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Roy Glashan's Library
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Adventure, March 1911, with "The White Queen of Sandakan"
James Francis Dwyer
JAMES FRANCIS DWYER (1874-1952) was an Australian writer. Born in Camden Park, New South Wales, Dwyer worked as a postal assistant until he was convicted in a scheme to make fraudulent postal orders and sentenced to seven years imprisonment in 1899. In prison, Dwyer began writing, and with the help of another inmate and a prison guard, had his work published in The Bulletin. After completing his sentence, he relocated to London and then New York, where he established a successful career as a writer of short stories and novels. Dwyer later moved to France, where he wrote his autobiography, Leg-Irons on Wings, in 1949. Dwyer wrote over 1,000 short stories during his career, and was the first Australian-born person to become a millionaire from writing. —Wikipedia
THIS is Shanahan's story. He told it sitting upon an empty crate on the Peninsular and Oriental wharf at Sydney, his blue, unwinking eyes turned upon the dazzling stretch of water that lay between Circular Quay and the Heads. Shanahan was a child of the Fringe, and truth is still prized in the camps of the Outer Rim. Besides, there is corroborative testimony.
"I shipped with Phelan at Yokohama," he remarked casually, "and it was a first mate's job at that. The man who held it before I got the berth was swept overboard one night off Nueshima when a Jap cruiser was nosing the stern of The Flying Cat. Phelan couldn't wait to search for him, and the Japs didn't bother. His game? Phelan's game do you mean? Huh! Ask me something easy! Faith, I didn't ask him what his game was when I hired with him. I was playing steerer for a Japanese on the Bund who was working off Birmingham-made Buddhas to the pith-helmeted tourists who left their horse sense in their home towns. The divil bites an Englishman when he gets from underneath the fog. I've seen British ladies wriggle with joy over quarter-clothed josses that would bring all Scotland Yard on the heels of the guy who tried to sell them round Belgravia. But I'm talking of prigs instead of talking of Phelan.
"We bucked down through the China Sea with a wind at our tailboard that would tear the soles off your boots if you lifted your feet too high. Man, it picked up lumps of water that were bigger than the Rock of Cashel, and flung them at us till everything breakable around the deck was the size of toothpicks. The Flying Cat gasped and groaned like a Tamil with the cholera, and Phelan clung to the stays and damned the wind in every language from Gaelic to Hindustanee. Every lingo in the world lies between those two, let me tell you.
"Faith that was a run! We stood on our end in hollows that made the Grand Canyon look as shallow as a baking-dish, and we cut the clouds into strips with our mast-tops before we had recovered from the sensations of the run downhill. The sun hadn't squinted at us for five days, and Phelan was as anxious as a frog that has tumbled into a snake's burrow.
"'We'll pile The Cat up on Borneo if this keeps up,' says he.
"'We're as good as piled then,' says I. 'This wind has got the habit.'
"I guess it was the mention of Borneo that made us talk of the White Queen of Sandakan. You've all heard of her? What? Sure, she was the talk of the Seven Seas! From the Rue de Rivoli at Papeete to the Street of Ten Winds at Hakodate you could hear more yarns about her than you'd find dishonest men in Yokohama, and that's saying a lot. A queen? Of course she was! She had made herself queen of the Dusans, Kadyans, Bisayas, and all the ugly specimens of humanity on the north coast of Borneo, and if rumor spoke the truth she had a hand as heavy as the Buddha at Yeddo, and, faith! his hands are of lead.
"'They say she's beautiful?' said Phelan to me as The Cat went up and down like a Coney Island coaster.
"'Beautiful isn't the word,' said I. 'The mate of a Glasgow tramp I met at Nikko said she was more beautiful than the Queen of Sheba and Helen of Troy, but what a Scotchman knows about those persons is another matter intirely!'
"'And she's white too?' said he.
"'Of course,' said I. 'They tell me that the Admiral of the China Squadron says that her name is Finnegan.'
"'I wouldn't doubt that,' growled Phelan, 'but it's like an Englishman to tack an Irish name on any one that's game to grab a bit of land and hang on to it!'
"'But it's British land,' I said, 'and they say she treats the natives shameful.'
"'More power to her!' he snapped, then he looked up at the torn sails and cursed the gale for a full five minutes.
