"Long after palæolithic man had passed away, a Chinese junk burst into these silent seas, with youth at the prow and pleasure at the helm, to the sound of the inspiring tom-tom. Old legends tell how the grisly apparition of these adventurous children of the Sun affrighted our peaceful Southern Ocean as it passed on its mysterious way. . . . The enterprising navigator of that pre-historic junk, scanning the future with dim prophetic eye, saw that Australia had better be left for some other active persons to do the rough work of colonisation; and after that his bland and patient Celestial descendents might come along without ruffling an eyelash, and scoop the whole institution like the merest fan-tan pool."—Vide Bulletin "History of Botany Bay":—
Touch the melancholy tom-tom
To a wild and weird refrain—
Let the brazen gongs and conches
Swell the bold historic strain.
Tell the legend, marrow-curdling,
Of that dim, phantasmal skunk
Who burst through the Silent Ocean
Jubilating!—in a junk!
How that cheerful apparition,
With his pig-tail on his head,
Scared the sleeping Austral Beauty
Till the girl got up and fled.
Nob with odour-wafts of Araby,
Clinging to his silken sails,
Did he fool round in his cruises,
As we read in other tales.
Swooped he not about the planet
In a picturesque galleon,
Or a shell-like shallop, guided
By the echo of a tune.
Not much! No! That navigator
Knew no tommy-rob like this—
This disgusting Chinese person
Smelt far otherwise, we wis.
Sloops there were not, neither shallops—
As we said before, this skunk
(Dim, phantasmal, we described him)
Jubilated in a junk.
With a hideous crash of cymbals,
Tom-tom music, wild and weird,
This grey pre-historic horror
Came, and saw, and—disappeared.
Like an Afreet, or a nightmare
Born of fell back-blocks champagne,
lie just came and raised the devil,
Turned—and sailed away again.
Sped into the purple distance
With his sails of dungaree—
With his tom-toms and his fragrant
Odours, not of Araby.
As regards the Austral Beauty,
We may mention that the girl,
When the spectre burst upon her,
Rose, and lit out with a skirl.
Lit out o'er the dim horizon
Where the wattle-blossom waves
[Bard who couldn't work that line in
Might as well be digging graves.—Ed. B.]
Skipped right out!—indeed, this spectre
Might make stronger people wince.
[We may remark the Austral Beauty
Has been missing ever since.—Ed. B.]
So he came and so he vanished—
So the misty legends run—
Up the red track of the sunrise
To the Offspring of the Sun.
Why he came, and why departed,
Why he ever lived or died,
Why he wasn't changed in childhood,
We could not tell if we tried.
Who his father was, or mother—
If he was an orphan boy—
If some swivel-eyed young person
Viewed him as her pride and joy—
If he proudly scorned the poll-tax
This we know nob, neither care—
Not to be deceitful persons
We admit we weren't there.
It may be some Joss, pot-bellied,
Yanked him to the Golden Shore
By his pig-tail—all we know is
He came back here never more.
Years have passed, and now we scoop him
In the scuppers of our rhyme,
And we send him fumigated
Down the corridors of Time.
With a dainty touch we spit him
In the forceps of our verse—
[Whatsoever fate his crimes brought
Couldn't possibly be worse.—Ed. B.]
In the coming time, when slant eyed,
Pig-tailed heathens populate
This the region he discovered
Holding high posts in the State,
Then some yellow Dan. O'Connor,
Or some slant-eyed Burdett Smith,
Will remember him with honour
And resuscitate this myth.
Build a statue—or a tombstone
To perpetuate his fame,
With an epitaph regretting
That they didn't know his name.
And a carven bas-relievo
Whereon the phantasmal skunk
Will be pictured jubilating
In his joy—likewise the junk.