Page:Scented isles and coral gardens- Torres Straits, German New Guinea and the Dutch East Indies, by C.D. Mackellar, 1912.pdf/122

92 smart in white uniforms with gold-braided white caps and tunics.

From our high deck I spend a long time daily looking down on the doings of the deck passengers, who include Indian coolies, Chinese, Japanese, Cingalese, Kanakas, Malays, and Javanese. In this hot weather they all sleep and live on deck under the awning. The making of toilets in the morning is wonderful. The Javanese and Malay women are very good-looking and attractive, and are ve neat and clean. They wear the Sarong, a checked, coloured cloth wrapped round the legs, and a white dressing jacket. They use, even on deck, pretty silken cushions and elaborately frilled white pillows. All these mixed natives are really well behaved, and very courteous, helpful, and polite to one another, though there have been some rows which nearly ended in knife business. The monkey, which pervades the place, goes the round every morning and cleans all their heads! This interesting operation always takes place in public. There is a Chinese woman on board, but she never leaves her cabin—at least, I have never seen her. The Chinese women, you know, are very gentle, good, and refined—the glory of their land.

We have another “personage”’ who cannot be ignored. This is a large white cockatoo with a yellow crest—the beloved property of the first officer. Captain Niedermayer is for ever giving stern orders that it must on no account be allowed on our deck. Nothing, however, will keep it away, so he pretends not’ to see it. Not that it can really be ignored, as it is most consequential, full of character, and rather uncanny. It tyrannises over us all. I never saw so much and such varying expression on a bird’s face before. It reminds me somehow of the expression on the faces of -elderly relatives who get bills young