ion. 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