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GABRIELLE OF THE LAGOON
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.. meta::
   :PG.Title: Gabrielle of the Lagoon
   :PG.Id: 40614
   :PG.Released: 2012-08-29
   :PG.Rights: Public Domain
   :PG.Producer: Roger Frank
   :PG.Producer: the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
   :DC.Creator: \A. Safroni-Middleton
   :DC.Title: Gabrielle of the Lagoon
              A Romance of the South Seas
   :DC.Language: en
   :DC.Created: 1919
   :coverpage: images/cover.jpg

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   :xl:`GABRIELLE OF THE LAGOON`

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   \A ROMANCE OF THE SOUTH SEAS

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   BY

   :lg:`\A. SAFRONI-MIDDLETON`

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   :sm:`AUTHOR OF`
   :sm:`“SAILOR AND BEACHCOMBER”`

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   PHILADELPHIA AND LONDON
   J. B. LIPPINCOTT COMPANY
   1919

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   | COPYRIGHT 1919, BY J. B. LIPPINCOTT COMPANY
   |
   | PRINTED BY J. B. LIPPINCOTT COMPANY
   | AT THE WASHINGTON SQUARE PRESS
   | PHILADELPHIA, U. S. A

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   PROLOGUE

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Though it was night and there was no moon,
a dim, weird light lay over the isle and pierced
to the depths of the forests. It was in the
Solomons, where the dark, picturesque surroundings
of palm and reef, the noise of the distant surfs, made
a suitable setting for anything unexpected. Even the
silver sea-birds had weird, startled-looking eyes down
Felisi beach way. And when the wild brown men
crept away from the grave-side of one whom they had
just buried in the forest, the winds sighed a fitting
music across the primeval heights. But there was
nothing strange in that; men must die wherever one
goes, and it was a common enough occurrence in that
heathen land where the ocean boomed on the one side
and inland to the south-west stood the mountains,
looking like mighty monuments erected in memory of
the first dark ages. Across the skies of Bougainville
the stars had been marshalled in the millions. It
seemed a veritable heathen faeryland as the night
echoed a hollow “*Tarabab!*” But even that heathenish
word was only the tribal chief’s yell as he stood under
the palms conducting the semi-religious tambu ceremony.
The tawny maidens and high chiefs, with their
feather head-dresses, all in full festival costume,
were squatting in front of the secret tambu stage,
some mumbling prayer, others beating their hands
together as an accompaniment. And still the dusky
tambu dancer moved her perfect limbs rhythmically
to the rustling of her sarong-like attire, swaying first
to the right then to the left as she chanted to the
wailings of the bamboo fifes and bone flutes. The
orchestral-like moan of the huge bread-fruits, as
odorous drifts of hot wind swept in from the tropic
seas, seemed to murmur in complete sympathy with
the pretty dancer. One might easily have concluded
that Oom Pa, the aged high priest, was the “star turn”
of the evening as he stood there enjoying his thoughts
and performing magnificently on the monster tribal
drum.

There was something fascinating and super-primitive
about the whole scene. The very scents from
decaying forest frangipani and hibiscus blossoms
seemed to drift out of the damp gloom of the dark ages.
The presence of civilisation in any form seemed the remotest
of possibilities. Even the fore-and-aft schooner,
with yellowish, hanging canvas sails, lying at anchor
just beyond the shore lagoons, looked like some strange-rigged
craft that sailed mysterious seas.

But as the assembled tribe once again wildly
clamoured for the next dancer to come forward and
exhibit her charms, a murmur of surprise rose from
the back rows of stalwart, tattooed chiefs—a white girl
suddenly ran out of the forest and jumped on to the
tambu stage!

One aged chiefess who was busy mumbling her
prayers looked up and gave a frightened scream.
Even the aged philosophical head-hunter Ra-mai, who
had one hundred and eighty skulls hanging to his
credit in his palavana hard by, gave a mellow grunt,
so great was his surprise. A white girl, lips red as
coral, hair like the sunset’s gold, standing by his old
*pae pae*! It was something that he had never dreamed
of. The tawny maidens squatting beneath the
coco-nut-oil-lamp-lit shades on the right of the buttressed
banyans, lifted their hands in astonishment. For a
moment the white girl stood perfectly still. All eyes
were upon her. She stared vacantly as though she
were in a trance. Then she moved forward a few steps,
her feet lightly touching the forest floor as if she were
a visionary figure veiled in moonlight. Only the
sudden renewal of the wild clamouring and guttural
cries of “*O la Maramam tambu, papalaga!*” (“A white
girl will dance before us!”) seemed to rouse her to her
senses, reminding her of the reason she had responded
to the swelling chorus of tribal drums.

The barbarian musicians had begun to bang and blow
on their flutes in an inspired way as they urged her
to dance. Her sudden hesitation was very evident to
every onlooker. And as she stood there by the monster
tambu idol, its big glass eyes agog and wooden lips
stretched in hideous laughter, she had a strange,
unearthly beauty. The winds sighed in the palms;
she wavered like a blown spirit-girl that had been
suddenly swept out of the night of stars into the midst
of those Pharaoh-like chiefs. Some of those warriors
watched with chin on hand, others stared upon her
with burning eyes.

Those old chiefs and their women-kind had seen
many strange sights and experienced many shocks
since German, British, Malayan, Hindoo, Chinese and
Dutch settlers had set foot on their shores; but still
they were quite unprepared for the sight they witnessed
that night. The handsome Malayo-Polynesian
half-castes nudged their comrades in the ribs and murmured
the native equivalent to “What-o!” To their
delight, the white girl had mounted the *pae pae* and
had begun to dance and sing. The whole tribe watched
and listened, spellbound. The haunting sweetness of
the melody seemed to bring all ears under its influence.
It was something in the way of song that those wild
people had never heard before.

Only the pretty faded blue robe falling down to her
brown-stockinged ankles and the long tortoise-shell
comb stuck in the rich folds of her golden-bronze hair
told of her mortal origin. And there was no mistaking
the reality of that indisputable bang on the heathen
bandmaster’s drum. That dusky virtuoso was certainly
inspired by human passion.

Ra-mai, who was a kind of religious genius, dropped
his festival calabash and rubbed his eyes, for the girl
was swaying as though she were fastened on to the
winds, her eyes wide open, staring upon him. The old
priestly warrior swore, long after, that she was a spirit-maid
whom he had loved a thousand years ago, and
who had returned that night, as white as a deep-sea
pearl, to show men how great a priest and warrior he
really was. But he was a poetical old fellow and had
a high opinion of himself where female beauty and
frailty were concerned. But if there was an element
of surprise over her sudden appearance before them,
the astonishment of these natives was intensified by her
dramatic exit from their midst. Just as the guttural
cries of the chiefs and the weird monotones of the
chanting tambu maidens had caught the *tempo* of her
dance, she gave a scream, stood perfectly still and
stared on those wild men with a terrified look in her
eyes. Then, before anyone could realise her intentions,
she had leapt from the *pae pae*, had run away into the
forest and vanished like a wraith!

The whole tribal assemblage looked into each other’s
eyes in astonishment. Such an exhibition of red
betel-nut-stained teeth had never been seen in a
midnight forest festival before, for they all stared
open-mouthed.

“Tabaran [a spirit] from shadow-land!” said one.

“Not so. Didst see the light of vanity in her wondrous
eyes as the young chiefs praised her beauty?”
said another.

“’Tis a white girl suddenly up-grown and full of
fever for love,” said an old chief with wise wrinkles on
his brow. And then yet another said: “Had it been
a full-moon sacred festival, ’twould have been well
to slay her for such boldness, the cursed papalagi!”

Then the festival broke up. And that night the
handsome chiefs, and even the aged priests, tossed
restlessly on their bed-mats as they lay in their village
huts dreaming of a goddess-like creature who had
flitted through their tambu ceremony like a dream.

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CHAPTER I—ROMANCE’S FIRST THRILL
================================

On the day following the tribal festival when
the white girl had so astonished the heathen
priests in the village called Ackra-Ackra a
runaway ship’s apprentice emerged from his half-caste
landlady’s wooden lodging-house. He was off for a
stroll, for the tenth time or so, over the slopes that
divided the banyan forests from the small township of
Rokeville. He was stagnating and so had little else to
do except to make the colour of the picturesque scenery
harmonise with his meditations. He was a tall, handsome
fellow, about twenty years of age. His brass-bound
suit looked decidedly faded by the hot tropical
sun, and the flannel collar of his only shirt had begun to
look slightly grimy. All the same, he had that look of
refinement which is inherited from good ancestors. A
romantically inclined maid would have thought him
extremely attractive. A bronze-hued lock seemed to
ooze from beneath the rim of his cheese-cutter cap, for
when funds were low in distant lands, and scissors
scarce on ships at sea, his hair grew quite curly. One of
his eyes was a deep blue and the other a golden-brown.
This eccentric combination of colour may have had
something to do with the romantic adventures that
fell to his lot through his leaving ship in Bougainville.
It was quite three weeks since he had made a bolt
from his full-rigged sailing-ship in the harbour, consequently
his cash in hand had seriously diminished. He
had already become terribly sane whilst pondering over
the natural consequences of being cashless.

Hillary L——, for that was his name, hated plantation
work and all muscular endeavours that did not
contain some element of romance. But still, he had long
since realised, through his many adversities at the end
of long voyages, that wherever one goes one must toil
for a living, however romantic the scenery may appear.

“Blasted wicked world this! Wish white men could
dress like the natives and chew nourishing nuts for a
living!” he murmured, as he thoughtfully saluted the
German official who was leaning against a dead screw-pine,
on the top of which blew the Double Eagle flag.

Hillary was no fool; he could always be polite at
the right time and place. He’d been stranded, with
fourpence-halfpenny or so in his possession, in about
ten islands during the last twelve months, and he knew
that if things got to the worst he could apply to the
German consul for a free passage to British New
Guinea or to Samoa. Hence his politeness. He was
British to the backbone, and as the Teutonic official
murmured that it was a nice day Hillary nodded and
then lifted a cloud of the finest coral-dust with his offside
boot. He could hear the German spluttering and
coughing in a fearful rage, wondering why the hot wind
had suddenly lifted so much dust. Hillary’s contempt
for anything in the German line was quite unaffected.
The natives whispered: “Germhony mans nicer feller
when he looker one way, but all-e-samee, he belonga
debil mans.”

The young apprentice was one of a type that commercially
was not worth a tinker’s dam. If he were a
party to any scheme connected with finance, one could
safely predict that that scheme was predestined to
complete failure. But in the imaginative world
Hillary could be pronounced a decided success.

It was the same wherever he went. The old sea-boots
on the shelf of the seaport’s slop-shop danced a
jig on some ship far at sea; the oilskins swelled to
visionary limbs as sailormen opened their bearded
mouths and climbed aloft, singing the chanteys that he
could distinctly hear as he placed his ear to the shop’s
dirty window!

The silk, blue-fringed chemise hanging on a nail by
the oil lamp clung, as he gazed, to the limbs of some
laughing girl; fingers travelling down the yellow keys
of the second-hand piano mysteriously strummed out
some melody that told of the briefness of life, youth and
beauty. This poetical weakness was a veritable Old
Man of the Sea on his back. But still, he was no fool,
and, like most of his type, he could be strong where
most men are weak.

As he turned round and looked on the desolate scene,
and stared at the sunset out at sea, his face expressed
an emotion that words cannot describe. The parrots
rose in a glittering cloud as he stood their meditating,
gazing on the small burial ground that he had suddenly
stumbled across. It was where a few white men
had been buried on the lonely beach-side, miles from the
township. The crosses of coral stone were sunken very
deep, the names nearly oblitered. “What a godforsaken,
tragic place,” he muttered as he read:

.. class:: center

   | TO THE MEMORY OF
   | BILL LARGO, BOATSWAIN
   | DIED JUNE 3RD 1860
   |
   | SPEARED BY HEAD-HUNTERS IN TRYING TO SAVE SHIP’S
   | COOK—THIS STONE IS RAISED BY THE CREW
   | OF THE S.S. “SALAMANDER” BOUND
   |
   | FOR CALLAO

Everything seemed tragic in those parts. For as
he wandered along the beach a voice startled him as
a weird face suddenly poked out of the mangroves:

“Noice even’ng, matey?”

“Yes,” responded the apprentice as he looked into
the face of a sun-tanned remnant of a white man who
stood by a fern-sheltered, thatched den. It was only
old Adams, an ex-sailor, leading his Mormon-like
existence. He was a kind of Solomon Island aristocrat
of independent means. He was apparently attired in
a wide-brimmed hat and beard only, for the climate
is muggy in the Solomons. He *did* wear thin cotton
pants, but they were so drenched with perspiration
that they clung to his legs like a skin. He borrowed
a shilling from the apprentice, shot a stream of tobacco
juice seaward, then entered his hut, but before slamming
the door behind him he looked back and said:
“I’d git back to me ship if I was you; the Kai-Kai
chiefs are on the b——taboo lay round ’ere, and they’d
give their ears for that curly mop of yourn!” The
door slammed. Once more Hillary was alone. As
he walked away he could distinctly hear old Adams
swearing at his four wives, who was apparently rushing
round the hut looking for his clean shirt. They were
dusky women, probably the daughters of tribal kings,
and had given their birthrights to Adams so that they
could be the wives of a noble papalagi. Such was the
queer, mixed population of that solitary locality where
the apprentice mooched along. And Rokeville, the
shore township, was not much more dignified; but what
it lacked socially was amply made up for by its Arabian-Nights-like
atmosphere. Its one street, a silvery track
made of coral dust, went winding down to the shore.
And when the full moon peered over the ocean rim,
touching with dim light the feathery palms that
sheltered the tin roofs of the scattered coral-built
houses, it looked like some staged faery town of a
South Sea isle. Often by night some strange-rigged
ship would hug the coast-line for hours while its crew
of blackbirders crept ashore and kidnapped native
men and women from the villages. Before dawn that
stealthy craft had sailed away, crammed up to the
hatches with cheap labour for the plantations and
heathen seraglios of nowhere. By day things looked
as real as possible. There was nothing faery-like about
Parsons’ wooden grog shanty, that stood, sheltered by
three tall palms, at the head of the township. Through
its ever-open doorway by day and night passed the
German, Scandinavian, Norwegian and Yankee shell-backs,
who drank strong rum at the bar, banged their
fists and narrated their Homeric deeds. That shanty
was the commercial centre and stock exchange of
Bougainville. It was haunted by about a dozen nondescript,
aged Chinese, Dutch and Japanese seamen
who wore pigtails, pointed beards or scraggy whiskers:
on the brightest tropic day *they* succeeded in adding
a touch of romance to the shore landscape, for when
rum was scarce they leant their ragged backs against
the palm stems and looked like old figure-heads from
Chinese junks and Spanish galleons stuck up on end,
till they spoilt the picture by pulling their tangled
beards as they spat seaward. They also drank rum
and existed, apparently, by watching the white seahorses
charge the purple-ridged line of coral reefs that
made the natural pier of that seaside resort. Consequently
the young apprentice preferred the wild
scenery of the mahogany forests and the blue lagoons
where the brown maids dived, to the mixed society of
that delectable township. To him there was something
fascinating, almost poetic, about the mahogany-hued
Papuans and Polynesians. But his ideals quite saved
him from falling in love with a brown maid. And it
must be confessed that the Solomon Isles was not an
Olympian locality, where dwelt cold, passionless
Hellenic beauties, and many a dusky Nausicaa and
luring Circe had tempted bold sailormen to destruction
by their songs and demonstrative exhibitions of their
charms. But some of the maids were innocent enough,
for as Hillary wandered by Felisi beach he caught
sight of a tiny Polynesian baby girl. She was busy
pulling wild flowers that grew amongst the thick tavu-grass.
Her tiny body shone with a hue like a new
Australian sovereign as sunset bathed her little figure
with its hot light. Her alert, savage ears heard the
apprentice’s footsteps in the scrub. Just for a moment
her thick curls tossed and sparkled among the tall
fern-grass as she sped away into the forest as though
she quite expected a white man to shoot her at sight!

“I wonder what I’ll sight next; why, it’s like some
fairy spot,” Hillary murmured as he watched the child
disappear. Then he climbed over the reefs till he
came right opposite the shore islets, where the natives
swore their gods danced under the stars.

At this spot there happened to be a wide lagoon, and
on the still waters, just where the mighty banyans
leaned over and made a delightful shade, floated a
canoe. “The very thing!” Hillary exclaimed. In a
moment he was paddling about on the lagoon in the
small primitive craft. Strange birds shrieked over his
head, their crimson and blue wings flashing along as
they resented his intrusion into their lovely solitude.
Some had eyes like sparkling jewels and long, hanging
coral-red legs and feet.

“What a bit of luck! I could paddle about here for
ever!” was his comment as he swished the paddle,
turned the prow of his canoe and went off full speed
down the narrow creek-like passage that led to the
wider stretch of water inland. “It’s like being alone
on an uninhabited island,” he thought. Suddenly a
hush came over the waters. Only the solitary “Kai
koo-seeeek!” of a parakeet disturbed the silence. So
still was the water of the lagoon that he seemed to
float about on a mighty mirror. The huge buttressed
banyans reflected in the deep, clear water by the banks
hung upside down, twisted shapes in an abyss of blue.
He could even discern the flock of shrieking, sky-winging
lories as their images went wheeling silently
over the wooded heights, so clearly was the forest
fringe reflected in the depths.

“Good Lord!” he gasped, as he stared on that
shadow-world; and no wonder, for on the rim of the
hanging cloud, high over the leaning trees of the
reflected sky, sped an ornamental canoe! Its paddle
was swiftly curling, like a fast-flying bird’s wing.
He nearly upset his small craft, so great was his
astonishment, for, looking towards the bend where the
banyans hid the expanse of inland water from view,
he saw that the reflected figure in the canoe was real.

It wasn’t the canoe but the paddler that made him
exclaim. “It can’t be an apparition with those hibiscus
blossoms stuck in her hair,” he thought as he rubbed
his eyes and stared again. The blue robe, open low
at the neck, was the apprentice’s only excuse for his
ridiculous idea in thinking that a beautiful princess
of some unknown white race had suddenly appeared
on the lagoon. She softly dipped her paddle and,
shattering the blue sky and twisted boughs with one
blow, came speeding towards him!

