Wandering Dane

Rejected By New Guinea And Returned To Tahiti

From Our Own Correspondent

Papeete, July 10

A RESIDUUM of the recent troubled days of the U.S. yacht Cassida’s so journ at Papeete is a sailor who shows promise of becoming a permanent guest of the Messageries Maritimes Co. This individual was one of the company of turbulent sailors who, having made the voyage from New York to Tahiti a night mare, were discharged by the owner at Papeete. Tahitian seamen were signed on in their stead, so that the yacht could navigate to Honolulu —where the owner and his guests left her and returned to the United States on a Matson steamer.

It was arranged that the discharged sailors should be returned to the port in the United States where they had been engaged, as the law requires.

One of them, a Dane, requested that instead of being returned to the States, where he was likely to have difficulties with the immigration authorities, he be allowed to go to New Guinea, as he wished to seek employment in the gold mines. Inasmuch as the requirement was that the colony should be relieved of his presence at the first available occasion, it did not much matter where his des tination might be. So arrangements were made with the Messageries Maritimes to deliver him “safe and sound’’ in NG.

When he arrived there, the authorities refused him permission to land. The M.M.

Company is under obligation, therefore, to return him to Tahiti. At Papeete, it is said, he will not be permitted to come ashore. Nor will the United States author ities at Panama allow him to put foot on that territory. Most certainly he will find no asylum at Martinique or Guade loupe and his chances of a welcome at Marseilles are very slim indeed.

Will he be fated to voyage back and forth on M.M. ships until St. Peter sum mons him? Or will he be cast overboard in the midst of a school of whales to be transported to and spewed up on some lonely beach —as was Jonah of old —by a behemoth of the vasty deep?

What probably will happen will be that the International Seamen’s Union will take the matter in hand.