"'We might strike the spot she's camped at,' I remarked.
"'We might,' he growled. 'It's an ill wind that blows nobody any good!'
"'Meaning—?' said I.
"'I might make her Mrs. Phelan!' he cried, then he jumped for the wheel and screamed like a ferry-boat in a fog.
"It was too late to save The Flying Cat, though. She put her forefoot on a rock that sprang up at us through the foam, and then she threw a somersault like a circus clown. When I came to my senses after butting a rock with the back of me head, Phelan and the French cook were sitting near me on the sand, while The Cat was doing a roly-poly act with the breakers about half a mile from the shore.
"'Where are the others?' says I.
"Frenchy screwed up his shoulders and rolled his eyes up to the cloud-wrack. Phelan said nothing. He had a habit of saying nothing.
"Well, after a time, the three of us got on our feet and started to explore the country; and mighty poor country it was. There was a silence around there that made you think the whole neighborhood had knocked off work to go to a funeral. It gave Frenchy cold chills.
"'Bah, zee solitude!' he spluttered. 'It makes my blood to tickle me all cold.'
"He was nervous mighty considerable, and he got worse as we headed up the shore. A bunch of Dyaks, with a wardrobe that'd fit into a tailor's thimble, slipped out of a patch of mangrove and steered for us at a gallop. They were an ugly batch all right. Frenchy put his hand over his heart and bowed eleven times—that was a bow for each one of the brigade, but they didn't take any notice of his politeness. A Dyak knows less than a Yap idol, and they, being wood, know nothing at all.
"Phelan and I clouted one or two of them with our fists, but that didn't do us much good either. They rounded us up with their long spears and started to hustle us inland at a gait that made the cook puff like a cheap gas-wagon.
"'What's the end of it?' said I to Phelan.
"'I don't think you'll ever see Tipperary,' he snapped. 'If that big fellow pricks me with his spear again I'm going to kill him and take the chances!'
"I guess they raced us along for a couple of miles; then we struck a Dyak village that smelt like a glue factory, and every mother's son in the place came out to rubber at us. They were a half-starved-looking lot, and Phelan noticed it quick.
"'They look hungry/ said he. 'Do you see the way they stare at the Frog-eater?'
"The cook nearly took a fit when he heard that, and he tried to tuck himself in so that he wouldn't look the fattest of the mob.
"'It's no use,' says Phelan, teasing him; 'don't you know I shipped you at Shanghai because The Cat was short of ballast?'
"Well, they rushed us into a long hut, and the cook collapsed on the dirty floor. The top of the place was covered with nipa-palm, and a bunch of dried skulls hung from the roof to let us see that we were here today and gone to-morrow, as Phelan translated it. And the smell was more violent there than it was outside, and, be jabers! that's saying a lot.
"A nigger, with a roll of seaweed twisted round his stomach, brought us in a mess of pounded yam and betel-nut, and as we were mighty hungry we tackled it without any grace.
"'I don't know if their love comes from their hearts or their stomachs,' said Phelan, 'but we mustn't be too curious.'
"When we had eaten the stuff, the Captain took a stroll to the door, but a brace of bucks with ugly-looking parongs blocked the opening, and Phelan pretended that he had changed his mind.
"'There are places where I'd sooner be,' he said. 'I hate to be eaten. There'll be such a job collecting yourself when Gabriel blows the clarionet on the last day!'
"Just as he said that, a big Dyak comes with a rush through the door and hands Phelan a scrap of paper. Mick read it, then he let out a whistle like a dying curlew and hands it over to me. I believe I have the note somewhere about me now."
Shanahan foraged through his pockets, and discovered amongst a batch of certificates and pak-a-pu tickets a soiled piece of paper, which he handed over. The clumsy pencil scrawl was hardly legible, but I made out the following:
These men intend to marry me to one of ye. They bar the Frenchy, so do I. I have been here seven months and I am their queen.
"It's the only communication I've ever had from royalty," said Shanahan, as I handed it back. "That's why I keep it with my papers. Faith! it affected us mightily when we got it in that dirty hut at Sandakan.
"'By the fist of Brian Boru, it's The White Queen!' roared Phelan. 'It's her and no one else!'
"'It sure is,' said I, 'but it's rough on the Frenchman, being barred out of the matrimonial stakes.'