“Am I awake?” he muttered. She had waved her
paddle, welcoming his presence as though she had
known him for years. At first he hesitated, thinking
that one word, one sign of recognition from him would
make her vanish back into her native skies. But at
length he too lifted his paddle and waved most
enthusiastically!

As Hillary came closer he saw that there was sorrow
in the girl’s blue eyes, as needs there must be, since
Beauty is Sorrow’s legitimate child. A far-off gleam
shone in them and glinted in her hair, which tumbled
down to the warm white curves of her neck and round
to her throat.

It was the pretty *retroussé* nose that looked so
human.

Hillary took a deep breath and gazed again.

“Fancy meeting you here!” he said as in his embarrassment
he pulled his dirty kerchief out of his
pocket and wiped his face to hide his confusion; then,
remembering, he hastily replaced the rag-like kerchief
in his pocket.

“Fancy meeting you!” said the girl as she gave a
silvery peal of laughter.

The young apprentice’s heart began to thump. He
stared into the girl’s eyes as though she had mesmerised
him. A wild desire thrilled his soul as she leaned
forward, still paddling softly as she returned his
gaze.

“Do you live here?—out here in the South Seas?”
he murmured as he almost dropped his cheese-cutter
midshipman’s cap into the water.

“Of course I do! Do you think I live up in the
sky?”

“Shouldn’t be surprised if you did,” he responded,
gaining his nerve. Then he told the girl that he
thought she might have been a princess migrating or
on tour in one of the intermediate steamers.

The girl stared at hearing this sally. The look that
came into her eyes made the apprentice understand the
cause of the girl’s apparently bold familiarity. She
was quite unworldly. She seemed to read his thoughts,
for she ceased paddling and, looking almost seriously
into his face, said: “I’m Gabrielle Everard. I’ve lived
in these islands with Dad since I was a child. Dad
took me away to Ysabel and Gualdacanar about a
year ago.”

“Did he really?” said Hillary as he metaphorically
nudged himself to find her so pleasant and confidential.

“Mother dead?” he murmured as the sea-wind
drifted across the waters, sighed in the shore banyans
and blew the girl’s tresses about her throat.

“Mother’s dead, of course! Always has been so far
as I can remember,” she responded, looking into the
young man’s face intently, wondering why on earth
his voice should sound so tender and concerned when
he asked about her long-dead parent.

They paddled side by side. The strange girl’s eyes
had done a grievous thing to Hillary’s soul. The
feathery palms and old trees, catching the sea-winds,
seemed to whisper cherished things of romance and
long-forgotten lover to his ears. It took him that way
because he was an amateur musician.

“What a beautiful voice you’ve got!” said he, as
she dipped her paddle in perfect *tempo* to some wild
melody that she sang in a minor key.

“Have I? Why, Dad says I’ve got a voice like a
cockatoo!” she responded merrily.

“The wicked, unmusical old bounder!” said the
apprentice; then he swiftly apologised.

“Oh, you needn’t be so sorry that you’ve said that.
I don’t care a cuss!”

Once more Hillary metaphorically rubbed his hands.
“Jove! What an original, fascinating creature the
girl is, to be sure,” was his secret comment. Had the
young apprentice known that the girl before him had
danced on a heathen *pae pae* (stage) and sang before
those cannibalistic tribal warriors the night before, he
would most probably have been more fascinated by her
presence than ever!

“Gabrielle! Gabrielle! What a name! Beautiful!”
he murmured to himself as the girl dipped the paddle
and sang on. By now they had arrived near the sandy
shore of the inland lagoon.

“Must you go?” he said.

“Well, yes; but I can easily see you again, can’t
I?” Hillary L—— made no articulate response.
“And this is the Solomon Isles, remote from
civilisation, far away in the cannibalistic South Seas!” he
murmured deep within his happy soul.

But mad as Hillary was, he half realised that the
girl before him was more of a child than a woman.
She laughed, even giggled a little, like a happy child.
Only five years had passed since she had played with
the native kiddies, who many times had persuaded
her to dance and sing their heathen songs as they pretended
to be heathen chiefs and chiefesses performing
on a toy *pae pae*. She had revelled in those dances.
But no one would have dreamed by looking at her that
she was not a pure-blooded white girl. Her father
had married a beautiful three-quarter caste girl in
Honolulu, so Gabrielle had a strain of dark blood in
her veins!

The young apprentice couldn’t fathom the look in
her eyes as he stared. Passion was just awakening in
her soul, stealing like a tropical sunrise over the hills
of childhood. To him she appeared like some spirit-creation
that might at any moment take wings and
fly away; so when she turned the prow of her canoe
dead on to the soft sand and jumped ashore, he made
a frantic dash and jumped, landing just behind her.
He was determined to know when and where she would
meet him again. But he had no need to fear; she did
not fly away. She simply tied her canoe to a bamboo
stem and, turning round, looked him full in the face
with those glorious eyes that were to be for him two
stars of the first magnitude. Then she placed her
fingers in the folds of her hair and taking out one of
the hibiscus blossoms, handed it to him, much to his
surprise. He realised that it was more the act of a
child than a woman of the world.

“I’ve read in books that girls give men flowers that
have been fastened in their hair,” she said. This
remark and act of the girl’s, and the look in her eyes,
had a strange effect on Hillary’s susceptible mind.
He almost felt the tears well into his eyes. It was all
so unexpected, and told him in some great poetry of
silence what the girl’s heart was made of, the utter
loneliness of her existence and the way her childish
dreams were flowing out to the great realities of life.
He placed the flower in his buttonhole, then gazed on
the girl as only an infatuated youth can gaze, and said:
“Will you meet me here again, by this lagoon? Any
day and time will do for me.”

“I’m sure to be this way again,” she said, and before
the young apprentice could stop her she had
flitted away under the coco-palms.

Before she got out of sight she turned and waved
her hand. In his excitement he responded by waving
his cap. Then she disappeared under the thick belt
of dark mangroves by the swamp track that led inland
in the direction of her father’s bungalow.

“What a girl!” That was the only audible comment
he made as the girl went out of sight. And where
did she go? She ran away over the slopes that lay
just behind the township of Rokeville, back to her home
and her trader father.

Old Everard, her parent, was a kind of freak too.
He was a tall, clean-shaved, thin-faced man, with blue-grey
eyes and a beaked nose; his mouth had a melancholy
droop about it; the face in repose looked
strong at times, but when he grinned and revealed his
tobacco-blackened teeth it looked characterless, almost
weak. At times he was extremely garrulous, at other
times either reticent or insulting to anyone who might
be unfortunate enough to come near him. Gabrielle
seemed to be the only person in Bougainville who understood
him. He didn’t take much interest in his daughter,
though she might have done so in him. All he did
was religiously to exercise his parental control by sending
the girl on his selfish errands, mostly for rum and
whisky. At other times he demanded that she should
attend to his comforts when delirium tremens shook
his spine. He was an ex-sailor. Trailing from the mainyard
of his ship whilst anchored off the Solomon
Group, he had lost a leg, and during his convalescence
in Honolulu had married, finally settling down in
Bougainville.

His homestead was a three-roomed bungalow, and he
kept things going by the money he had saved during
his seafaring life; he was also interested in copra
plantations at Bougainville and at Ysabel. His temperament
was choleric. He was known in the vicinity
by the nickname “Shiver-me-timbers.” This cognomen
was derived from the fact that he always stamped
his wooden leg, making it shiver in his impatience,
when he wanted a drink, consequently his wooden leg
was never at rest. He looked like some wooden-legged
Nemesis as he sat there that evening; and if any
glamour still lingered in Gabrielle’s brain from her
chance meeting with the young apprentice, it was
swiftly dispelled by the stumping of that wooden
member as she rushed indoors.

Even a wooden leg would seem to have its part to
play in the universe: there was something imperative
about its tapping voice. That fate-like tapping had
smashed up many of Gabrielle’s young dreams; possibly
that wooden leg was a soulless agent of the devil.

“Here’s the whisky, Dad,” said she, as the cockatoo
looked down from its perch and shrieked: “Gabby-ell!
Gabby-ell! Kai-kai-too!”

In a moment that weird symbol in wood, that represented
all that was unromantic to her ardent soul,
ceased its ominous “tip-e-te-tap-tap” as the old sailor
looked up and spied his daughter.

“Thankee, thankee, kid!” he growled as he put
forth his hand. Such was the domestic atmosphere
that the girl had rushed back to.

After the young apprentice had waved his farewell
to Gabrielle he strolled away under the palms. “Well,
she’s a beautiful creature. Who’d have thought of
meeting her in this wild place? She’s ethereal, too
beautiful to make love to,” he sighed.

Possibly the contrast between Gabrielle Everard
and the Solomon Island mop-headed girls etherealised
her natural beauty in his eyes. This was a fatal outlook
for Hillary, considering the girl’s impulsive
nature and his chances in the love affair that he had
unknowingly embarked upon. And possibly this outlook
of his was the result of outward glamour having
greatly influenced his indwelling life. He had succeeded
in making himself the more unfitted to cope
with his immediate surroundings by poring over such
writers as Tolstoy, Walt Whitman, Rousseau and
Ruskin. But still, these writers, with their mad denunciations
and rhapsodies, had helped to awaken in
Hillary’s soul that adoration for the beautiful, that
love for living art that nourishes a delight in God’s
work. The young apprentice did not digest the whole
contents of those volumes; he was too young to grasp
their full meaning, but his mind had grasped enough to
make him a kind of derelict missionary of the beautiful.
When the moods came to him he would bury his nose in
the pages of Byron, Shelley, Keats, etc. And the influence
gathered from those poets possibly filled his
head with vague imaginings over beauty and innocence,
feeding the fires of wild aspiration that cannot be realised
in this world, and were never realised and acted
up to by the poets who wrote the poems.

As he walked on thoughts of the strange girl on the
lagoon *would* haunt his brain. He had quite made
up his mind to secure a berth on the sailing-ship that
was leaving for New South Wales in a few days, but
Gabrielle Everard’s eyes seemed to have magically
changed the future for him.

It was almost with relief that he gave his arm to the
drunken shellback who suddenly appeared from nowhere,
struck him on the back and spat a stream of
tobacco juice across Hillary’s poetic vision, taking him
completely away from himself. Then the shellback
faded away, went off shouting some wild sea chantey
as he rolled over the slopes, bound for the sailor’s
Morning and Evening Star—the distant light of Parsons’s
grog shanty. It was getting dark. That night
Hillary seemed inspired. He sat outside the wooden
building where he lodged and played his violin to the
shellback, traders and natives who came over the slopes
to listen. Mango Pango, the pretty Polynesian servant,
grinned from ear to ear, showing her pearly
teeth, as she danced beneath the palms that grew right
up to the verandah of his landlady’s homestead. Even
the congregated sailormen ceased their unmelodious
oaths as they pulled their beards and listened to his
playing.

Hillary wasn’t a master on the violin; his career
had been too erratic for him to get the necessary practice
to accomplish great things in instrumental playing.
But still he could perform the *Poet and Peasant*
overture and most of the stock pieces, besides playing
heathen melodies that sent the natives into ecstasies of
delight. His sailor critics swore that his extemporised
sea-jigs were the most classical of compositions that
they had ever heard. For when he played the South
Sea maids threw their limbs about in rhythmical
swerves, till the soles of their pretty bare feet sometimes
seemed turned toward the South Sea moon!
Mango Pango, Marga Maroo and Topsy Turvy were
dancing to their heart’s content as the hills re-echoed
the shellbacks’ laughter and the wild chorus of *O, For
Rio Grande* when the concert was disturbed. For notwithstanding
the wild surroundings, the hilarity and
awful oaths, piety roamed those savage isles.

As the strains of the *Poet and Peasant* overture
trembled from Hillary’s violin a tall, handsome savage,
attired in European clothes, stepped out from beneath
the palms and complimented the young Englishman
on his artistic performance. He was an educated
savage, and naturally conducted himself in public
just as a late missionary from the North-West Mission
School at Honolulu should do. He was certainly an
attractive-looking being, possibly through his mother
being a Papuan and his father a handsome Malayan.
Even the shellbacks pulled their whiskers and beards,
and put on their best behaviour as he stood there and
spoke as becomes a Rajah and late missionary who
has “saved” thousands of souls; for he studied the
philosophy of the Psalms so that they might fit in with
his views. And it might be mentioned at once that
he did not allow idealistic views to disturb the nice
equilibrium of his earthly requirements. When he was
excited his speech lapsed into the native pidgin-English.
But he spoke perfectly as he addressed Hillary,
saying: “You play exceedingly well, young man, and
your rendering of Spohr’s concerto strikes me as
superb. For perfect intonation and verve your performance
outrivals the rendering by Monsieur De
T——, whom I heard play it at the Tivoli, Honolulu.”
So spake the civilised heathen.

“’Ark at ’im! an ole kanaka missionary!” whispered
Bunky Lory, the ordinary seaman.

“’Andsome cove with his whiskers on,” said another,
a Cockney.

There is no doubt that Rajah Koo Macka was a
handsome type of man so far as the world’s idea of
what’s handsome goes. He wore a fine moustache
curled artistically at the ends; had fine teeth, ivory-white;
and full, sensual, curved lips that were not a
libel on his character. But his greatest asset was his
magnetic, telescope-like eyes that could sight a sinfully
inclined girl or woman miles off! Indeed he was a
splendid example of a christianised heathen doing his
best to be religious notwithstanding his inherently antagonistic
principles. He had plenty of cash; he owned
two or three schooners, and received a Government
bounty for hunting down the white miscreants, those
skippers who indulged in all the horrors of the black-birding
slave traffic. He wore three medals on his
ample breast, and besides the aforementioned bounty
received a pension from some missionary society in
London which had heard of his self-sacrifice whilst
converting his heathen brothers from cannibalistic orgy
and lust. And more, it was discovered, after many
days, that he was a good and dutiful son to his old
father Bapa, who still dwelt in the Rajah’s native village
in far-away Tumba-Tumba, on the wild, God-forsaken
coast of New Guinea. Such is a rough summary
of the Rajah Koo Macka, whose ways were mysterious,
more so than the wily Chinee! And though dead men
may turn in their graves over the doings of men on
earth, the apprentice only pulled the end of his virgin
moustache, no prophetic breath of all that was destined
to happen disturbing his equanimity.

CHAPTER II—THE CALL OF THE BLOOD
================================

The day after the young apprentice had played
his violin to the shellbacks and listened to the
Papuan Rajah’s eulogies over his playing, old
Everard was sitting in his bungalow swearing like the
much-maligned trooper. He was holding out his
gouty foot whilst his daughter poured cool water
upon it.

“What the devil are yer doing!” he yelled, as the
girl, who had done exactly as she had been told to do,
stood half-paralysed with fear over her parent’s outburst.
Then the ex-sailor picked the ointment pot up
and rubbed the swollen foot himself. As Gabrielle
looked on and mentally thanked her Maker that her
father had only one foot, he finished up by grabbing a
chair and pitching it across the room, careless as to
what it might hit. A fierce look came into the girl’s
eyes, her face was hotly flushed. For a moment the
old man opened his mouth in surprise, really thinking
she meant to hurl the chair back at him. She looked
for a moment like a beautiful young savage. Then
she turned and rushed from the bungalow.

“Come back, you blasted little heathen!” roared
old Everard as he stood up on his wooden leg; then he
gave a fearful howl as his gouty foot gave him another
twinge. His face was purple with passion. “I’ll
break her b—— neck when she comes back, I will.
She’s like her mother, that’s what she is.”

The ex-sailor’s wild sayings meant nothing. He had
been genuinely fond of his wife. Like most men who
have choleric tempers, his hot words had no relation to
his true feelings. Gabrielle’s mother had been dead
for many years. Although she had dark blood in her
veins, she had been a very beautiful woman. Indeed
an eerie kind of beauty seems to be the natural heritage
of women who are remotely descended from a mixture
of the dark and white races. And this striking beauty
is most noticeable in those half-castes who are descended
from the Malayan types, a superstitious people,
of wild, poetic, passionate temperament. There was
some mystery concerning Gabrielle’s mother: she had
flown from Haiti to Honolulu in some great fear.
Everard had met her because it was on his ship that
she had stowed away; but she had never divulged the
cause of her flight from the land where she had been
born. All that Gabrielle knew was that her mother’s
photograph hung on her bedroom wall, a sad, beautiful
face that gave no hint of her dark ancestry. Gabrielle
had been the tiny guest who had unconsciously caused
her natural host to depart from this life—for her
mother had died during confinement. Gabrielle Everard
felt that loss as she walked beneath the palms; but,
still, she felt glad that her father’s violence had inspired
her with sufficient courage to beat a hasty retreat,
careless of the parental wrath when she at length
returned home again. “Perhaps he’ll be so full of
rum when I get back that he’ll have forgotten,” was
her sanguine reflection. Then she pulled her pretty,
washed-out blue robe tight with the sash, and murmured:
“The old devil! Good job if he pegged out!”

As the girl’s temper subsided the savage look on her
face faded away. Like a gleam of sunrise across the
lagoons at dawn, the laughing expression of her blue
eyes slowly returned. The firm resolve of the lips also
disappeared. Her mouth was again a rosebud of the
warm, impassioned South, a mouth that easily claimed
twinship with the beauty of the luring eyes, which
looked warm with desire as the lips themselves. She
wore her loose blouse very low at the neck, so low
that the sun had delicately touched the curve of her
breast. But she was only an undeveloped woman as yet.
Her ideas of the great world were vague and shadowy.
She knew little of what lay beyond her own surroundings,
of men’s ways, the terror of cities, human frailty,
and the force and passion of human tragedies. All the
ribaldry, the hints thrust upon her by the rough sailors
since she had entered her teens, had been quite lost
on her undeveloped mind. Her whole idea of life and
its mysteries had come to her out of a few old books.
They were books that had been left at her father’s
homestead by a ship’s captain when Gabrielle was a
child. This captain’s ship had gone ashore in a typhoon
off Bougainville, and its wreck could still be seen lying
on the barrier reefs about a mile from the shore.

Who could foresee the wondrous potentialities that
lay within the pages of those books which the old
skipper had carelessly thrown aside?—what dreams
they would some day awaken in a girl’s heart, giving
her strength to combat the desires that came with
volcanic-like force on the threshold of womanhood?
For, true enough, the heroes and heroines of those old
books mysteriously leapt from the thumb-torn, yellow
pages and seemed to struggle in their effort to help her
regain her better self.

