Page:Scented isles and coral gardens- Torres Straits, German New Guinea and the Dutch East Indies, by C.D. Mackellar, 1912.pdf/105

Rh This ship, however, is not particularly clean. They cannot help it swarming with tiny white ants, which are everywhere, even on one's plate at dinner. I wage war with them in my cabin. They are all over the white-painted wall, all so fussy and busy, tearing about in long lines intent on some destructive purpose. What it is all about I do not know, but I take care they never " get there." For long they were beyond me, but now I have got them. I go to bed, put out the electric light, and wait. Suddenly I turn it on again and there they are in scores on the wall, scuttering along as hard as they can go. I take a piece of odoriferous yellow soap—some German product—and draw a line in front of them. They abhor it, and start off on another tack—I block them everywhere, and at last they retreat in disorder. Of course I enjoy the smell of the soap also, but I prefer it to the ants.

Then the pillows and mattresses have such an extraordinary odour that I cannot use them. I have complained, been assured they are perfectly clean and that it is only the result of some disinfectant which is sehr gesund in hot weather, and that, as nothing that can be avoided is ever purchased in any British port, no new ones can be got except at Bremen in Germany some months hence. The German Government will fatten and batten on us Free Traders, but endeavours not to let us profit one sixpence by them.

We steamed up the Australian coast outside the Great Barrier Reef, experiencing a great thunderstorm. We made Moreton Island about six o'clock one evening and shipped a pilot. Moreton Bay is full of shifting sandbanks and shoals. We were too late for the shorter entrance and so had to go a long way, the route being two sides of a triangle, the base of which ought to be