"'What would you have?' yelled Phelan. 'The Frenchman is a foreigner, and like as not this lady is Irish or something near Irish. We're more her equals. I've heard my father say that the Phelans were kings of Connaught before the Sassenach came across and made 'em potato-diggers.'
"Well, sir, after that message we were all excitement. Neither Phelan or I was married, and we sat in the hut all day telling each other stories we had heard of the woman who had made herself queen of the head-hunting mongrels on the North Coast
"'The skipper of a pearl poacher told me she was handsomer than Venus,' said Phelan. 'Isn't it a lump of luck for us? If I'm picked I'll keep Froggy to cook for us. These black devils don't know how to dish up food for a white man.'
"'And I'll keep him if I'm picked,' said I, not wishing to appear smaller than Phelan, 'and I'll make you a general, Mick, and give you power to make war on the English. It's meself that's been dying to have a lick at them for many a day.'
"''d advise you to wait till you're chosen,' said he coolly. 'You're a man that don't measure much over five-feet-six, while it's myself that stands six-feet-one in my stockings.'
"WE GOT a bit huffy to each other after that. Phelan would sit all day in the corner of the hut dreaming of the Queen and wondering when the right man would be picked. Faith! he was struck on getting her! I spent the three days trying to learn a little of the Dyak lingo from one of the fat bucks that guarded the door, and mighty glad I was afterwards that I had the thirst for knowledge. The fat fellow took a fancy to a penknife that I had in my pocket at the time we were shipwrecked, and I struck a bargain with him. He was an idjut, like all savages, but after much talk I made him understand that I wanted a squint at the Queen, and he grinned like a Chinese joss.
"'Agreed,' said he, 'I'm your man.' Of course he didn't say it in the English tongue, but he made a sound like a nanny-goat sliding down a sheet of tin, and I knew what it meant.
"'When?'I asked
"'To-night,' he whispered, and my heart pounded like the motor of a petrol-boat as I sat down to wait.
"Phelan and the Frenchman were snoring comfortably when the Dyak poked me with the end of his spear and I crept out on me hands and knees and followed him through the darkness. We wriggled along to the end of the village, and there he stopped short, and faith! I stopped too. Out of a big bungalow came the sound of a woman singing, and I swallowed nine times before I could shoot a question at the guide.
"'Who's the warbler?' I asked.
"'The Queen,' he whispered. 'She does that every evening.'
'"She does, does she?' said I, and I scratched my head while I listened. You don't know what she was singing, do you?—I mean you would never guess. Faith, it was, 'The Wearing of the Green!' It's a fact!
"Well, I sat there for a few minutes; then I became anxious to see her. A woman singing 'The Wearing of the Green' with a Cork brogue at Sandakan Bay should be worth looking at, thinks I. The Dyak moved in closer to the hut, and then he hunched himself under one of the openings, and I climbed up on his back and looked in. Playing the Peeping Tom stunt isn't a game of mine, but curiosity had a ju-jitsy grip on me just then, and I had to go ahead or choke to death.
"The moment I got my eye on the interior of the apartment the singing ceased, and I thought the Queen had spotted me. But she hadn't. She had spotted something else. One of the five dozen women that were preparing her evening meal was doing something she shouldn't have done, and faith! I witnessed a disturbance that had Donnybrook Fair in the backwater in one jump! The Queen grabbed a stick that was standing beside her throne, and she gave a hop into the middle of the batch and started to use the bludgeon for all she was worth. The mob ducked and feinted and cross-countered, but they didn't have a hope, and when she chased the last one into the night I fell off the back of the Dyak and asked him to carry me to the hut.
"'Do you know when the witch doctor is to pick between myself and Phelan?' I asked him when I recovered my breath, as we were near the door of the prison.
"'To-morrow night,' he said. 'They're bringing a missionary up the coast to do the marrying.'
"'And how will the witch-chaser do the picking?' I asked.
"He was a jewel, was that fat Dyak. Squatting there in the darkness, he explained that Phelan and I would be put into a dark hut, and that his highness the medicine-man would crawl in through the door and grab one of us by the arm or the leg or any other part of us that he could find in the darkness. The one he caught hold of would be the bridegroom.
"'Me friend,' says I, and I took hold of him by the hand, 'I want that lady; I want her badly. Do you think that the witch-doctor can be bought?'