One book was Bunyan’s *Pilgrim’s Progress*; another,
Christina Rossetti’s poems; *The Arabian Nights* and
Hans Andersen’s fairy tales. That old captain (he
must have been old by the dates in the books) had
brought many valuable cargoes across the world, but
he dreamed not that his most wonderful cargo was the
magic in the books that he was destined one day to
leave behind him in the Solomon Isles!

To a great extent old Everard’s daughter was the
embodiment of the principles and idealisms that were
in those faded volumes: in her imagination Bunyan
stood there beneath the palms, seeing God in those
tropic skies; Hans Andersen drank in the mystery
of sunset on the mountains, and Christina Rossetti
laid a visionary hand on the tiny, shaggy heads of the
native children who had rushed from the forest’s
depths and had started gambolling at Gabrielle’s feet.
She hastened on. “Awaie!” she cried to the dusky
little creatures, who looked up at her in a bewildered
way, as though they had seen a ghost. “Ma Soo!” they
wailed, as they sped away, frightened, into the shadows
of the forest. A wild desire entered Gabrielle’s heart;
she half bounded forward, as though to rush after those
tiny forest ragamuffins. She felt like casting aside
her civilised attire, so that she too might race off,
untrammelled, into those happy leafy glooms. The
cry of the yellow-crested cockatoo, the deep moaning
of the bronze pigeons and iris doves in the bread-fruits
seemed to feed her soul with unfathomable music.
As she passed by a lagoon she saw her reflection in the
still depths. The dark-toning water made her appear
almost swarthy; her bronze-gold hair looked quite
black. It was only a momentary glance, but that
glimpse was enough to strike a wild feeling of terror
into her heart, reminding her that she was connected
by blood to the dark races.

At that thought her heart trembled: to her it was
as though God had suddenly thumped it in some
inscrutable spite. In a moment she had recovered.
The strange dread of she knew not what vanished.
Once more she gave a peal of silvery laughter, and even
went so far as to wave her hand to the crowd of dark,
handsome native men who were hurrying by on their
way back from the plantations.

As she meandered along she began to think over all
that had happened on the festival night when she had
suddenly felt that strange impulse and astonished the
natives by jumping on to the festival *pae pae* and
dancing before them all. She rubbed her eyes. “I
can’t think that I really did such a thing; I feel sure
it must have been a dream.” Then she remembered
that her gown was torn and one of her slippers lost
when she had arrived home in her father’s bungalow.
“It must have been true. Fancy me doing such a
thing! I wonder what *he* would have thought.” So
she reflected over all she had done. Then she began
to reassure herself by recalling how she had often,
when only ten years of age, danced on the *pae pae* with
the pretty tambu maidens. And, as she remembered it
all, she gave an instinctive high kick and burst into a
fit of laughter; then she said to herself: “I’m a woman
now and really must not do such things!” She started
running down the forest track, and as she passed by
the native village the handsome emigrant Polynesian
youths waved their hands and cried: “Talofa Madimselle!”
One handsome young Polynesian, gifted with
superb effrontery, ran forward and stuck a frangipani
blossom in her hair. This by-play made the
tawny maids who were squatting on their mats by the
village huts jump to their feet and give a hop, skip
and a jump through sheer jealousy.

Once more Gabrielle had passed on and entered the
depths of the forest. Passing along by the banyan
groves on the outskirts of the villages she suddenly
came across a cleared space surrounded by giant
mahogany-trees—a kind of natural amphitheatre.
Between the tree trunks stood several huge wooden
idols with glass boss eyes and hideous carved mouths.
They seemed to grin with extreme delight at the adoration
they were receiving from the twelve skinny hags
and three chiefs who knelt and chanted at their wooden
feet. Gabrielle stood still, fascinated by the weirdness
of that pagan scene. Again and again the hags and
chiefs jumped to their feet and prostrated themselves
before the carved deities. “*Tan woomba! Te
woomba, tarabaran, woomba woomba!*” they seemed to
moan and mumble as the stalwart chieftains jumped to
their feet, wagged their feathered head-dresses, thrust
forth their arms and chanted into the idols’ wooden
ears. The largest centre idol seemed actually to grin
with delight as it listened to the mumbling of the
chiefs. Gabrielle stared, awestruck, as she listened,
and the hags, leaping to their feet, danced wildly and
shook their shell-ornamented *ramis* (loin chemises),
making a weird, jingling music as the shells tinkled.
Then they lifted their skinny arms and bony chins to
the forest height and mumbled weird chants of death.
Gabrielle had seen many similar sights in Bougainville,
but never before had she quite realised the full meaning
of that strange chanting, or of the sorrow that impels
heathens to fashion an effigy with a fate-like grin on
its curved wooden lips so that it could stand before
them as some material symbol of the Unknown Power!
As Gabrielle watched, two of the chiefs turned their
heads, recognised her, and gave their sombre salutation:
“Maino tepiake!” And still the hags chanted on.

Then Gabriello heard a faint mumbling coming from
the belt of mangroves that grew by the lagoons near
by. She was astonished to see six tambu maids appear,
attired in full festival costume, which consisted of
a kind of sarong fashioned from the thinnest tappa
cloth. The girls had large red and black feathers
stuck in their head-mops and Gabrielle knew by this
that someone had died in the village and was being
borne to the grave. They were walking slowly, carrying
their mournful burden between them. It was
an old-time tribal funeral. As the coffin-bearers
arrived in front of the idols they laid their burden
down. Gabrielle instinctively crossed herself when
she saw the wan face of the dead mahogany-hued
Broka girl. It was a sad, curiously beautiful face,
for death had toned down the old wildness of the living
features. The reddish, coral-dyed hair had fallen forward
on to the pallid brown brow and gave a pathetic
touch to that silent figure. On the forehead was the
plastered scarlet mud cross, a sign that the girl had
died in maidenhood. She was stretched out on a long,
narrow death-mat that had handles, something after
the style of an ambulance stretcher, but fashioned in
such a way that when the primitive hearse of dusky
arms moved forward the corpse regained a sitting posture.
The effect was gruesome in the extreme, for
the head of the corpse, being limp, fell forward or
wobbled as the mourners passed along the narrow
mossy track. Through entering into the spirit of the
proceedings Gabrielle at once gained the sympathy
of those pagan mourners. For she too crept behind
the procession as it moved along among the pillars
of the vast primitive cathedral. The thick foliage of
the giant bread-fruits, the buttressed banyans and
towering vines, that ran here and there like symphonies
of green, scented the forest depth. And when the
wind sighed it seemed to be some moan from infinity,
as though that moving procession and the forest itself
stood on the deep inward slopes of some vast sea.
Only the remote wide window, through which the stars
shone by night and the sunsets marked the close of each
tropic day, was visible between the colonnades of tree
trunks, as there it shone—the far-away western horizon.
Suddenly the procession stopped. The six tambu
maidens had begun to chant an eerie but beautiful
pagan psalm as they approached the grave-side; then
they laid their burden gently down. The weeping
hags and chiefs stood looking up into the branches of
the tall coco-palm. It was there that the girl’s body
was to rest till her bones whitened to the hot tropic
winds. Along one of the lower branches they had
fashioned a grave-mattress of twigs and leaves, jungle
grass and tough seaweed, the whole being fastened on
to the branch by strong sennet. It was a weirdly
fascinating sight as they stood there voiceless and
began hurriedly to perform the last sacred rites over
the dead girl. The tallest of the mourners, an aged
chief, who had a naturally melancholy aspect, besides
both his ears being missing, took a bone flute from his
lava-lava and began to blow a weird *Te Deum*. Gabrielle
could hardly believe her eyes as the tambu maidens
started to whirl their bodies in perfect silence to the
sound of the wild man’s piping. Only the jingle of
the *rami* shells, tinkling in exact *tempo* to the wailing
fife (made out of the thigh-bone of some dead high
priest), told her that those girls were whirling rapidly
in the forest shadows. The hags and chiefs had already
fallen prone on their stomachs, so that they could perform
the lost mysterious rite. This rite necessitated
them rising repeatedly to their knees so that they
might take in a deep breath and blow their stomachs
out, balloon-like, to enormous proportions. The contrast
was weird in the extreme when their bodies
receded and subsided into a mass of wrinkles. This
strange rite took about five minutes to perform. It was
a rite that was supposed to blow the sins of the dead
away ere the spirit entered shadow-land.

As soon as this ritual was completed two of the
chiefs climbed the grave-palm and then, hanging in a
marvellous way by their feet, they leaned earthwards
and gripped the dead girl’s coffin-mat by the sennet
handles. One old woman (the mother probably) rushed
hastily forward, and lifting the corpse’s hand kissed it.
Then the living limbs of the weird grave-elevators went
taut as, still with their heads hanging downwards, they
clutched the coffin-mat and slowly pulled the dead
figure foot by foot off *terra firma* towards the sky!
In a few moments the dead girl lay lashed to the bough
of her strange grave, high up in the forest coco-palm.
Suddenly the mourners had all vanished! Even
Gabrielle felt some of the fright that haunted the souls
of those wild people. They had hurried away because
it was known that directly the forest wind blew across
the new-made grave the soul of the dead departed
for shadow-land and must not be tainted by the breath
of the living. After seeing that sight Gabrielle hurried
away also. She trembled as she stepped at last out of
the forest shadows into the glory of the sunlight. She
seemed to realise at that moment that the sun was the
visible god of the universe, the rolling orb that woos
the world, creating the green happiness of the woods
and bills. She saw the migrating birds going south
as she lifted her eyes. Perhaps she felt the winged
poetry of the birds on their flight to the southward,
hurrying away like symbols of our own brief days.
Her eyes were very concentrated as she sighed and then
jumped carelessly on to a springy banyan bough and
began to sing one of her peculiar songs. Suddenly
she ceased to sing, and a startled look leapt into her
eyes as she turned her head. She had even let her
swinging legs fall stiff so that the old blue robe might
fall and hide her pretty ankles. Then she gave a merry
peal of laughter that frightened the life out of a decrepit
cockatoo. “Cah-eah! Whoo-cah!” it shrieked
as it left its high perch and flapped away. Hillary
looked up and threw a coco-nut at it and missed by a
hundred yards. It was he who had disturbed the girl.
As the apprentice stood before her she blushed softly,
as though her bright eyes and face mysteriously reflected
the sunset fire that shone on the sea horizon
to the westward.

Hillary metaphorically rubbed his hands over his
luck. He had strolled over the hills for no other reason
than to get clear of his growling landlady, who had
begun to give hints over delayed rent. Nor was the
old half-caste woman to be blamed, for many white
youths from “Peretania” arrived in the Solomon Isles
crammed with hopes and promises and little cash!
Besides, the evening was the only time fit for a quiet
stroll without being charged by myriads of sand-flies
and other winged, tropical things. Though Gabrielle
had hinted to him that she generally took her walks
by the lagoons, he had gathered that she was usually
busy at the twilight hours getting her father’s tea,
polishing his wooden leg, etc. Consequently, Hillary’s
face was aglow with pleasure as he approached the girl.
In his confusion he lifted his cap and bowed as men
bow to maids in civilised communities. Gabrielle, who
was unused to such gallant manners, was delighted.
She even gave a little nod in response. It was a most
fascinating bit of “court etiquette” on her part, for
she had learnt it from her French novels. Hillary,
who had especially noticed and loved the girl’s wild,
rough, fascinating ways, was charmed at Gabrielle’s
tiny bit of “put-on.” It would have been impossible
to reproduce the expression of his face as he flung himself
down in the fern-grass close to Gabrielle.

The girl who was again swinging to and fro on the
banyan bough, looked sideways like a parrot on the
apprentice’s face, wondering why he looked so confused.
Hillary always felt shy when she looked at him
with those childish, big eyes.

“I’m going to clear out of this God-forsaken place
soon,” he said, as he found his voice. Then he continued:
“It’s marvellous how a girl like you can exist
in this infernal hole, full of tattooed savages.”

She only stared at him as he rambled on, and wondered
why he attracted her so. Then she laughed like
a child, and looking him straight in the face said:
“You are very different to the other men I’ve seen
round these parts.” Hillary felt himself redden as she
stared into his eyes; she looked critically for a moment
and said: “Different coloured eyes too!” Then she
added artlessly: “Do you drink rum?”

“On cold nights at sea,” Hillary responded, as he
stroked his chin and felt amused at the girl’s remarks.

And still the girl sang on as he watched her. She
looked like a faery child as she sat there swinging on
the banyan bough, the music of her voice ringing
some elfin tune into his ears. There was a look that
reminded him of Keats’s *La Belle Dame Sans Merci*.
Indeed, the apprentice half fancied that she was some
visionary girl sitting there singing to him from a banyan
bough in the Solomon Isles. And as the sea-winds
drifted in and made a kind of moaning music in the
ivory-nut palms their murmurings seemed to sing:

   | “I met a lady in the meads,
   | Full beautiful—a faery’s child;
   | Her hair was long, her foot was light,
   | And her eyes were wild.
   |
   | “I set her on my pacing steed,
   | And nothing else saw all day long,
   | For sidelong would she bend, and sing
   | A faery’s song.
   |
   | “I saw pale kings and princes too,
   | Pale warriors, death-pale were they all;
   | They cried: ‘La Belle Dame sans Merci
   | Hath thee in thrall!’”

A strange bird that neither knew the name of began
to whistle its evening song and broke the spell. “I
wish that damned bird hadn’t come and spoilt everything,”
was Hillary’s most emphatic mental comment.
Gabrielle had stopped singing. “Do you love the songs
of birds, Miss Everard?” he said as he looked at her
and gave an inane smile.

“I do this evening,” she replied, then quickly added:
“It’s the tribal drums, that horrible booming and
banging in the mountains, that I hate to hear!”

“Fancy that!” said Hillary, somewhat surprised, as
he listened to the distant echoes—it was the tribal
drums up in the native village beating the stars in.

“I was just thinking how romantic that distant
drumming sounded; the people in the far-off cities of
the world would give something to hear that primitive
overture to the night, I can tell you,” said he.

“Fancy that! Why——” said Gabrielle, as she
over-balanced and fell from the bough in considerable
confusion at his feet. Hillary made a grab as though
she had yet another sheer depth to fall.

“Oh, allow me!” he exclaimed, as he picked her
novel up. The girl whipped her robe down swiftly
and hid the brown, ornamental-stockinged calves
that a few months before had been exposed by short
skirts to the gaze of all those who might wish to stare.
Gabrielle blushed as she rearranged her crimson sash.
She was dressed in a kind of Oriental style, in a sarong,
opened at the sleeves to about one inch above the
elbows. The crimson sash was tied bow-wise at the
left hip; a large hibiscus blossom was stuck coquettishly
in the folds of her hair, making her small white
ear peep out like a pearly shell. Her *retroussé* nose
had a tiny scratch on it where a bee had stung her the
day before.

“Why, you’ve scratched your arm!” exclaimed
Hillary, taking advantage of the delicate situation by
gently pulling back the sleeve of her sarong and boldly
wiping a tiny speck of blood away from the soft whiteness
that had been pricked by a cactus thorn. Gabrielle
put on a look of extreme modesty, notwithstanding that
she had danced on a heathen *pae pae* a few nights
before.

“Your eyes are different colours, one brown and
one a beautiful blue!” she suddenly exclaimed for
the second time as she burst into a merry peal of
laughter.

The young apprentice reddened slightly. “I can’t
help that I did not make my own eyes, did I?”
he said.

For a moment the girl stared earnestly at his face,
then said: “Well, you needn’t mind, really. I reckon
they look fine!”

“Don’t you get full up of wandering about this
heathen locality?” said Hillary, changing the conversation.
“Nothing but palm-trees, parrots, and
brown men and tattooed women roaming about gabbling
*tabak* and worshipping idols.”

Gabrielle laughed. “Don’t you care for the natives?
I think they’re amusing; especially at the festival
dances,” she added after a pause.

“Well, I don’t object to the festivals; they’re original
and decidedly attractive. I was charmed by seeing
a Polynesian maid dance like a goddess over a Buka
village two nights ago.”

“Fancy you liking to see native girls dance!” said
Gabrielle, giving a roguish glance.

“Well, I do; there’s something so fascinating and
poetic in the way they do it all,” Hillary responded.

Gabrielle readjusted the flowers in her hair, then
said: “Would you like to see me dance?”

“Dear me, I certainly should!” exclaimed the young
apprentice, his eyes betraying the astonishment he
felt over her question.

“Shall I dance?” Gabrielle repeated.

“What! Now!” he exclaimed. He lit his cigarette
twice over, wondering if she were laughing at him
or really meant that she would dance there on the spot.

Before he could say another word Gabrielle had
risen to her feet and was dancing before him. He
blew his nose, coughed, put on an inane smile and then
fairly gasped in his astonishment and admiration.
Her tripping feet softly brushed the blue forest flowers
and tall, ferny grass that swished against her loose
robe. Hillary’s embarrassment had changed to a tremendous
interest in the originality of the dancer before
him. He clapped his hands in a kind of obsequious
way for an encore as she swayed in a most fascinating
manner, her hair tumbling over her shoulders, her
eyes shining, one hand holding up the fold of her
sarong-like robe, just revealing her brown stocking
above the left ankle. “Well, I’m blessed!” he breathed.
She had begun to hum a weird melody; her right
hand was outstretched, uplifted as though she held a
goblet of wine and would drink a toast to some pagan
deity.

He looked at the sunset; he half fancied that it
had always been staring from the ocean rim, and would
never set! And as he looked at the dancing figure
she really did seem to hold a goblet in her outstretched
hand—full to the brim—with the gold of sunset that
touched the landscape and was glinting over her
tumbling hair and eyes.

“The Solomon Isles! The Solomon Isles!” was
all that he could breathe to himself as she stared at him,
a strange fixed look in her eyes. A cockatoo fluttered
down to the lowest bough of the bread-fruit tree, looked
sideways on her swaying figure, slowly flapped its blue-tipped
wings in surprise and chuckled discordantly.

“Ta-ra-ra-boom-de-ay!” chimed in Hillary, as he
clapped his hands, stared idiotically and felt like hiding
behind the thick trunk of the bread-fruit.

