Manchurian Books

We sighted the Brunhilda some five hundred miles south of the
Carolines. The wind had fallen soon after Papua had dropped astern.
The Suwarna's ability to make her twelve knots an hour without it had
made me very fully forgive her for not being as fragrant as the Javan
flower for which she was named. Da Costa, her captain, was a
garrulous Portuguese; his mate was a Canton man with all the marks of
long and able service on some pirate junk; his engineer was a
half-breed China-Malay who had picked up his knowledge of power
plants, Heaven alone knew where, and, I had reason to believe, had
transferred all his religious impulses to the American built deity of
mechanism he so faithfully served. The crew was made up of six huge,
chattering Tonga boys.
The Suwarna had cut through Finschafen Huon Gulf to the protection of
the Bismarcks. She had threaded the maze of the archipelago
tranquilly, and we were then rolling over the thousand-mile stretch of
open ocean with New Hanover far behind us and our boat's bow pointed
straight toward Nukuor of the Monte Verdes.


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