up. We were
rounding a lofty headland crowned with groves of cocoa-palms and bananas
and with trailing skirts of flowers and vines, when we saw ahead of us a
pretty little bay, and on the shore a human being plainly not a
Polynesian. Up the hillside that rose suddenly from the beach was a
thatched dwelling, not built open all round like most native houses, and
apparently having but one doorway. In front of the house, and near it,
was a tall staff, and on the staff the British Flag.

In a moment we, too, had the British Flag flying at our mast-head.

Long ago I ceased to wonder at coincidences, still I confess I was
scarcely prepared for the Correspondent's exclamation, as, taking the
marine glass from his eyes, he said: "Well, I'm decalogued if it ain't a
Chinaman!"

It certainly was so. Here on the Island of Pentecost, in the New
Hebrides, was a Celestial washing clothes on the beach as much at home as
though he were in Tacoma or Cooktown. The Member's "My oath!" Skye
Terryer's "Ah!" and the Captain's chuckle were as weighty with importance
as though the whole question of Chinese immigration were now to be
settled. As we hove-to and dropped anchor, a boat was pushed out into the
surf by a man who had hurriedly come down the beach from the house. In a
moment or two he was alongside. An English face and an English voice
greeted us, and in the doorway of the house were an English woman and her
child.

What pleasure this meeting gave to us and to the trader--for such he was,
those only can know who have sailed these Southern Seas through long and
nerveless tropic days, and have lived, as this man did with his wife and
child, for months never seeing a white face, and ever in danger of an
attack from cannibal tribes, who, when apparently most disposed to amity,
are really planning a massacre. Yet with that instinct of gain so strong
in the Anglo-Saxon, this trader had dared the worst for the chance of
making money quickly and plentifully by the sale of copra to occasional
vessels. The Chinaman had come with the trader from Queensland, and we
were assured was "as good as gold." If colour counted, he looked it. At
this the pro-Mongolian magnanimously forbore to show any signs of
triumph. The Correspondent, on the contrary, turned to the Chinaman and
began chaffing him; he continued it as the others, save myself, passed on
towards the house.

This was the close of the dialogue: "Well, John, how are you getting on?"

"Welly good," was John's reply; "thirletty dollars a month, and learn the
plan of salvation."

The Correspondent laughed.

"Well, you good Englishman, John? You like British flag? You fight?"

And John, blinking jaundicely, replied: "John allee samee
Linglishman-muchee fightee blimeby--nigger no eatee China boy;" and he
chuckled.

A day and a night we lingered in the little Bay of Vivi, and then we left
it behind; each of us, however, watching till we could see the house on
the hillside and the flag no longer, and one at least wondering if that
secret passage into the hills from the palm-thatched home would ever be
used as the white dwellers fled for their lives.

We had promised that, if we came near Pentecost again on our cruise, we
would spend another idle day in the pretty bay. Two months passed and
then we kept our word. As we rounded the lofty headland the Correspondent
said: "Say, I'm hankering after that baby!" But the Captain at the moment
hoarsely cried: "God's love! but where are the house and the flag?"

There was no house and there was no flag above the Bay of Vivi.

Ten minutes afterwards we stood beside the flag-staff, and at our feet
lay a moaning, mangled figure. It was the Chinaman, and over his gashed
misery were drawn the folds of the flag that had flown on the staff. What
horror we feared for those who were not to be seen needs no telling here.

As for the Chinaman, it was as he said; the cannibals would not "eatee
Chinee boy." They were fastidious. They had left him, disdaining even to
take his head for a trophy.

Hours after, on board the Merrie Monarch, we learned in fragments the sad
story. It was John Chinaman that covered the retreat of the wife and
child into the hills when the husband had fallen.

The last words that the dying Chinkie said were these: "Blitish flag
wellee good thing keepee China boy walm; plentee good thing China boy
sleepee in all a-time."

So it was. With rude rites and reverent hands, we lowered him to the deep
from the decks of the Merrie Monarch, and round him was that flag under
which he had fought for English woman and English child so valorously.

"And he went like a warrior into his rest
With the Union Jack around him."

That was the paraphrasing epitaph the Correspondent wrote for him in the
pretty Bay of Vivi, and when he read it, we all drank in silence to the
memory of "a Chinkie."

We found the mother and the child on the other side of the island ere a
week had passed, and bore them away in safety. They speak to-day of a
member of a despised race, as one who showed

"The constant service of the antique world."

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