“Well now! You dance perfectly!” he gasped.
Gabrielle had ceased tripping. She looked embarrassed
and had begun to coil up her tumbling tresses.

“Worth chewing salt-horse and hard-tack on a
dozen voyages to have seen what I’ve seen!” was the
apprentice’s inward reflection.

“Do the girls in England dance like that?” she
said in an eager, frightened way.

“Oh no, not as well as you’ve danced. Blest if
they do!” said he. That last remark of hers made him
realise that girl before him was half-wild and had
danced before him as a child might ere it became self-conscious.
“Fancy meeting a beautiful white girl,
half-wild! It’s thrilling! I wonder what will be the
end of it,” mused Hillary, as he stared on that strange
maid whom he had chanced upon so suddenly.

Suddenly she said: “I’m no good at all; you may
think I am, but I’m not.”

“Aren’t you?” murmured Hillary, somewhat taken
aback.

“You’re a clever girl. Not many girls can quote
the poets and rattle off verses as you can. I suppose
your father’s an educated kind of man and has a good
library?” he added after a pause.

Gabrielle’s hearty peal of laughter at the idea of her
father possessing a library made the frightened parrots
flutter in a wheel-like procession over the belt of shoreward
mangroves. Then she said: “Well, my father
has got a lot of books, but they really belonged to a
ship’s captain—a nice old man who lived with us years
ago, when I was a child.” Then she added: “His ship
was blown ashore here in a typhoon and when he went
away he left all his books behind him in Dad’s bungalow.
I’ve learned almost all I know from those
books.” Saying this, she pointed with her finger
towards the shore, and said: “From the top of that
hill you can see the old captain’s ship to-day: it’s a
big wreck with three masts. Father told me that the
old captain often got sentimental and went up on the
hills to stare through a telescope at his old ship lying
on the reefs.”

“How romantic! So I’ve to thank the old captain
that you can quote the works of the poets to me,”
said Hillary. Then he added: “But still, you’re a
clever girl, there’s no doubt about it.”

“I’m secretly wicked, down in the very depths of
me.”

“No! Surely not!” gasped the apprentice as he
stared at the girl.

Then he smiled and said quickly: “What you’ve
just said is proof enough that you’re not wicked.
You’re imaginative, and so you imagine that you have
limitations that no one else has. If anyone’s wicked
it’s me, I know,” he added, laughing quietly.

“I’ve got the limitations right enough, that’s why
I feel so strange and miserable at times.”

“Don’t feel miserable, please don’t,” said Hillary
softly as he blessed the silence of the primitive spot
and the opportunity that had arisen for his direct
sympathy.

“You must remember that we all have our besetting
sins, and that the majority of us think our besetting
sin is our prime virtue,” he said. “I’ve been all over
the world but never met a girl like you before,” he
added in a sentimental way.

“I can take that as the reverse of a compliment,”
said Gabrielle, laughing musically.

“Believe me, Gabrielle, I would not say things to
you that I might say in a bantering way to other girls
I’ve met. I dreamed of you when I was a child, so to
speak. It seems strange that I should at last have
met you out here in the Solomon Isles, that we should
be sitting here by a blue lagoon in which our shadows
seem to swim together.”

“Look into those dark waters,” he added after a
pause.

Gabrielle looked, and as she looked Hillary became
bold and placed his hand softly on her shoulder,
amongst her golden tresses that tumbled about her
neck. And Gabrielle, who could see every act as she
stared on their images in the water, smiled.

“It’s a pity you’re so wicked,” said Hillary jokingly.
Then he added suddenly: “Ah! I could fall
madly in love with a girl, like you if only I thought I
were worthy of you.—What’s the matter?”

“Oh, nothing,” said Gabrielle. Hillary noticed that
she had become pale and trembling.

“Why, you’ve caught a chill!” he said in monstrous
concern, though it was 100° in the shade and the heat-blisters
were ripe to burst on his neck.

“Dad thinks everything that he does is quite perfect,”
Gabrielle said, just to change the conversation,
for the look she saw in the young apprentice’s eyes
strangely smote her heart.

“Of course he does,” said Hillary absently.

The girl, looking eagerly into his face, said: “You
know quite well that you play your violin beautifully,
I suppose?”

“I’m the rottenest player in the world.”

The girl at this gave a merry ripple of laughter and
said: “Now I *do* believe in your theory, for I’ve heard
you play beautifully in the grog bar by Rokeville.
You played this”—here she closed her lips and
hummed a melody from *Il Trovatore*.

“Good gracious! you don’t mean to tell me that
you hover about the Rokeville grog shanty after
dark?” exclaimed Hillary.

Gabrielle seemed surprised at his serious look, then
she burst into another silvery peal of laughter that
echoed to the mountains.

Hillary looked into her eyes, and seeing that eerie
light of witchery which so fascinated him, felt that he
had met his fate.

“If I can’t get her to love me I’m as good as dead,”
was his mental comment. Even the music of her
laughter thrilled him. Then she rose from the ferns,
and sitting on the banyan bough again started to swing
to and fro, singing some weird strain that she had
evidently learnt from the tambu dancers in the tribal
villages.

“It seems like some wonderful dream, she a beautiful
girl with flowers in her hair, sitting there singing
to me,” thought the apprentice.

Then she looked down at him, gave a mischievous
peal of laughter, and said: “Oh, I say, you are a
flatterer! I almost forgot who I really was while you
were saying those poetic things about me!”

“Don’t laugh at me, I’m serious enough,” Hillary
responded, as he looked earnestly at the swaying figure.
Heaven knows how far Hillary might have progressed
in his love affair had not the usual noisy interruption
occurred at the usual crucial moment. Just as he felt
the true hero of a South Sea romance—sitting there
in a perfect picture of ferns and forest flowers, sunset
fading on a sea horizon, dark-fingered palms bending
tenderly over his beloved by a lagoon—with a rude
rush out of the forest it came! It was not a ferocious
boar, or revengeful elephant; it was a bulky, heavily
breathing figure that seemed the embodiment of
prosaic reality. It was attired in large, loose pantaloons,
belted at the waist, a vandyke beard and mighty,
viking-like moustachios drooping down to the Herculean
shoulder curves.

“What the blazes!” gasped Hillary, as he looked
over his shoulder and saw that massive personality
step out from underneath the forest palms. The
strange being wore an antediluvian topee and an extraordinary,
old-fashioned, long-tailed coat. The atmosphere
of another age hung about him. A colt
revolver stuck in his leather belt seemed to have some
strong link of kinship with the grim determination of
its owner’s mouth.

“What-o, chum! How’s the gal?” Saying this,
the new-comer put forth his huge, thorny palm and
emphasised his monstrous presence by bringing it
down smash!—nearly fracturing Hillary’s spine.

“What-o, friend from the great unknown!” came
like an obsequious echo from the young apprentice’s
lips as, recovering his breath, he saw the humour of
the situation. Hillary well knew that it was wise to
return such Solomon Island civility as affably as possible.
At that first onslaught Gabrielle had jumped
behind Hillary’s back when he had sprung to his feet.
No one knows how long that new-comer had stood
hidden behind the palm stems before he came forth.
Anyhow, he rubbed his big hands together in a mighty
good temper, chuckling to himself to think his presence
should be so little desired. He bowed to the girl
with massive, Homeric gallantry. Then, as they both
stared with open-mouthed wonder, he put his hand up
and, twisting his enormous moustache-end on the starboard
side, courteously inquired the route for the
equivalent of the South Sea halls of Olympus. It was
then, and with the most consummate impertinence
imaginable, that he gave them both the full view of his
Herculean back and put forth his mighty feet to go
once more on his way, bound for the wooden halls of
Bacchus—the nearest grog shanty.

Such a being as that intruder on Gabrielle’s and
Hillary’s privacy might well seem to exist in the
imagination only, but he was real enough. That remarkable
individual was only one of many of his kind
who, having left their ship on some drunken spree,
roamed the islands, seeking the nearest grog shanty,
after some drunken carousal in the inland tribal
villages.

As that massive figure passed away he left his breath,
so to speak, behind him. It seemed to pervade all
things, sending a pungent flavour of adventure over
forest, hill and lagoon. Indeed, the faery-like creation
into which Hillary’s imagination had so beautifully
transmuted Gabrielle—vanished. “Well, I’m
jiggered!” he muttered. As for Gabrielle, she looked
as though she was half sorry to see that handsome
personality go. His big, grey eyes had gazed at her
with an unmistakable, yet not rude, look of admiration.
Indeed, before he strode away he gazed at Hillary as
though with a mighty concern, as though he would not
hesitate to redress wrongs done to fair maids who had
been lured into a South Sea forest by such as he.

“Do you know him?” gasped the apprentice as the
man went off; but the astonished look in the girl’s
eyes at once convinced him that the late visitor was a
stranger to Gabrielle as well as to himself. It all
happened so suddenly that he wondered if he had
dreamed of that remarkable presence. But the frightened
cockatoos still giving their ghostly “Cah! Cah!”
over the palms were real enough. And as they both
listened they could still hear the fading crash of the
travelling feet that accompanied some rollicking song,
as the big sea-boots of that extraordinary being beat
down the scrubby forest growth as they travelled due
south-west.

Gabrielle little dreamed as she stood there listening
how one day she would hear that intruder’s big voice
again, and with what welcome music it would ring
in her ears.

Gabrielle laughed quietly to herself as the intruder
passed away and seemingly left a mighty silence behind
him. She had seen many men of his type in her short
day, not only in Rokeville, but out on the ships that
anchored in the harbour. She had also seen stranded
sailors at Gualdacanar, at Ysabel and at Malaita, where
her father had taken her on a trip a year or so before.
Such men stood out of the ruck, quite distinct from
the ordinary run of beachcombers, who were usually
stranded scallawags, seeking out the tenderfoots who
would stand them drinks in the nearest grog bar.
Hillary saw that new-comer as some mighty novelty
in the way of man; to the young apprentice the late
intruder was something between a Ulysses and a Don
Quixote. And Hillary’s conception of the man’s character
was not far wrong. Anyway, he did not express
his private opinion, for he looked up at Gabrielle and
said: “Good Lord, what an awful being. Glad to see
the back of him!”

It may have been that the late stranger’s presence
had turned Hillary’s thoughts to his sailor life, for that
massive being positively smelt of the high seas, of
tornadoes and sea-board life on buffeting voyages to
distant lands. Looking up at Gabrielle, he suddenly
said: “I’m going aboard the schooner that is due to
leave for Apia next week. I’m on the look-out for a
berth. I suppose I sha’n’t see you any more if I get
a job?”

Everard’s daughter gazed at the apprentice for a
moment as though she did not quite know her own
mind concerning his query. Then she sighed and said:
“Must you go away to sea again?”

Hillary looked steadily into the girl’s face. He could
not express his thoughts, tell her that he would wish
to stay with her always. What would she do were he
to spring towards her, clutch her tenderly, fold her in
his arms, rain impassioned kisses on her lips, look into
her eyes and behave in general like an escaped lunatic?
She might think he was mad!—race from him, screaming
with fright, seeking her father’s assistance, or even
hasten for the native police. Such were the thoughts
that flashed through Hillary’s mind. And so, although
he longed to do all these things, he only stood half-ashamed
over the passionate thoughts that flamed in his
brain as he gazed into the half-laughing eyes of the girl.

They sat and talked of many things. Hillary forgot
the outside world. He half fancied he had been sitting
there for thousands of years with that strange girl by
his side. He spoke to her of scenes that were remote
from Bougainville: of England, of London and the
wide bridges over the Thames, and of the deep, dark
waters that bore the tall ships away from the white
Channel cliffs, taking wanderers to other lands. And
as the girl listened she saw old London as some city
of enchantment and romance, where cold-eyed men and
women tramped down labyrinthine streets by dark
walls. In her imagination she even fancied she heard
the mighty clock chime the hour over that far-off city
of wonder and romance.

“Fancy! And you’ve lived there! Actually seen
the great palaces, the spires and towers that I’ve read
of and dreamed about!” said Gabrielle. Then she
added: “And you’ve seen the queen and the beautiful
princesses?”

“Yes, Gabrielle, I have.”

Then she said artlessly: “Weren’t they sorry when
you left England for the Solomon Isles?”

For a moment Hillary was grimly silent, then he
said: “Well, they were, rather!”

Gabrielle’s innocence and his own mendacity had
broken the spell that home-sickness and distance had
cast over him, the spell that had enabled him to picture
to Gabrielle’s mind the atmosphere of old London in
such true perspective. Indeed, as he talked, Bougainville,
with all its novelty and heathenish atmosphere,
became some dull, drab reality and London a great
modern Babylon of his own hungry-souled century.
His voice as well as Gabrielle’s became hushed. He
was so carried away by his own vivid imagination that
he fancied he *had* dwelt in some ancient city of smoky
romance, and had seen a Semiramis on her throne, and
Pharaoh-like peoples of a past age. It was only the
eerie beauty of Gabrielle’s eyes that awakened him to
the reality that blurs man’s inward vision. The girl
had handed him a small flower which she had taken
from her hair.

“Could anything be more innocent and beautiful,”
he thought as he placed that first symbol of the girl’s
awakening affection for him in the buttonhole of his
brass-bound jacket.

Night had fallen over the island. “I must go,” said
Gabrielle. “It’s terribly late.”

“So it is!” Hillary moaned regretfully. Gabrielle
hastily jumped into her canoe, fear in her heart over
the coming wrath of her father. Hillary had intended
to place his arms about her and embrace her before
she went, but his chance had gone!

As he stood beneath the tamuni-trees and watched,
she looked more like an elf-girl than ever, as her canoe
shot out into the shadows of the moon-lit lagoon and
was paddled swiftly away.

CHAPTER III—SOUTH SEA OPERA BOUFFE
==================================

Hillary hardly knew where he was going as
he walked back round the coast, thinking of
Gabrielle Everard and all that had upset his
mind. When he at last arrived at his lodgings, the
old wooden shack near Rokeville, he was tired out.
Even pretty Mango Pango, the half-caste Polynesian
servant-maid, wondered why on earth he looked so
solemn as she gave her usual salutation: “Tolafa!
Monsieur Hilly-aire!”

“Nasty face no belonger you!” said the cheeky girl
as the young apprentice forced a smile to his lips,
chucked her under her pretty, dimpled brown chin, and
then went off into his room. It wouldn’t have been
called a room in a civilised city, unless a small trestle
bed, a tub and fourteen calabashes and wooden walls
ornamented with grotesque-looking Kai-kai clubs and
native spears deserved that name. He could even see
the stars twinkling through the roof chinks on windy
nights, when the palms swayed inland to the breath
of the typhoon and no longer let their dark-fingered
leaves hide the cracks half across the wooden ceiling.
But still, that mattered nothing to him; the companionship
of his own reflections, away from the oaths of
grog-shanty men, beachcombers on the shores, and
surly skippers, and jabbering natives, made up amply
for all the apparent discomfort of his apartments.

Pretty Mango Pango, the housemaid, was singing
some weird native melody; it seemed to soothe his
nerves as the strains, from somewhere in the outbuildings,
came to his ears while he sat there reflecting.
He thought of England, and wondered what his people
thought over his long silence. He knew that they
must by then know the truth, for his ship must have
arrived back in the old country long, long ago without
him. He thought of the wild life he was leading as
compared with life in London. “It’s like being in
another world.” Standing there by the window
listening to the tribal drums beating in the mountains,
he thought he saw the dark firs and palms for miles
over the inland hills. And as he stared he felt the
eeriness of the scene, and he remembered the ghostly
figures that sailors swore they saw on those moon-lit
nights, even when rum was scarce. As he thought of
Gabrielle his brain became etherealised with dreams.
He took out his dilapidated volume of Shelley’s poems
and read *The Ode to the West Wind*, and finally became
so sentimental that he sat down and wrote this
letter home:

    Dear Mater,—Forgive me for not writing before
    this. I ran away from my ship. Though the skipper
    smiled like an angel when you saw him, he turned out
    a fiend incarnate. I’m out here in the Solomon Isles.
    I often think of you.... You’d never believe the
    wonderful things I’ve seen, the experiences I’ve gone
    through, since I left you all. I couldn’t stand
    Australia.

    First of all I must tell you that the natives here are
    inveterate cannibals, but still they’re not likely to eat
    me. I’ve got tough. The wonderful part of it all is
    this: I’ve met a most beautiful, eerie kind of girl here
    in the Solomon Isles. She comes up to all that I ever
    dreamed of in the way of beauty and innocence in
    human shape. I know, dear, that you will smile, that
    thousands of men have thought they had come across
    the one perfect woman; but it seems to me something
    to be thankful to God for that I should *really* find her!
    And living out here in these God-forsaken isles, too!
    Her father’s not much of a catch in the way of prospects.
    But he’s a retired captain and, I believe, is
    well respected by the population. I’m sure you would
    like Gabrielle if you saw her, and you will see her if
    I can manage it all.... It seems gross to have to
    mention business prospects after mentioning her.

    Well, I’m making fine progress with my music.
    I’ve mastered Paganini’s twenty-four Caprices. I’ve
    also composed some wonderful pieces. I know they’re
    good....

    I’m reading Shelley, Byron and Swinburne and
    Tolstoy’s *Kreutzer Sonata*. The people here seem
    strangely to lack poetic vision. They are wonderful
    men, though, brave and truthful in their forcible expression
    at the concerts outside the Beach Hotel. It’s
    a kind of Brighton Hotel, but the *prima donnas* are
    dusky. I was knighted by a tribal king the other night.

    Kiss dear sister Bertha for me. Tell her to read
    Balzac’s *Wild Ass’s Skin*. It’s a beautiful book.
    She must skip the chapters where the woman’s silken
    knee comes in, etc., etc. Your affectionate, loving son,

    .. class:: right
    
       Hillary.

Having penned the foregoing epistle, Hillary placed
it in his sea-chest. Like many of his temperament,
he wrote more letters under the impulse of the moment
than he ever posted.

“It’s early yet,” he said to himself as he stared out
of the window and saw the moonlight stealing across
the rows of mountain palms to the south-west. He
could hear the faint rattling of the derrick, where some
schooner was being unloaded by night. That noise
seemed to rouse him from his dreams. He lit his pipe
and crept out of the door. A puff of cool ocean breeze
came like a draught of scented wine to his nostrils;
for it had passed over the pine-apple plantations and
drifted down the orange and lemon groves. The
pungent odours seemed to intoxicate him. But still
he was feeling moody, so he started off over the slopes.
He was off to the grog shanty. He knew that originality
abounded in that drinking saloon and in the neighborhood
of its wooden walls.

