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