China and the West

London, Jack. Brown wolf and other Jack London stories. (New York, N.Y. : Macmillan, 1906).
http://www.gutenberg.org/files/12336/12336.txt
Yellow handkerchief.
We ran forward, and found her bowsprit entangled in the tanned rigging of a short, chunky mast. She had collided, head on, with a Chinese junk lying at anchor. At the moment we arrived forward, five Chinese, like so many bees, came swarming out of the little 'tween-decks cabin, the sleep still in their eyes. Leading them came a big, muscular man, conspicuous for his pock-marked face and the yellow silk handkerchief swathed about his head. It was Yellow Handkerchief, the Chinaman whom we had arrested for illegal shrimp-fishing the year before, and who, at that time, had nearly sunk the Reindeer, as he had nearly sunk it now by violating the rules of navigation…
In a couple of minutes we ran softly alongside the bank, and the sail was silently lowered. The Chinese kept very quiet. Yellow Handkerchief sat down in the bottom alongside of me, and I could feel him straining to repress his raspy, hacking cough…
What was to happen next I could not imagine, for the Chinese were a different race from mine and from what I knew I was confident that fair play was no part of their make-up…
I was familiar enough with the Chinese character to know that fear alone restrained them…
Three of the Chinese--they all wore long sea-boots--got over the side, and the other two passed me across the rail. With Yellow Handkerchief at my legs and his two companions at my shoulders, they began to flounder along through the mud….
Half swimming, half wading, with my head just out of water and avoiding splashing, I succeeded in putting about a hundred feet between myself and the spot where the Chinese had begun to wade ashore from the junk. I drew myself out on the mud and remained lying flat…

The heathen.
The six of us cabin passengers were pearl-buyers. Two were Americans, one was A Choon (the whitest Chinese I have ever known), one was a German, one was a Polish Jew, and I completed the half dozen…