The grog shanty of Bougainville harbour was known
by sailormen as far as the four corners of the world as
the finest pick-me-up and dispeller of fits of the blues
in existence. Indeed, that shanty was a kind of medicine
chest, the magical chemist’s shop of the Pacific. It
was the *opéra bouffe* of South Sea life: it made the
cynic smile, the poet philosophical, the madman feel
that he must surely be deadly sane, and the ne’er-do-wells
drunk with happiness. Indeed, the consequential,
heavily moustached German consul, Arn Von de
Sixth, had crept down the Rokeville highroad one night
and seen such sights that German culture received a
shock! He at once issued an edict that no native
girls were to visit the precincts of the grog shanties
after sunset.

But notwithstanding his strict orders the dances
still went on. Indeed, as Hillary arrived in sight of
the dead screw-pine that flew the Double Eagle flag
the scene that met his gaze fairly astonished him. It
was as though he was witnessing some phantom-like
cinematograph show. A small cloud that traversed
the clear tropic sky suddenly blurred the moon, sending
lines of shadows over the shining spaces outside the
grog shanty. This made the scenic effect look as
though a covey of dusky female ghosts had rushed
from the jungle and were whirling their semi-robed
limbs in wild delight beneath the coco-palms. If the
apprentice had any idea that the scene was supernatural
it must have been swiftly dispelled by the sound
of the wild chorus of a chantey coming from the hoarse-throated
sailormen assembled outside Parsons’s bar.
Then the moon seemed to burst into a silvery flood of
silent laughter that went tumbling over the dark palm
groves, drenched the distant shore forests with pale
light, and touched the dim horizon of the sea; it even
lit up the bearded mouths of the shellbacks and revealed
the brilliant eyes of the dusky ballet girls who
had stolen down from the mountain villages. They had
their chaperon with them in the shape of old High
Chief Bango Seru. Those brown girls were his prize
gamal-house, or tambu dancers. A mighty calabash
was by his side. It was in that handy receptacle that
he carefully placed the accumulating bribes that he
demanded as payment for all that his dusky protégé
did—and ought not to do! Parsons, the bar-keeper,
poked his elongated, bald cranium out of the shanty’s
doorway and shook his towel violently. (It was the
signal that no German official was in sight.)

Once more pretty Singa Mavoo and Loa Mog-wog
lifted their *ramis* (chemises), revealed their nut-brown
knees and swerved with inimitable grace. The Yankee
nudged the German half-caste in the ribs till they both
so roared with laughter that they fell down. It was a
kind of miniature representation of the wine of the
European music hall and *opéra bouffe* poured into one
goblet so that the onlooker might swallow the draught
at a gulp! Oom Pa, the aged high priest, was there.
That fervent ecclesiastic had been unable to resist
the temptation thrown out to him by the half-caste
German sailors and grog-bar keepers. There he stood,
as plain as plain could be, his eyes alive with avarice,
as he too winked, begged for a drink and solemnly
pointed out the attractions of his two pretty, semi-nude
granddaughters, who danced ecstatically, so that he
might add his mite to the collection-box for the heathen
temple fund down at Ackra-Ackra.

The most unimaginative of those onlookers breathed
a sigh of admiration when two Malayo-Polynesian
youths stepped out of the shadows and put forth their
arms, looking at first like dusky statues, not only because
of their perfect terra-cotta limbs and artistic
pose, but because of their graceful erectness as their
arms and legs moved with marvellous symmetrical precision.
Even the night seemed astonished as a breath of
wind came in from the seas and ran across the island
trees. For now it seemed like a shadow-world peopled
with puppets. The youths put forth their arms and
dived up, up between the palms, coming down on their
bare feet like dusky marionettes dropping softly from
the moon-lit sky! Then the tambu maids began to
chant and dance. Only the weird jingling of their
armlets and leglets showed that they were really there
in the shadows, as the shellbacks in their wide-brimmed
hats looked on in silence.

“Tavoo! Malloot!” suddenly said a voice. The
effect of those two words was magical. Every maid,
dancer and onlooker had vanished! Only the palms
sighed as though in sorrow of it all as a German official’s
white helmet hat came into sight far along
the beach.

“Did I dream it all?” murmured Hillary. He
rubbed his eyes; then he went across the sands to the
spot where the dancers had done such wondrous feats.
He stamped with his foot to see if there was some
subterranean outlet through which the dancers could
so mysteriously disappear. But all was solid enough.
The moon still shone with its silent, religious light.
Parsons flapped his towel three times from the grog-bar
doorway. One could have sworn that the rough
men in his bar-room had never left their drinks as they
stood there solemnly pulling their beards, discussing
old grievances in hushed voices. Not a breath of
wind stirred the phantom-like palm groves outside;
only the chants of the cicalas were faintly audible as
they clacked down in the tall bamboo grass of the
swamps and shore lagoons. Those old sailors and
shellbacks looked the picture of honesty *till* they gazed
meaningly into each other’s eyes and drank on, sighed
and sent the flames of the roof oil lamps flickering
over their wide-brimmed hats. But even they gave a
startled jump as something out in the silent night
went “Bang!” It might have been the signal that
any kind of horror was being perpetrated. But it was
only a mighty thump on a tribal drum, somewhere up
in a mountain village, telling the frightened inhabitants
that all was well, that the last of the tambu maids
had arrived safely, had entered the stockade gates
and that their pagan world might rest in peace for the
remainder of the night.

Even Hillary responded to the far-off voice of the
tribal drum, for he turned away and strolled back to his
humble lodging-house. As he went over the slopes
he saw Oom Pa staggering homeward with his mighty
calabashes, minus his granddaughters, who had come
down from the mountain villages. All was silent as
he crept beneath the palms, passed under the verandah
and entered his room. Even Mango Pango was snoring
on her sleeping-mat in the kitchen, so late was it.
And yet, as he looked out of his open window and
yawned, he could distinctly hear the sounds of muffled
drums beating across the slopes.

“Damned if there is not another heathen festival on
somewhere,” he muttered. It was true enough: the
full-moon festivals were in progress, and down at
Ackra-Ackra they were chanting and banging, and
their sacred maids were dancing to the discordant
music. Had Hillary known *who* was dancing at that
moment on a tambu stage only two miles away he
wouldn’t have slept much that night. But he was
oblivious to all that happened, so he fell asleep and
dreamed of dusky whirling ghosts and fate-like drums
that swept dancing maidens away into a shadowy
pageant of swift-footed figures that bolted into the
mountains and were seen no more.

CHAPTER IV—THE SOUL’S RIVAL
===========================

As soon as Gabrielle Everard had paddled across
the lagoon and passed from Hillary’s enraptured
sight she pulled her little craft up on
the sandy beach, hid it amongst the tall rushes and
started off home. She stood for a moment hidden
beneath the mangoes till three jabbering, hurrying
native chiefs had passed by.

As she watched them recede from sight down into
the gloom of the sylvan glades, she gave a sigh. “I
hate to see those big tatooed chiefs; it’s through them
that I feel so wild at times, I’m sure. I simply curse
that ancestor of mine who married a dark woman.
Why, I’d sooner die than marry a dark man!” Then
she added: “Pooh! Why should I worry? I’m white
enough, since I feel such a dislike for them—but, still,
I do like dancing and singing at times, I admit.”

Then she thought of the young apprentice; his
bronzed, frank face and earnest eyes rose before her
memory. “He does look handsome; those odd-coloured
eyes of his do fascinate me; but it’s a pity
he’s not a passionate kind, who would make love like
those handsome chiefs do when they sing to their
brides on the *pae paes* and tambu stages. But there,
they’re wild and can’t control their passions as we do!”
she added. She looked down into the lagoon at her
image and blushed deeply at her own thoughts. “I’m
getting quite a pretty girl—almost a beautiful woman,”
was her next reflection, as she noticed her large shadowy
eyes and her full throat in the still water.

“Hallo, Ramai!” she exclaimed, as a graceful
native girl suddenly stepped out of the bamboo
thickets, stared with large dark eyes at her, then made
as if to pass on. “Don’t go, Ramai,” said Gabrielle.
The girl stared sphinx-like for a second, then moved
on. “I go, Madesi, to pray, tabaran! Must go or die!”
answered the strange maid as she turned round, then
pointed her dark finger in the direction of the god-house
that was situated somewhere in the taboo
mountains.

“Your old god-houses! Do you really believe in
them?” said Gabrielle, looking earnestly into the
strange maid’s serious eyes. For a moment Ramai
stared, put her brown knee forward, made a magic
pass with her hands above her head, and said: “The
gods have spoken more than once to Ramai when
the stars did shine in the lagoons and the caves by
Temeroesi, and told the future. And am I not sacred
in the eyes of the gods? For I am head singer at the
tambu festivals, so are my love affairs good, and chiefs
have died for that look from my eyes that would tell
all that a woman may say.”

“If I danced on the *pae paes* would I be loved too?”
said Gabrielle almost eagerly.

“Pale-faced Marama, you no dance; the gods like
not your kind!” Ramai answered almost scornfully.
Then she glided away into the shadows on the other
side of the track and disappeared.

Gabrielle burst into a merry peal of laughter. Once
more she looked at her image in the lagoon and began
to chant and sway and clap her hands rhythmically,
just as she had seen the natives do. The deep boom of
the bronze pigeon recalled her to herself as she stood
throwing her shapely limbs softly to and fro. The
songs of the birds seemed to remind her that she was
no longer a child, and that such antics were a bit out
of place now that she wore long dresses. She stopped
dead, and put her hands into the folds of her hair that
had fallen in a glinting mass to her shoulders as she
shuffled her sandalled feet in the long jungle grass.

“I’m really getting awful,” was her next reflection.
The sun was lying broad on the western sea-line; it
looked like an enormous, dissipated, blood-splashed
face that would hurry to hide itself below the rim of
the ocean, away from the violent wooing of the hot,
impassioned, tropic day.

Gabrielle stared across the seas from the hill-top and
half fancied that that great hot face grinned from ear
to ear over all it had seen. A peculiar feeling of fright
seized her heart. In a moment she had turned and
hurried away. She felt quite relieved as she sighted
her father’s bungalow beneath the shade of the bread-fruits.
“It’s late. Won’t Dad swear! I don’t care;
men must swear, I suppose,” she muttered as she
plucked up courage and entered the small door of the
solitary homestead.

The shadows of evening had fallen; the last cockatoo
had chimed its discordant vesper from the banyans
near by. The room was nearly dark as she opened the
door; only a faint stream of light crept through the
wide-open casement that was thickly covered with
twining tropic vine and sickly yellowish blossoms.
To her astonishment, she was received by her father
with a broad smile of welcome. “Come in, deary,
don’t stand there! What yer frightened of—you
*beauty*?” said old Everard, as his lean, clean-shaven
face looked up at the girl in a warning way and he
placed a forcible accent on the last two words.

“Who’s here that he should be so affable?”
thought Gabrielle.

Turning round, she was startled to see a tall figure
standing by the window. In a moment she hurried
to the mantel piece and, striking a match, lit the small
oil lamp, scolding her father all the time for his discourtesy
in allowing a stranger to stand in the darkness.
As she turned and gazed at the visitor she almost
gave a cry, so impressed was she by the appearance of
the man before her. It was the handsome Rajah Koo
Macka, the half-caste Malayo-Papuan missionary.
He was attired in semi-European clothes, but with
this difference—round his waist was twined a large
red sash and on his head the tribal insignia of the
Malay Archipelago Rajahship, which consisted of
coils of richly coloured material swathed round and
round to resemble a turban. He looked like a handsome
Corsair who had suddenly stepped out of an
Eastern seraglio. For a moment the girl stared in
astonishment; the Rajah corresponded with her conception
of what the grand old heroes of romance were like.

The Rajah took in the whole situation and the impression
he had made at this first glance at the father
and daughter. He swelled his chest and assumed his
most majestic attitude, and then behaved as though he
knew he had befriended the girl by being at her homestead
at that opportune moment.

“My darter!” said old Everard, inclining his lean
face and introducing the girl with a grin.

“Your daughter!” gasped the Rajah as he stared
with all the boldness and brazen admiration that
Hillary’s eyes had lacked into Gabrielle’s face. He
was taking no risks, had no idealistic views about
innocence and beauty to thwart his heart’s desires—in
a sense he had already captured her!

Gabrielle, recovering from that thrilling glance,
blushed deeply. She stared at the dark moustache; it
was waxed, and curled artistically at the tips. “What
eyes!—luminous, warm-looking, alive with romantic
dreams!” she thought.

The Rajah looked again at the girl. That second
swift glance made her heart tremble with fright, but
somehow she liked to see a man stare so.

“My darter ’andsome girl,” gurgled old Everard,
stumping his wooden leg twenty times in swift succession,
as Gabrielle brought out the rum bottle. The
business confab that had been going on between
Everard and his guest ceased abruptly. The old ex-sailor
took the Rajah’s proffered cigar, stuck it in his
mouth and gripped the ex-missionary’s hand, with
secret delight bubbling in his heart. That grip said to
Everard: “Everard, old pal, I never knew you had
such a bonny daughter. Never mind the business I
came here about, I’ll supply you with cash for
rum!” The old sailor rubbed his hands. He knew
that the man before him was wealthy, owned a
schooner, and was boss of two plantations in Honolulu,
where he had first met him. He put forth his horny
fist and gave the Rajah the first familiar nudge of
equality.

Everard was altogether worldly, but utterly unworldly
in the great human sense of that phrase. He
lacked the swift instincts that should have made him
discern the truth and see how the wind might blow.
His drunken eyes could not read the deeper meaning
in the Rajah’s eyes as that worthy glanced at his
daughter. He could see nothing of the passion and
lust that is so often in the hearts of the men of mixed
blood in the dark races.

Even Gabrielle’s half-fledged instincts of womanhood
made her realise that the man before her did not
exactly represent her preconceived ideas of what the
old heroes of romance would look like could they stand
before her in the flesh; the look in the Rajah’s eyes
as he gazed on her was rather too obvious.

That night as the three of them sat at the table and
Everard roared with laughter over Rajah Macka’s
jokes, and giggled in delight at discovering that the
Papuan potentate was such a fine fellow after all,
Gabrielle’s heart fluttered like a caught bird. Rajah
Koo Macka had leaned across the table once and stared
into her eyes in such a way that even old Everard had
ceased his narrative concerning his own astuteness
and, like the idiot he was, stared at the Rajah, the rum
goblet still between his lips and the table. But the
Rajah, noticing that swift look in the old ex-sailor’s
face, immediately recovered his mental equilibrium,
and with astute cunning swiftly turned to his host
and said: “I really couldn’t help staring so. Why,
bless me, Everard, this Miss Gabrielle is the dead spit
of the Madonna, the glorious painting that adorned
the sacred walls of my missionary home when I studied
Christianity’s holy precepts.”

“Damn it! Is she?” wailed old Everard, as the
artful heathen gent shaded his eyes archwise with
one dusky hand and, staring unabashed with a long,
reflective glance at Gabrielle, murmured in holiest
tones: “Virginity! Virginity! O blessed word!”

Gabrielle certainly *did* look beautiful: the dying
flowers in her bronze-golden hair and her *negligé* attire
(a much-renovated, washed-out blue robe and scarlet
sash) added to the mystery of that sordid bungalow,
as the dim candles and oil lamp burnt humbly before
the unfathomable eyes of sapphire-blue. The deep
golden gleam in their pupils seemed to expand as the
night grew old. What a night of magic it was for her!
The strange man from the seas thrilled her.

The old bungalow, lit up by two tallow candles and
one oil lamp, the smell of rum, all vanished, and the
dilapidated furniture and walls shone with a beautiful
light, a light that came from that romantic presence!
By an inscrutable paradox Macka was abnormally
sensual and selfish, and yet truly religious! He spoke
in low, sombre tones about Christ, of innocence, of
the hopes of the living and of men when they are dead.
Old Everard looked almost sane as he leaned his
Dantesque face across the table and murmured
“Amen.” And as the girl listened the Rajah loomed
before her imagination as some glorious representative
of the chivalric ages who had stolen into their bungalow
out of the hush of the great starry night. The very
walls of the room faded away as she watched his eyes
flash. It was the sudden tiny pinch on her leg as he
stooped to pick up his fallen cigar that she couldn’t
quite place. It most certainly had no Biblical import
in the books she had read. But still, “Why worry?”
she thought, as she once more came under the spell of
that look. And still old Everard looked round with
insane eyes and thanked God for a Rajah’s friendship;
and still Gabrielle struggled against the fascination of
that man of mystery. Though nature has fixed indisputable
danger signals in the eyes of voluptuaries, liars,
rogues and old *roués* so that they give themselves away
in a thousand acts, women’s blind eyes *will* not see!

All the old idolatry, the belief in his heathen gods,
returned to Rajah Koo Macka that night. His mind
was fired with superstition, much as Gabrielle’s was
by romance, as he stared upon her. Had not the gods
of his boyhood far away in New Guinea spoken of such
a one with midnight-blue eyes and the hue of the
stars in her hair? And was she not before him drinking
to his eyes as she held the goblet at his wish? Had
not their lips met in secret before the white man’s
blinded eyes?

He even made a further advance in that predestined
courtship, as planned by the gods, when he left the
bungalow that night. In a way that is the special
gift of voluptuaries, he managed to squeeze by her in
the doorway, passing his arm about her with heathen
artistry till she felt a strange thrill. Old Everard also
received monstrous pressures of friendship as he put
forth his hand and opened his insane-looking mouth
at being so flattered. Then the old ex-sailor fell down
in the doorway, dead drunk.

As soon as the Rajah got outside the bungalow he
stood under the palms and looked back at that little
homestead, a terrible fire gleaming in his eyes. The
old superstition, deep in his heart’s blood, asserted
itself with that full strength that is always triumphant
when invested with the power of two creeds. “She’s
mine!” he muttered in the old Malayan language.
He looked like an agent of the devil as he waved his
arms and made magical passes. Then he gave a low
whistle. Two stalwart Kanakas, with mop-heads and
glassy eyes like dead fish, stepped out of the shadows
and saluted the Rajah. “Talofa Alii, Sah!” said one,
as he softly swung his strangling rope to and fro and
muttered, “Oner, twoer, threer, fourer,” at the same
time ticking off each number with his dusky finger.
They were kidnappers, members of his crew. In a
moment they were all hurrying down towards the shore.
As they stood by the coral reefs, the waves singing up
to their feet, the Rajah rubbed his hands with delight,
for there were five dark girls lying prone, half
strangled, in his waiting boat.

