The western half of New Guinea (and the least known) belongs to Holland, and it was in the waters of this coast that the Australians whose story I am telling were living and working when the tocsin of war sounded. These sons of empire were registered under a Dutch name with their charter to work there from the Dutch Government, yet when they heard that men were needed for the Australian army, they dropped everything and hastened south to enlist. The long-obeyed calls of large profits and novel experiences, the lure of an adventurous life, were drowned by the bugle notes of the Australian "call to arms." These were young men who had left the shores of their native country, venturing farther out a-sea, ever seeking pearls of great price. They had once been engaged in pearl-fishing from the northernmost point of Australia--Thursday Island--that eastern and cosmopolitan village squatting on the soil of a continent sacred to the white races. When the handful of white people holding this newest continent first flaunted their banner of "No Trespassers" in the face of the multicolored millions of Asia, they declared their willingness to sweat and toil even under tropic skies, and develop their country without the aid of the cheap labor of the rice-eating, mat-sleeping, fast-breeding spawn of the man-burdened East. But this policy came well-nigh to being the death-blow to one little industry of the north, so far from the ken of the legislators in Sydney and Melbourne as to have almost escaped their recognizance. The largest pearling-ground in the world is just to the north of this lovely Southland. It would seem as though the aesthetic oyster that lines its home with the tinting of heaven and has caught the "tears of angels," petrifying them as permanent souvenirs, loves to make its home as near to this earthly paradise as the ocean will permit. When the law decreed that only white labor must be employed on the fleets a number of the pearlers went north and became Dutch citizens, for from ports in the Dutch Indies they could work Australian waters up to the three-mile limit. But as soon as it was known that Australia needed _men_, that _we_ were at war, then politics and profits could go hang: at heart they were all Australians and would not be behind any in offering their lives. It took but a few days to pay off the crews, send the Jap divers where they belonged, beach the schooners, and take the fastest steamer back HOME--then enlist, and away, with front seats for the biggest show on earth. CHAPTER II AN ALL-BRITISH SHIP