"The Dyak put his finger to his nose to let me see that the medicine-guy wasn't the sort of person to lead a reform movement against graft, and me heart grew lighter there and then.
"'Look,' said I, and I wet the head of a match to let him see how the phosphorus glowed in the dark, 'if I smeared a bit of this on me forehead do you think the witch-chaser would come straight for it?'
"'If it was made worth his while!' said he, and the way he grinned made me see that the hay then isn't the blind person the missionaries would make him out to be.
"'Well, here,' said I, and 1 pulled out me pipe and a little bronze Buddha that a tea-girl gave me at Yokosuka; 'they're yours if he makes for the phosphorus patch. I want that lady,' says I,' and if you can arrange it with the witch-doctor, I'll steal the Frenchman's eye-glasses and give them to ye.'
"'You're as good as picked,' said the Dyak, speaking in his own lingo, and I went back to my bed with an easy mind. Phelan had an idea that size and intellect run together, but it's been proved a dozen times that they don't."
SHANAHAN stood up and stretched himself. "I'm walking around here a bit," he said. " Will ye come? " I sprang up and followed him as he turned towards the poverty-stricken area around Miller's Point.
"And did the phosphorous dodge work?" I asked, as he remained silent.
"It did," he answered. "The German missionary arrived the night after I had the private view of her Majesty doing the Bob Fitzsimmons act on the threescore servants of the royal household, and Phelan and I were popped into a dark hut to let the witch-doctor draw the winning card. He was a cute old grafter, that guy. Faith! he made straight for the phosphorus gleam the moment he crawled in the door—Hold on a minute, I want to see a man in here."
He whistled at the rear of a dilapidated dwelling in a dirty cross street, and a big, raw-boned man with a scared look on his face thrust his head through the window.
"Come out a minute," said Shanahan coaxingly; "I've got a friend I want to introduce you to."
The big man looked around cautiously, jammed a dirty felt hat on his head and started to crawl through the small window.
"Do a hustle!" urged Shanahan. "Quick, man!"
The big fellow picked himself up and rushed towards an opening in the paling fence that surrounded the small back yard.
"Go it!" yelled Shanahan. "Come on! Hustle!"
He grabbed the arm of the big man and attempted to pull him through the hole, but at that moment a shout split the silence of the street and sent an army of echoes scurrying into space:
"Phelan! Stop, will ye? Phelan!"
The big man turned, and his flushed face paled before the vision that dashed from the rear door and charged after him. It was red-headed, fierce and domineering, the figure of a termagant, insane with passion.
"Come back!" she screamed. "Go inside, will you? And you, Jim Shanahan, I'll be putting one of these flower-pots at your head if you don't leave a decent woman's husband alone!"
The giant stumbled back to the house, and Shanahan grasped my coat-sleeve and pulled me to the nearest corner.
"That's her!" he spluttered.
"Who?" I cried.
"The White Queen!"
"What?"
"Sure!"
"But I thought you—you—" I stammered. "Why, I—I thought you used the phosphorus?"
"On Phelan!" he whispered. "Smeared it on his forehead without him knowing it. Do you blame me? I saw her mop up fifty Dyak women that night I had the private view. I'm going to wait round here for a while; Mick might make another attempt to get out."
I SAID good-by and walked towards Lower George Street, but I turned after taking only half a dozen paces.
"And was the Admiral right about her name?" I asked.
"He was," said Shanahan. "Her maiden name was Nora Finnegan. She was the stewardess on the B.I. boat, The White Pilgrim, that went down in Sandakan Bay. She was the only one of the crew the haythen didn't eat, and faith! it's little wonder they didn't! But if Mick Phelan—"
Shanahan broke off with a cry of rage. A well-aimed flower-pot struck him on the back of the neck, and he dashed madly towards the water-front as the red head of Mrs. Phelan, ex-queen of Sandakan, was thrust around the corner. I beat Shanahan by five yards in the sprint.
Roy Glashan's Library
Non sibi sed omnibus
Go to Home Page
This work is out of copyright in countries with a copyright
period of 70 years or less, after the year of the author's death.
If it is under copyright in your country of residence,
do not download or redistribute this file.
Original content added by RGL (e.g., introductions, notes,
RGL covers) is proprietary and protected by copyright.