They had just been caught while swimming in the
enchanted lagoons at Felisi, where native maidens,
at the tribal witchman’s bidding, went in the dead of
night to wash their bodies in the charm-waters that
made girls so beautiful. Even as the Rajah and his
kidnappers stood on the shore they heard the sound of
a sharp, terrified scream come faintly on the hot winds
across the hills. They knew that another victim had
been caught in the thug-nets. It was easy enough too;
for it was a happy hunting ground for the “recruiters”
down Felisi beach way. In the dead of night native
girls often ran along the soft, moon-lit sands like coveys
of dishevelled mermaids, placing sea-shells to their
ears that they might hear the songs of dead sailors
and the far-off voices of their unborn children humming
and moaning in the great spirit-land that is
under the sea.

.. vspace:: 2

Gabrielle’s heart thumped like a drum as she softly
closed the door of the bungalow. She thought she
must have dreamed it all. A handsome, god-like
Rajah had gazed upon her as though she were a goddess—impossible!
So thought the girl as she stumbled
over a sordid reality—her father’s recumbent form
on the bungalow door-mat. He still lay where he had
fallen. He was a big man, and so it was with much
difficulty that she at length managed to pick him up
and lay him down on the old settee. Then she sat
down in the big arm-chair. She heard her father
gurgling out some old-time sea-chantey, so faint that
it sounded a long way off. The two tallow candles
were burning low in their coco-nut-shell candlesticks.
But still she sat there. The idea of going to bed
seemed ridiculous after the wonderful thing that had
happened. She was still trembling to her very soul
over the Rajah’s flatteries.

She thought of that secret pressure, the hot kiss,
the deep meaning look in the flashing eyes. “He even
spoke of God. Men seem to think more of God than
women,” she muttered absently. “I’m dark, a heathen
at heart; I’d like to marry a handsome, dark man
like that,” she continued, as she began to beat her
hands to and fro. Suddenly she felt a pang at her
heart, for she had begun quite unconsciously to hum
a melody that she had heard the young apprentice
play to her on his violin. Her limbs started to tremble;
the old look came back to her eyes; the swarthy, half-fierce
look had vanished. She tried to change her
thoughts by humming on in that weird way. “I’m
heathenish, I’m sure I am,” she almost sobbed. Then
a fierce feeling took possession of her as she realised
her own unstable thoughts over the two men she had
just met. For a moment she sat perfectly still, thinking—then
she burst into tears.

Everard still snored on. Gabrielle ceased her tears,
clapped her hands and laughed softly to herself. She
had drunk a little rum and stuff that she knew not the
name of that night. How could she help doing so.
Had not the Rajah placed his lips at the goblet’s edge
and looked sideways in deep meaning at her as he
drank a toast to her father? But it wasn’t the rum
that filled the bungalow parlour with mystery and
changed the universe for her. She forgot the armchair
in which she sat: it seemed that she sat on a
lonely shore by night and stared at a blood-red sun that
peered at her over the ocean horizon. Perhaps the
Rajah had done this mysterious thing to her through
his tender pressure. He knew! He knew! But still,
he had no hint in his mind of the witchery of that
girl’s soul.

She rose from the arm-chair, her shadow dodged
about the walls of the bungalow, then she peeped
through the open casement. Night lay with its
tropical mystery drenched with stars as she stared
upward and then again across that silent land. She
withdrew her head and placed a pillow under her
sleeping father’s head, then crept from the room, passing
up the three steps that separated her from her
own chamber. Her room was faintly lit up by the
tint of moonrise on the distant mountains. “How
silly of me to feel frightened like this,” she murmured,
as she swiftly lit the oil lamp. Her limbs still trembled.
A feeling of intense sorrow had come over her. The
apprentice’s eyes rose before her memory again; she
thought of the tryst by the lagoon, and it all seemed
like some memory of a romantic opera she had seen and
heard long years ago. Then she gave a startled cry:
a shadow had run across the room. “How foolish
of me to be frightened of my own shadow!” she said
almost loudly to herself, as though she would seek
courage by hearing her own voice. “I’ve heard that
mother had nights of madness, when she thought a
dark woman, blind, deaf and dumb, crouched under
her bed and begged forgiveness for something she’d
done.” So she thought as she rushed to the window
to get away from her thought.

But Gabrielle could not escape from that presence.
She looked out on the wide landscape of feathery palms
and pyramid-shaped hills to the south-east in a strange
fear. Then she stared seaward in the direction of the
dark-armed promontory, where she knew the native
girls stood on their great god-nights, coiled their
tresses up and dived into the moon-lit seas, so that
they might swim and beat their hands at the cavern
doors where Quat and his vassal-gods moaned.

“I’m going mad too,” she murmured, as she pulled
her head in through the open window and began to
undress. One by one she pulled off her sandals and
ribbons. Then she heard a queer kind of sawing noise.
“What’s that?” she wondered. But it was only the
regular intervals between Everard’s snores in the
silent parlour below. “It’s Dad!” she murmured;
and the sound of that deep bass snore soothed her soul
as though it were the music of the singing spheres.
She took off her blouse, undid the lace corsage, loosened
the sash swathing till her semi-oriental attire fell
rustling to her knees. “Am I so beautiful?” she
murmured, as she looked half in fright and guilt at
herself in the oval bamboo mirror. Her eyes sparkled
like stars in the gloom as she peeped through her
bronze-gold tresses. And still she swerved and swayed,
so that the cataract of golden hair fell to her throat
and again below the sun-tanned flush of her bosom.
She thought of the Rajah, the warm look of his dark
eyes. A strange thrill went through her. As though
a dark figure ran across the moon-lit space just outside
her window once again, a shadow whipped across the
room. She hastily wrapped a robe about her, rushed
across the room and stared through the vine-clad
bamboo casement. The sight of the masts in the bay
and the dim light of the far-off grog shanty by Felisi,
where she knew sunburnt men from the seas spent the
nights in wild carousal, dispelled her fears. She looked
round her; then in some unaccountable fascination
she stared in the mirror again. “I’m growing into
a woman, getting quite beautiful!”

“I’m growing into a woman, getting quite beautiful!”
came some exact echo of her words. She was
startled; she swiftly glanced round the room; she
could almost swear that she was not alone.

“What’s that?” she muttered, as she heard the
muffled sounds of beaten drums, so faint that it seemed
that the barbarian rumbling came across the centuries.

“What’s that!” re-echoed her own query. The
echoes startled her more than the reality would have
done. Thoughts of Ra-mai, the tambu dancer, of her
gods and the terrors of the phantoms that haunted
those whom the *tabaran* high priests had tabooed
flashed through her brain. Her bedroom was faintly
lit up by the light of the oil lamp that fell over the
dilapidated furniture and on to her old settee bed. A
swarm of fire-flies whirled and sparkled beneath the
palms outside and then were blown through the open
casement, right into the room! She swiftly placed her
hands over her eyes, as one might at the sight of vivid
lightning—a ghostly flash leapt across the room and
seared her very soul! The hot night winds swept
through the palms outside; she heard them moan as
something leapt out of the night and clutched her heart
with its shadowy fingers! In her terror she swiftly
looked up at her mother’s photograph, as though she
would rush to the dead for companionship. No help
there. The faded eyes of that sad face only stared in
immutable silence down from the frame on the wall,
as though in some twinship of misery. Gabrielle
dared not turn her head. She knew that something
stood there watching her. Another gust of wind
seemed to come from the stars and burst the half-closed
casement open.

“Dad!” she cried in her terror, as she felt a hot
breath against her face.

“Dad!” echoed the walls of her room in mockery.

“Who are you?” she managed to wail out.

“Who are you?” came the relentless echo.

She had just caught sight of her face in the mirror.
Even the fear of that presence in the room was somewhat
subdued, so unbounded was her astonishment at
seeing the reflection that stared back at her from the
bright glass—it was not her own face that she saw, but
the face of a wildly beautiful, dark-blooded woman!

She stared again, paralysed with horror. The fiery
eyes mocked her fright and astonishment. Then the
expression changed: the face seemed to appeal and
smile half sadly at the girl.

It was not a monstrous Nothing that gazed upon her.
She turned to flee from the terrible presence. But in
a second it had leapt out of the mirror—had sprung at
her! So it seemed to the terrified girl; but the figure
was standing *behind* her, staring into the mirror over
her shoulders like some relentless, cruel Nemesis
from her helpless past, a hideous thing that had
searched for centuries—and found her at last!

Old Everard slept on. He heard nothing of the
terrible conflict in the room three steps up, where his
daughter struggled in the awful grip of that temptress
who had found her—a woman from some long-forgotten
forest grave in the Malay Archipelago.

It was not madness; nor did the struggle exist only
in her imagination. The sheets were torn, the counterpane
rent in twain, as that merciless phantom tried
to overpower the girl.

Only those who have been true worshippers in the
great Papuan tambu temples who have seen and heard
the magic of the heritage rites, can guess what really
happened in the girl’s room. Only those who have
experienced a like experience secretly know how she
felt as she attempted to overthrow that deadly visitant.
For a few seconds their two figures swayed in the dark.
The oil lamp had been knocked over! Then the small
door of the bungalow suddenly opened: Gabrielle had
escaped. She ran out into the moon-lit night! Just
for a second she stood under the windless palms,
staring first one way and then another, as though she
longed to leap over her own shoulders—escape from
herself. Up the slopes she ran, and down into the
distant hollows by Fallamboco. She passed the
derelict hut where the high priest dreamed before he
died and was buried just in front of his front door.
The broken, crumbling wooden idol still stood on his
grave, its bulged glass eyes staring in immutable insolence
as Gabrielle rushed by. She stopped by the
lagoons at Felisi, where the huddled waters lay, the
sacred waters that washed the beautiful bodies of the
dead brides ere they were buried safe in the highest
mahogany-tree of Bougainville.

She was not surprised when she stooped and gazed
on her reflection in the waters and saw a second image
beside her own in those silent depths. Standing there
in her hastily donned night attire, her hair outblown,
her chemise torn to rags at one shoulder, her blue
robe clinging to her delicate figure, she looked around
in despair. Only the mountains looked on silently
as their giant stone heads seemed to stare like Fate
across the desolate landscape and out to the moon-lit
seas. She looked at the sky and groped in some blindness,
lifting her hands in mute appeal. Some past
heathen life possessed her. A crawling, half-human-shaped
cloud blurred the moon’s face, failing suddenly,
like a dark hand. It was not a cloud to Gabrielle’s
changed eyes as the shadow fell over the weird landscape;
it was a big thumb busily tattooing the sky,
as one by one the dim constellations rebrightened on
their darkened background.

She stood alert and peered over her shoulder, her
face and eyes bright with startled delight—she heard
the tribal drums beating.

Those sounds were real enough. Even the young
apprentice in his room over the hills jumped as he
heard the booming, then put his head out of his window
and bobbed it back, startled like a frightened child.

Gabrielle recognised those sounds. The long, low-drawn
chant was familiar to her ears. Softly they
came, weird undertones drifting across the silence.
Like a monstrous rat that had wings, something
whirred across the sky and gave a wretched groan as
it swept out of sight.

“Ta Savoo! Ta Savoo!” (“Come on! Come on!”)
said a voice beside her. A shadowy hand was laid
upon her shoulder. The horror of that presence had
already vanished. She startled the hills by bursting
into a silvery peal of laughter; then away she ran,
on, on, into the depths of the forest.

On the brightest tropic night the forest depths were
dark with lurking mystery; the multitudinous twistings
of the giant trees and their gnarled limbs, all
thickly lichened with serpent-like vines, made a
wonderful depth of brooding silence and unfathomable
light, and in the moonlight looked like some mighty
forest of twisted coral miles down under the sea.

White men would sooner walk miles than pass
through those depths by night. “No, thank ye! No
tabooed b—— heathen forest for me!” they said, as
they gave a knowing glance. And none could persuade
them. Old Sour Von Craut simply shrugged his
shoulders, spread out his fat hands and intimated by
raised eyebrows that it was the most natural thing on
earth to have found the dead beachcomber, with ears
and eyes missing, in the forests behind Felisi beach.

Even Gabrielle stopped running, gave a startled
moan and looked up in the dim light. Something
screamed and gave a mocking laugh; it was a red-striped
vulture. The girl saw the whitened bones of
its eyrie as it stood up and flapped its wings. For
it had made its nest amongst a dead man’s bones,
a grave up there in the palms of the tabooed forest.
Just for a moment she crouched in fear, but not because
of that sight over her head. An aged dark man with
a large nose was passing along, not ten yards off,
chanting to himself. It was Oom Pa, hurrying back
from the festival outside Parsons’s grog shanty. He
had a bamboo rod across his shoulders, Chinese fashion,
wherefrom his calabashes swung as he disappeared
in the depth beyond. In a few seconds Gabrielle was
off again. She had been that way before, so knew
the near cuts to the villages and tambu temples. As
she ran out of the bamboo thickets she caught a first
glimpse of the hanging lamps. A breath of wind had
swept through the forest, blowing the thick, dark
leaves aside that made the natural taboo curtain to
the festival spot. She saw the whirling figures of the
tambu maiden dancers. She heard the weird music
of the flutes and twanging stringed gourds. The
chants only increased the wild feeling of savagery that
was delighting her soul. She did not hesitate, but
deliberately pushed aside the bamboo stems and stood
in the presence of that secret midnight throng of
sacred worshippers and the great tambu priests. For
a moment the dark heathen men and affrighted women
stared from their squatting mats in astonishment,
the expression on their faces strangely resembling the
carved surprise of the big wooden, one-toothed idol
that stood six feet high, staring with glass eyes from
behind the taboo stage. Even the dancing tambu
maidens swerved slightly in their sacred movements,
their steps put out of gear as Gabrielle, with hands
uplifted, and eyes staring strangely, appeared before
that *pae pae*.

The head priest coughed in astonishment; then he
rose and wailed out: “Taboo! She is white, and such
are tabooed by the gods!”

As he brought his club down with a crash, anger
come into the dark eyes of the sacred chiefesses, who
had leapt to their feet, all disturbed while they had
been paying obeisance to the wooden Idol Quat (chief
god of the skies). It was a specially private occasion,
only the greatly trusted allowed to attend. One stalwart
chief stepped forward as though he intended
slaying the girl on the spot. Old Oom Pa, who had
barely wiped the perspiration from his brow and flung
down his calabashes of bribes, gazed with as much
surprise as anyone on Gabrielle. Then, seeing that
harm might come to the girl, he hastily stepped forward
and said: “Hold, O chiefs; this papalagi has that in
her eyes which tells she is under the influence of our
gods. And, therefore, is she not one of us?” He
swiftly turned and said something in the guttural
language of his tribe. Whatever he said was for
Gabrielle’s benefit, for it greatly calmed the fears of
the huddled dark men and their women-kind. In a
moment the fierce resentment towards Gabrielle
changed to wild grunts of welcome. One aged priest
who was grovelling on his stomach before the dwarf
taboo idols that were receiving the sacred slanting
moonbeams through the palms prostrated himself at
Gabrielle’s feet. The white girl looked round her like
one who stared in a dream, then she gave a merry peal
of laughter. The handsome, tattooed braves who stood
leaning on the palm stems gave a hushed cry of admiration
as they saw the girl standing, bathed in moonbeams,
her hair wildly dishevelled, her eyes like stars,
her arms as white as coral as she made mystical movements
in a dance they did not know. The old priest,
who was at her feet lifted his face and chanted some
prayer to her eyes.

This act of the priest made the chiefs and chiefesses
think that the girl was there by special decree of their
*kai-kai* (sacred moon gods). In a moment the whole
tribe had followed the priest’s act, hod surrounded the
girl and were moaning and grovelling at her feet.

“Tala Marama Taraban!” (“’Tis a spirit-girl!”)
they whispered in an awestruck voice as they lifted
their chins and stared at the girl’s vacant eyes. The
peculiar stare of those wonderful blue eyes intensified
their superstitious belief.

Two of the chiefs rose, nodded their heads, wailed,
and said: “She has been here before, O brothers!”

The tambu maidens had now stopped dancing.
The barbarian flutes had ceased their wailings, not a
drum note disturbed the hush as the wild, swarthy
men gazed on Gabrielle and the aged priest chanted
into her ears.

The girl seemed to be dimly conscious of the reverent
homage those wild men and women paid her as they
fell on their faces before her. She looked down with
a dream-like stare on their muscular brown bodies, on
their richly shelled *ramis*, their red-feathered headgear.

“Savoo! Savoo!” (“Go on! Go on! Dance for
us!”) they almost whispered, as they turned their
shaggy heads and peered into the depths of the forest,
half in terror and pleasurable anticipation of what
the girl might do.

For a moment Gabrielle swayed, clapped her hands
softly as a prelude, then chanted. Then she swiftly
glided towards the tambu elevation. In a moment
the tambu maidens had jumped down, soft-footed,
on to the mossy floor before the sacred erection.
Gabrielle had leapt on to the stage! The skulls and
skeleton bones and other gruesome ritual objects that
dangled on boughs just above her head swayed to
the hot night breeze, all tinkling weirdly as she stood
for a moment in dreamy hesitation. Then she gave a
silvery peal of laughter. She had begun to move hither
and thither as though in a dream, swaying to and fro
with marvellous delicacy and grace. Never before
had those chiefs seen so weird, so wonderful a sight or
heard a voice chant their wild melodies with such
strange effect. They all stared. Even the tambu
maidens stood as though riveted to the forest floor
in envious wonder. A drum began softly to beat out
the tribal notes, “Too Woomb! Too Woomb!” in
perfect *tempo* to the girl’s shifting faery-like footsteps.
Suddenly the aged high priest, Pooma Malo, fell
prostrate before his tambu idol and began to chant,
so great was his fear. The whole assemblage were
trembling like wind-blown shadows. They had all
noticed the silent, shadowy woman who stood beside
the white girl on the *pae pae* mimicking her every
movement, as it, too, bobbed rhythmically to and fro,
moving its feet noiselessly behind her across that
*pae pae* before them all.

Two of the tambu maidens and one dusky youth
jumped to their feet and bolted off into the forest
in fright. The giant wooden idol just behind the
shadow-figure gave a wide carven grin from ear to ear
as a shaft of moonlight fell across its hideous face.
A handsome, plucky young chief stepped forward.
He was adorned with the insignias and decorations of
the fetish rites. He leapt straight on to the *pae pae*.
Under the influence of the white girl’s dance he too
swayed his arms and chanted, as only men of his race
can dance and chant.

Gabrielle looked up at him, a strange light in her
eyes. He reminded her of the Rajah. She lifted her
arms in response to the handsome young chief’s gesticulations
as he careened by her in the mystical cross-passes
of the ritual dance. She lifted her mouth to his.
The tribal chiefs saw the strange look of the girl’s eyes
and at once smothered the cry of “Awai! O lao Mia!”
the old tribal exclamation that would express their
innermost feelings. The elder priests stood open-mouthed,
leaning against their idols in fear and
trembling, as though they would ask their protection.

The impassioned warrior chief grew bolder, and held
Gabrielle’s delicate figure in a swerving embrace.
His dark mouth came close to her ear, murmuring
words of magic that she could not understand. Even
the idol seemed to stare its surprise as he lifted one
white arm and touched the soft flesh with his lips.
And still the tambu flute-players blew on, for they too
had come under the spell of that strange sight, where
the two races clung together and chanted mysteriously
to each other. Then the chief untwined his swarthy
arms from that embrace and, falling forward on one
knee, placed his lips to her feet. He was eager to press
his extraordinary advantage. To kiss a maid’s feet
is the first act the happy warrior performs when a
maid favours his presence on a tambu stage. But he
found that her feet were covered. In a moment he had
pushed her robe aside and had begun to remove one
of her small, blue-bowed sandals.

Just for a moment the white girl’s face seemed to
betray the light of vanity over this act of the young
chief. Then he lifted her foot once again, to his lips,
and immediately Gabrielle’s expression changed. She
stared around her in astonishment, looked with a
dream-like stare back into the eyes of the giant warrior
who was caressing her and at the swarthy men and
women who stood under the coco-nut-oil lamps watching
in front of the *pae pae* stage. They knew that the
cry she gave was one of terror, for Gabrielle had awakened;
her soul had been asleep.

The young chief who had danced with her suddenly
cowered away from her side; then he jumped in the
opposite direction as she leapt from the *pae pae*.

“Taboo!” whispered the astonished chiefesses as
the wind sighed mournfully across the forest height
and flickered the bluish flames of the hanging lamps.

“She would tempt our menkind!” yelled a deep-bosomed
chiefess as she leapt forward, her head-dress
feathers swaying violently.

One or two of the older chiefs put forth their dusky
hands as though they would clutch her in their anger.
In a moment Oom Pa lifted his dark fist and bade none
touch her. Placing his tawny hand on his tattooed
chest, just where his sun-tanned skin encased his
thumping heart, he muttered solemn-sounding undertones
that told the assembled tambu watchers to leave
the girl to him.

Gabrielle looked round on those fierce-eyed men and
women in terror. She saw that look in the eyes of
old Oom Pa which told her that he, at least, had her
welfare deep in his heart. The lines of tambu maidens
divided, and moved back half in fright as Gabrielle
made a dash and passed by them.

“Stay, O papalagi maid,” said Oom Pa, as he too
moved back into the recesses of the forest and, staying
her flight, said: “O white maid, you come to
tambu dance before, I knower you. I know, too, that
you no belonger to our race.” Then he rubbed his
wrinkled face, looked at her sternly and proceeded:
“Remember that great trouble may come to one who
comer to our full-moon rites unasked. Savvy?”

Gabrielle nodded. She could not speak as she stood
there trembling from head to feet. Then the old
priest looked quietly in her eyes and said: “Tell me,
O white maid, who was she with skin dark as the night,
eyes like unto stars and cloudy, flowing hair as she
dance on *pae pae* stage with you, mimicking you like
a spirit-shadow?”

“With me!” exclaimed the girl in a startled, hushed
voice, as she looked round into the forest depth in a
great fear.

“Wither you!” reiterated Oom Pa. Then he said:
“You knower not that such a spirit-shadow dancer
with you and laugher when you place your lips ’gainst
those of our taboo warrior? La Umano?”

So spake old Oom Pa, as the light of the moon and
superstition lit up his wrinkled face. Before he could
say more Gabrielle had fled in fear from his presence.

She had no recollection of the way of her flight back
to her father’s bungalow. Her feet went swiftly, like
pattering rain, over the forest floor as she ran from her
fear and shame. And only God knows the thoughts
of her sad heart as she entered her father’s homestead
in the dead of night and crept into her little civilised
bed to sleep.

Was it imagination? Well, whoever you may be,
go to Bougainville, look into the wonderful eyes of
those half-caste women who happen to have the blood
of the white, Papuan and Polynesian races mixed in
their veins, fall in love with such a one, hold her in
your arms by night and watch for the shadow!—listen
for the rustle of the old life that revelled in the magic
of the tambu and maidia temples, the altars of heathen
passion and enchantment.

CHAPTER V—MUSIC OF ROMANCE
==========================

On the morning following Gabrielle’s terrible
experience old Everard sat bathing his head
in a calabash of sea-water. It considerably
revived his numbed sense. Then he blew his nose
fiercely and, stumping his wooden leg with tremendous
irritability, sat down to breakfast. Suddenly, as he
was munching, he looked up, wondering what on earth
was the matter with his daughter. Her dress was torn,
her face looked pale and haggard, her eyes full of
drowsy fright and some haunting fear. She looked
years older than when she had retired the night before.
The expression on her face was one of infinite sorrow.
The lips kept trembling. The old man, completely
lacking in imagination, could see nothing of the pathos,
the absolute wretchedness of the girl’s expression. He
summed up the whole business according to his own
feelings.

“Did you drink rum last night?—get drunk?
What’s the matter?” said he, as he concluded by
munching fast at his bread and toasted cheese.

“*You* were drunk,” said the girl, squeezing the
words out with an effort as her voice cracked.

“Wha’ you think of Rajah Koo Macka, gal, eh?”

“Not much,” she responded. Her mouth visibly
twitched as she turned her eyes from the stupid, inquiring
parental gaze.

“Nice fellow ’im; believes in God, Christ and in
virginity. Rajahs ain’t knocking about everywhere,
Gabby old gal, either,” he continued, as he gave a
wink. Then he added: “It’s wonderful how people
who was once ’eathens seems to be the most relygous
folk; they seems to ’ave a real faith in goodness ’o
things, that’s what it is.”

Gabrielle still kept silent, hardly hearing at all as the
old idiot rambled on in this wise: “’E’s got ther brass
too! Going to ’ire me to go on a pearl-hunting scheme
in the Admiralty Group. ’E knows *I* know where the
pearls are found. He he!”

Suddenly the man ceased his wild talk and looked
at the girl quizzically for a second, then said:
“Gabrielle, you’re a woman now, don’t yer feel like
one?”

At this, to the old man’s astonishment, the girl
burst into tears.

“What on earth ’ave I said,” he mumbled, as his
eyes lost the bleared, rum-dim look, and he tapped his
wooden leg. Something that slept deep down in his
heart stirred in its long slumber: “Don’t cry, girlie.
Aren’t you well?”

Even he saw the faint appeal of those violet-blue
eyes.

“Who’s torn your dress?” he said, as he struggled
against the impulse that he felt, for he had put forth
his arms to draw the girl to him. But he didn’t do so.

Pouring a little more Jamaica rum into his tea, he
swallowed it, smacked his lips and said: “Don’t
grissel. I’m not going to bully you for tearing your
clothes. S’pose you’ve been arambling ’bout ther
scrub at yer old games, admiring ther beauties of
Nathure?” He pursed his lips and gave a cynical
grin as he made the foregoing remark. Then he continued:
“I saw you t’other day talking to that blasted
runaway ship’s apprentice, ’Illary, I think they call
’im. Do yer want to disgrace your old father by
talking to ther likes of ’im, a damned penniless,
stranded runaway apprentice, nothing but a fiddler
with a shabby, brass-bound suit on!”

Then the old evangelical zealot of vagabon gospel
and the best Jamaica rum put his big-rimmed hat on,
looked at the clock and went stumping down the track
by the palms to look after the Kanakas who were employed
on the copra, coffee and pine-apple plantations.

As soon as the sounds of his stumping footsteps
had died away the pretty native girl, “Wanga-woo,”
from Setiwao village, made her characteristic somersault
through the front door. She had come to tidy
the bungalow in her usual way. Even that nymph-like
creature looked sideways at Gabrielle, noticed the
pallor of her face and wondered at the absence of the
usual cheery salutation that had always greeted her.
It took the native child no time to tidy up. Then she
ran outside the homestead and returned with her big
market basket full of luscious tropical fruits: mangoes,
two big over-ripe pine-apples, limes and reddish
oranges lying on their own dark green leaves.

“You liker them, Misser Gaberlel? They belonger
nicer you!”

The native child’s voice and action cheered up
Everard’s daughter wonderfully. Then, as she lay
down on the parlour settee to rest her aching head, she
heard the little maid running away into the forest,
back to her village, singing:

   | “Willy-wa noo, Woo-le woo wail-o,
   | Cowana te o le suva, mango-te ma bak!”

Then the sound died away and Gabrielle felt glad
to hear it no longer, and lying there thinking and
thinking, and softly crying to herself, she fell fast
asleep, and slept through most of the hot tropical day.
When she awoke sunset had already fired the mountain
palms. As she sat on the bamboo seat by the door
she heard her father’s voice. She knew he was drunk;
the rollicking, hoarse intonation of, his song was unmistakable
as the sounds came nearer. He had been
away to the plantations to see Rajah Koo Macka, who
was supposed to be purchasing a lot of copra for
cargo for his ship that lay off Bougainville.

In a moment the girl had made up her mind, had
risen and run off into the forest. Sunset was sending
its golden streams across the banyan groves as she
passed under the giant trees that were smothered with
huge scarlet blossoms. Already the koo-koo owl had
stolen from the deeper shadows and was hooting
forth its “To woo—to-woo-woo!”

“I wish I hadn’t overslept,” she murmured to
herself as she felt a longing to see one of her own sex.
For she had made up her mind to go around the coast
to see Mrs. S——, the German missionary’s wife. She
was a cold-eyed white woman, this missionary’s wife,
but still, she was white. Gabrielle had thought to
tell her of the terrible shadow that had come to her
in the night, and had hoped for her sympathy and
advice. She would have gone even then, but she knew
that the white woman’s residence was miles round the
coast and it would be quite dark before she arrived
there. She also remembered that Mrs. S—— was a
terrible coward and would not venture from her
husband’s bungalow after dark on account of the
rumours going about that *tabarans* (evil spirits) lurked
in the forests when the tambu worshippers were
chanting their sacred rites.

Even Gabrielle shivered in fright when she thought
of the tambu worshippers and the strange look of fear
on the faces of the dead who were found in the mountain
forests after certain festivals. It was some kind of
religious sect who offered terrible sacrifices to the
*tabarans* and the ceremony was something after the
style of the Vaudoux worship as described by M. de
St. Mery in his work on Vaudoux cannibalistic fetishes
in Haiti.

When those fetishes were in full swing they could
hear the chanting away down in Rokeville during the
silence of the night. “Ach!” the Germans would
say as they listened to the far-away shrieks in the
mountain citadels: children being clubbed and offered
up in thanksgiving song and frenzied dances at the
altars of indescribable orgy. And the knowledge that
such things happened within easy walking distance
from her bungalow made Gabrielle careful about
roaming too far after dark. She turned from the
denser forest and made up her mind to go through
the light jungle that separated her from the picturesque
shores and lagoons to the south-west. As she ran
along the silvery track she looked fearfully into the
shadows of the huge buttressed banyans. Her imagination,
vividly alive through her terrible experience the
night before, made her fancy she heard something
running swiftly beside her in the jungle. She suddenly
stopped and trembled from head to feet as the sounds
of running footsteps stopped also. “Dear God, what
have I done?” she wailed out in terror. In a moment
she had rushed off, and bounding over the logs of the
deserted *dobos* (huts) came to the cleared spaces
where the scattered ivory-nut palms grew. She looked
round with relief as she thought of that dreadful hollow
that had so strangely re-echoed her *own* footsteps.
Again she ran off; her fears left her and she began
to sing. The sight of the dotted huts of the native
homestead on the far-away shore revived her spirits.
The rich blue of the departing day shone on the
horizon and seemed strangely to influence her thoughts.
The sough of the winds in the palms near by had
rich music for her ears as she listened. “What’s
that?” she murmured, as she stood perfectly still.
It was not the sound of beating tribal drums this time:
she leaned forward and listened again, as though her
very soul would drink in that faint, far-off sound.
It came again, softly, a wailing, silvery sound moving
on the warm sea wind. No fear leapt into her eyes,
no agitation came to her limbs. An intensely beautiful
expression seemed to light up her face as her heart as
well as her ears heard those sweet sounds. The very
palms just over her head moaned a tender *con anima
tenerezza* accompaniment as it came, a sweet-throbbing,
long-drawn tremulous wail. Tears sprang into her
eyes as she listened to the strain of melancholy in the
thin silvery voice that drifted beneath the tropic stars.
It was the “Miserere” from *Il Trovatore*.

It was Hillary who felt the embarrassment of the
moment as she ran out from beneath the palms. He
had not really expected the girl to turn up that evening,
although she had asked him to play his violin at
that very spot so that she might chance to hear him.
The apprentice felt a trifle foolish as he dropped his instrument
and gazed at the girl. It struck him that
he had been a party to a sentimental by-play out of
some romantic novel or scene on the stage. He gave
a sheepish grin that would have been quite out of place
even had it been a stage performance. As for Gabrielle,
she revelled in the romance of that meeting. She
gazed into Hillary’s eyes, more like a child than ever,
as she sat there on the same banyan bough where she
had first sung to Hillary when the Homeric intruder
had so suddenly disturbed them. As the apprentice
looked at the girl he noticed how haggard she was.
As though to ward off his critical gaze, she swiftly
turned her head and murmured: “How romantic to
hear you play your violin in the distance like that.”
Then she added coyly: “It’s as though we are two
passionate lovers meeting, just like they meet in Spain
and Italy—you know, in the books,” she added, as she
gazed half sadly in the apprentice’s face. Hillary
tried to hide his true feelings by joking about her
brown stocking. She laughed. Then as the darkness
deepened Hillary became bolder and pressed his lips
on her hand. The girl responded by pressing his
fingers. He gazed steadily into her eyes; he wondered
why they looked so beautiful and wild. He had
noticed the same expression before. He did not stare
with vulgar surprise; he simply pressed the girl’s
hand in instinctive sympathy. He knew that some
fear haunted her soul. His love for Gabrielle had
strangely blinded him to worldly things, but had gifted
him with an inward sight that made him wonderfully
sympathetic. Just for a second he felt a tremendous
premonition of all that was coming to pass in his life
through his affection for the girl by his side. In
another moment his natural gaiety had returned. He
half laughed to himself as he felt the wonder of all
that he was experiencing in a place where white girls
wore two expressions, laughed in one breath and stared
in fright in the next.

Gabrielle was staring into his eyes as though she
were asleep and yet had her eyes open. Her face was
pallid; she had released her hand from his; she was still
singing the song she had begun when her expression
changed before the apprentice’s astonished eyes.

“God! what is that weird, beautiful melody that
you are singing, Gabrielle?” said he, as he came
under the influence of her voice. All the European
music that he knew was as nothing compared to the
painful soul of melody that lingered in the strain that
the girl extemporised.

As she still sang and swayed by him in the shadows
he swiftly opened his violin-case, but very softly, as
though he feared to frighten the song away from her
lips. He drew the bow gently, caressingly, *con
tenerezza*, across the responsive strings and played.

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   | [Transcriber’s Note: Lyrics]
   |
   | Mis Ta-lo-fa, the chiefs are sleep-ing,
   | The seas in moon-light sing,
   | My eyes are dream-ing, the winds art creep-ing,
   | Dead shad-ows round me spring.
   |
   | Winds sigh-ing by me, my Ma-la-bar maid,
   | Un-der the co-co palms.
   | Here thro' the night on my breast in the ... Etc.
   |
   | A. S.-M.

It was very late when Hillary walked back with
Gabrielle to see her home. Even the shouts from the
festivals of the heathen villages had subsided, only
coming to their ears in dismal wails and tom-tom
beatings. Gabrielle felt no fear of the dark forest
as they hurried along the silver track with the
big-trunked trees clearly outlined in the brilliant
moonlight.

“You mustn’t get nervous and allow your brain
to have such curious fancies, Gabrielle,” said the
young apprentice as the girl clung tightly to his arm
at the dodgings of their own monstrous silhouettes.

At length they arrived outside old Everard’s bungalow.
All was quiet.

“Good-night, Gabrielle,” said Hillary, as he leaned
forward, half inclined to say: “Dearest, may I kiss
you?” During the last two hours, however, he had
been too much worried about something that he knew
not of to have made such headway in his advances.
Notwithstanding his wish, he only took her hand and
gazed into her eyes, and made her promise to keep the
next appointment without fail. And she promised.
Then he said: “Don’t look so scared, he’s asleep.
Surely you’re not afraid of your father like this?”
Then he added: “I’ll wait outside here and have a
snooze beneath the palms till I think that you are
fast asleep!”

Gabrielle didn’t laugh at such a suggestion, as she
might have done two nights before! Indeed, she
pressed his hand in almost hysterical thankfulness.
Hillary wondered why she should be so frightened,
why she should look so delighted after looking so
scared. “God in heaven! the girl’s madly in love with
me!” was the delighted thought that flashed through
his brain.

Gabrielle crept indoors. She heard her father’s snoring
as she softly opened her bedroom door and entered
the room. She went straight to the small casement
that opened on the feathery palms and distant moon-lit
seas. She pushed aside the big hibiscus blossoms and
peered down. Her heart fluttered with some half-fierce
delight as she saw that form reclining beneath the
palms: it was the penniless, stranded sea apprentice
watching outside his South Sea princess’s castle.

With some great light warming her heart Gabrielle
crept into bed and fell fast asleep, and so another night
passed. It was only in the morning that old Everard
said: “Where the ’ell were yer last night? I wish
ter blazes ye’d come back before it’s dark. I’m damned
if there wasn’t a shadder a-knocking about ’ere last
night!”

“No, Dad!” said Gabrielle.

“Yus!” said the old man with terrible vehemence.
Then he added: “That old barman up at Parsons’s
is a blamed liar; he swore that the last case I bought
was the best Jamaica rum. And yer don’t see shadders
after drinking ther best Jamaica, that yer don’t!”

The old ex-sailor rambled on as he beat a violent
tattoo on the floor of the bungalow with his wooden leg.

As for Hillary, he didn’t get home till sunrise, so he
slept till near midday.

“Papalagi! Maser Hill-e-ary!” roared Madame
Tamboo, his landlady, as she banged his bedroom door
with a ponderous bamboo stick.

“All ri’!” answered the sleepy young apprentice.
Then he jumped up. He was out and about in two
ticks, for he had slept “all-standing.”

He couldn’t keep calm that day. Mango Pango
the maid-of-all-work, opened her bright eyes with
delight as he paid her pretty compliments over her
beauty. “Ah, what nice papalagi!” she said, as she
looked sideways in the German mirror at her image.
True enough, she had fine eyes and features that were
quite different from those of the full-blooded Solomon
natives. Like most Polynesian girls, she was extremely
romantic and imaginative. She lifted her eyes towards
the roof in childish ecstasy when Hillary laughingly
admired her yellow stockings and told her that she
reminded him of Cleopatra.

“Who Cleopatra?” Mango Pango said. Then
Hillary told her a lot about the doings of Antony, who
loved Cleopatra.

“She and nicer Antony still liver in Peratania
England?”

“No, they’re both dead,” said Hillary mournfully.

“Oh dear! poor tings!” said Mango Pango sympathetically.
Then she looked into the apprentice’s
eyes and said coquettishly: “Was Cleopatra a bery
beautifuls woman, Mounsieur?”

“Most beautiful woman in the whole world, just
like you,” said Hillary.

So would they talk together; and the pretty native
girl would laugh and smirk with the apprentice and
wonder if she was as beautiful as he said she was, and
if he really meant it when he told her that he longed
to elope with her so that they could live on a desert
isle together. Hillary little dreamed how one day
he and that little native girl *would* travel across the
seas together—in a stranger fashion than he jokingly
anticipated.

After the noon sun had dropped and the fire-flies
had begun to dance in the mangroves the apprentice
put his cap on and strolled out on to the slopes to kill
time. And pretty Mango Pango peeled potatoes, sang
a melancholy Samoan song, dreamed of the handsome
white papalagis and nearly wept to think she was so
brown.

CHAPTER VI—THE DERELICT
=======================

Hillary was impatient during the interminable
hours that passed ere he saw Gabrielle
again. “Don’t worry me, Mango,” he said,
as the pretty native girl stood on the verandah and
blew kisses from her coral-red lips.

“He go mad soon; man who no get drunk am no
gooder at all!” murmured Mango Pango as she ran
off to obey the orders of her mistress.

It was the next night when Hillary was to reach
the zenith of his dreams and happiness. Gabrielle had
promised to meet him at sunset and go off in a canoe
for a paddle round the coral reefs off Felisi beach.
He was on fire with the idea. He could not sleep.
His brain teemed with the thoughts of all he would say
to Gabrielle when he declared his love. He determined
to act his part well and be a worthy lover. She should
not be disappointed in him. “I’ll paddle her out to
that derelict three-masted ship; that old wreck’s the
very place. I’ll take her on board so that we shall
be quite alone.”

He thought of the light in Gabrielle’s eyes. “Fancy
me being the lucky one to receive her kisses! Wonderful!
I know men get exaggerated ideas about the *one*
woman who appeals to them—but Gabrielle!—it’s excusable
in me.” So Hillary reflected as he heard the
ocean surfs beating against the barrier reefs. It pleased
him to hear the winds sighing mournfully through the
tracts of coco-palms beyond his bedroom window.
His brain became confused as he thought of the ecstasy
of holding her in his arms. He sat down by the bamboo
table and wrote off a poem. He was so much in love
that even the poem was good. He proudly read the
verses over and over again, till they seemed more
wonderful than anything he had read in the works of
the great poets. “I’m a poet,” said he. Then he
stared in the mirror at his haggard face, just to see
what the world’s greatest lyric poet looked like.
Placing his scribbled lyric amongst his valued property
in his sea-chest, he once more continued to think over
all that he would do when the sublime moment arrived.
He thought of how he would hold Gabrielle in his arms.
He would be no ordinary lover. He would rain impassioned
kisses on her sweet mouth as he held her
in his strong embrace. She should not escape him:
the very fright that might leap into her eyes through
his impassioned vehemence would only serve to feed
the fires of all that he felt for her. He looked in the
corner on his violin—his old love. How insignificant
it seemed when compared to his new love. Yet he felt
a slight pang of remorse as he realised how its strings
had always responded to his moods. Would Gabrielle’s
heart-strings respond as readily? Are the heart-strings
of women as perfectly in tune with a lover’s
ideals as violins are to the touch of the *maestro*? He
heard the faint booming of the far-off seas sounding
through his reflections as they stole across the quiet
night. Then he opened his sea-chest and took out
Balzac’s *Wild Ass’s Skin*. He gazed on the faded
flower that had lain in the pages. Though it was
limp and withered, it was glorified because Gabrielle
had worn it in her hair. After that he fell asleep.

Next day the young apprentice became terribly
impatient as the hours slowly passed. He was to meet
Gabrielle at sunset by the old lagoon. It wanted half-an-hour
before the sun fell behind the peaks of Yuraka
when he eventually started off. Mango Pango wondered
why he was so full of song, so carefully dressed.
He chucked her under the chin, even praised her eyes,
as he said, “Good-bye, O beauteous golden-skinned
Mango Pango,” then hurried out under the palms.

“He fool; he go meet dark-skinned, frizzly Papuan
girl, I know! O foolish mans!” murmured pretty
Mango as she readjusted the hibiscus blossoms in her
bunched tresses and looked quite spiteful.

As the young apprentice hurried on, his Byronic
neckerchief fluttering from his throat like a flag, his
eyes twinkled with delight. The glamour Gabrielle
had created in his head threw a poetic gleam over the
rugged island landscape and on the brooding wealth
of nature around him. The blue lagoons, nestled
by the lines of ivory-nut palms, looked like petrified
patches of fallen tropic sky that had been mysteriously
frozen into bright mirrors. Then they seemed to
break up into musical ripples of laughter, for a covey
of bronze-hued, pretty native girls had modestly
dived down into their blue depths as he suddenly
emerged into the open. He distinctly saw the bubbles
where they had disappeared, and he knew that they
were all standing on the sandy bottom of the lagoon
hastily slipping on their loin-cloths before they boldly
reappeared on the surface.

“Talofa! Papalagi!” said one as her shiny head
bobbed on the surface, her eyes sparkling as she gazed
shoreward and blew the apprentice a kiss as he was
passing out of sight. Then he arrived on the lonely
shore tracks. The Papuan birds of paradise looked
like fragments of feathered rainbows haunting old
shores as they floated over the sea. The orange-striped
cockatoos, sitting high in the tall flamboyants and
tamuni-trees, seemed to shout “Cockatoo-e whoo!
Cock-a-too whoo! Make haste! Make haste!” as he
approached. They rose in a glittering shower from
their roosts, gave dismal muttering as they fluttered
over his head, till, hanging their coral-red feet loosely,
they resettled on the boughs of the tasselled breadfruits.
It was a wildly desolate spot; not a sail specked
the horizon as Hillary tramped along, singing to himself.
Except for the solitary dark man who lay fast
asleep in his outrigger canoe, that was becalmed a few
yards beyond the coral reefs, he wandered in a world
alone. Only the bright-plumaged birds populated the
wooded promontories, cheeks and slopes.

As the young apprentice walked slowly along,
making time, he repeatedly glanced seaward to see
how low the sun was setting. Arriving opposite the
alligator-shaped promontory at Nu-poa, he sighted the
scattered palavanas of the small hut citadel, Ko-Koa.
It was a fishing village; quite a score of canoes floated
hard by on the lagoons. The romping heathen kiddies
waved their paddles as he passed by. Their alert eyes
seldom missed the passing of a papalagi. From out
the thatched beehive-shaped homesteads, under the
mangoes and mahogany-trees, rushed several old chiefs
and their women-kind, who at once began loudly to
lament the dearth of tobacco and gin and loose cash.

Attractive girls offered him their fabulous wealth
of shells and fish in exchange for a silk handkerchief.
“You got nice lady fren, papalagi?—one who ’av’
gotter old pair stocking she no wanter?” said one
coy maid whose soul yearned to attract some dusky
Lothario’s waning glances. But it was all innocent
enough in a way. “Women are the same the world
over, blest if they aren’t!” he murmured, as he gave
a bashful maid a small piece of red ribbon in exchange
for her beautifully carved bone hair-comb, which she
handed him with inimitable grace, for brown maids
are very ambitious for the love of a white man. Some
of the youths and maids were half-caste and three-quarter
caste, a mixture of Polynesian and Melanesian.
Armlets and leglets fashioned from the pretty treduca
shells jingled as the girls romped round the apprentice.

Those girls of mixed blood were mostly of graceful
deportment, many having fine, intellectual eyes.
Neither did they possess the ungainly head-mop.
Indeed, standing there under the distant palms of
the lower shore, their wavy hair tossing to the sea-winds,
they made a picturesque sight. And one might
easily have imagined that they were tawny mermaids
who had crept up the sands so as to stand under the
green-leafed palms to comb their tresses and wail
luring songs. Hillary stood still for a moment and
gazed on that enchanting scene of primitive life,
fascinated. Out on the edge of the promontory sat yet
another covey of semi-Papuan and Polynesian maids.
It was not fancy; they were really singing mysterious
songs as they sought to lure the sun-varnished native
fishermen who paddled or sailed their buoyant catamarans
over the wine-dark waters. Hillary bolted
under the palms to escape the embarrassing attentions
of both the cadging chiefs and those Solomon Island
Nausicaas and Circes. It was not long after that he
arrived by the side of the wide lagoon that Gabrielle
would cross in her canoe if she kept the appointment.
She would come by water, whereas he had travelled
three miles, the long way round by the coast. As he
stood by the lagoon it seemed to stretch before him
like a beautiful mirror that reflected tall fern and
palm trees. Even the bright-winged lories were distinctly
visible as their shadows flitted across the sky.
“Will she come? Is it all a dream?” thought he
as his heart thumped heavily.

It seemed incredible to Hillary that he should really
be standing there by that lagoon in the cannibalistic
Solomon Isles, waiting to see a beautiful white girl
paddle towards him across the blue waters. He had
not waited long before round the bend of the lagoon,
far off, came a ripple, quite visible on the waters;
in another moment the curved, ornamental prow of a
canoe appeared as the moving paddle leapt into full
view. The sun was setting and the blaze shot right
across the Pacific and touched the mountains to the
south-east, sending transcendent hues and shadows
down on to the lagoon waters and again into the
forests.

Women play all sorts of tricks with credulous men
and their instinctive love of beauty. True enough,
Gabrielle was an artist in the delicate business of self-attire.
She knew exactly where to place the blue ribbon
at her throat and the crushed crimson flower in the
crown of her hair so that it might appeal to the senses
of a mere man. The blue and white flowers stuck in
her tresses looked unreal, for her hair shone as though
it had been set on fire by the hues of the sunset. Her
robe might have been cut out of some burnished cloud
material such as the angels wear. “Fancy! She’s
come!” murmured Hillary as the prow of the canoe
softly swerved broadside on to the sandy shore. “Come
on, dearest,” he said. Gabrielle looked tired and was
breathing fast through her haste in paddling across
the wide lagoon. She looked very pale. “What’s the
matter, dear?”

“Father’s drunk.”

“Is he?” said Hillary, as he metaphorically brought
his fist down and swept such an unromantic nuisance
as a father off the face of the earth. Even Gabrielle
looked up quickly as she heard him take a deep breath
as he swept old Everard to dust, pulverised. He
hadn’t rehearsed through the feverish night all that he
intended to do at that moment, and written a mighty
poem, to be finally thwarted by a drunken father.

Something kin to the fire that shone in the apprentice’s
eyes shone in Gabrielle’s eyes also. She trembled,
and obediently did all that he bade her do. In a
moment they had taken hold of the prow of the canoe
and between them dragged it for thirty yards over
the shallows that separated the deeper lagoon waters
from the sea. They were right opposite to where
the Pacific waves gambol into a thousand creeks and
coral caves. Without a moment’s hesitation Gabrielle
jumped into the canoe. “Be careful, dear,” whispered
the apprentice.

They lost no time in embarking. A trader was
likely to pass at any moment, and Everard had
threatened to “kick Hillary into the middle of next
week” if he found that villainous apprentice hanging
around his daughter. They could just hear the faint
echoes of the tribal drums in the Buka-Buka mountains
as their canoe shot silently out into the bay.
They were off, paddling away together into the unknown
seas of romance. Such was that world of
rugged shore and dark blue waters to Hillary as he
gazed up at the darkening sky. God had just lit the
first star, and as he gazed upward it flashed into sight.

Gabrielle really *did* look like some beautiful visionary
creature sitting there; and she was voiceless, as befits
those who travel across tropic seas of love. The
apprentice paddled a long time, then at last he could
hear the faint monotones of the seas that were ceaselessly
beating against the reefs and the big bulk of
the wreck.

“Allow me!” he said. His voice trembled as he
took hold of her hand firmly, as though he thought she
might escape. The prow bumped gently against the
hulks’ side near the gangway. That big, three-masted
derelict looked like some huge phantom ship as it
loomed up there in the silent waters off Bougainville.
“Come on, dear.” Very carefully he placed his arms
around her and step by step carried her up the ragged
rope gangway.

Their heads were nearly up to the level of the deck,
but there were still two more steps to climb. “Hold
tight, dear,” he whispered. His voice seemed to
travel like an echo across the silence of the tropic night.
Just for a second he gazed into Gabrielle’s eyes, then
he gently dropped her down on to the deck. At that
moment reality returned; things took some definite
shape; Hillary recalled time, the world and the far-off
cities.

A drove of frightened rats went shrieking and
squeaking down the alleyway towards the forecastle.
The remnants of torn sail and tangled rigging flapped
mournfully to the winds as they both slipped hurriedly
across the warped deck. Hillary felt the ecstasy that
is the highest attainment of mortal happiness. Had
she wholly belonged to him, body and soul, he would
not have been half so happy. He stared aloft at the
tall masts and felt a mighty sympathy for that vessel
lying there by the desolate shores of its last anchorage,
for the jib-boom at the bow seemed to point helplessly
at the far-away horizon, to which it could never sail.
“This way! Come on!” he whispered, as he gazed
around in some mad thought that the ghosts of the
old crew were enviously hanging round in their great
off-watch.

They sat down in silence on the old form that was
close against the poop, just by the entrance to the
saloon. Immediately over their heads, by the deck
rails of the now rotting poop, was the spot where the
old captain had stood when he sailed the seas. As the
apprentice looked upwards he suddenly remembered
that he was on the very derelict that had once been
the ship of the old skipper who had left the books
at Everard’s bungalow, the books from which Gabrielle
had gathered her romance.

In his mind he saw that old derelict when it sailed
the seas in its prime, when the figure-head with outstretched
hands at the bows (now with one arm broken
off and its emblematic, once beautiful face fast rotting)
had bounded across the waves like a living thing, long
before Hillary was born. The influence of the surroundings
and the girl beside him stirred his fancy. In
imagination he saw the old skipper standing on the
poop watching the blue horizons and the starlight and
moonlight that shone in another age, so far as his
own brief run of years were concerned. In a flash he
realised that out of all the cargoes the captain had
jealously guarded in his long voyages it was the old
books that had brought him solace in his cabin that
had proved the most wonderful merchandise after all.
Where were the imported pianos that had been shipped
for the Australasian colonies, Fiji, Java, Callao and
Shanghai? What had been their fate? They had
been thumped and thumped to distraction and destruction
while men drank their grog. Where were the
cargoes of old grandfather clocks and German-made
alarms? But more wonderful than all was the fact
that Gabrielle sat beside him on that very ship, her
heart aglow with the romance that she had gathered
out of the pages of the old captain’s books. True
enough, that skipper never wrote the books, but he
lived an adventurous life in the big world, and who will
say that he may not have been wiser than the authors?

Hillary looked through the saloon port-hole just behind
them and half fancied he saw a ghostly glimmer of
the oil lamps that had shone in that saloon in the dusk
of other days; he even saw the shadows of men moving
about the cuddy table. But it was no ghostly pageant
of the post at all, simply a stream of moonlight on the
torn sail that waved to and fro as it hung from the
main-yard and sent its shadow into the dark saloon.

The atmosphere that surrounded the wreck and the
music of the wind in the decaying rigging affected
Gabrielle also. Her old tom-boy demeanor, had
completely vanished. Hillary only said, “Well
Gabrielle,” and she heard the music in those two words.
For a moment they both forgot the world beyond that
hulk. Only the stars existed, and they shone into
Gabrielle’s eyes as their lips met. The passionate
phrases that he had so carefully rehearsed, all the
poetic vehemence of the night before, had faded. Not
one mad vow escaped his lips. He only held her tenderly,
as though he were afraid that she might crumble
in his arms—fall as dust to his feet. Not an atom of
passion come to ruffle the poetry of his feelings. For
the young apprentice was *really* in love. Her hair
touched his face. It thrilled him as music thrills
dreaming men. “Gabrielle, you are very beautiful
How strange that no man has claimed you before.
For that, at least, I thank God.”

The girl was silent. “Don’t you believe me?” he
added. He glanced swiftly at her face. It was
deathly white. Hillary thought it was the rats scampering
across the deck that had brought that startled
look. Then Gabrielle burst into tears.

The apprentice thought little about those tears. He
had felt a little like that too when he was really happy.
If there was a wrong construction to be placed on
Gabrielle’s actions, Hillary was sure to hit on it. It
was a natural consequence, since he had gathered all
his knowledge of women from his books. To him all
women were beautiful and good. He thought of them
as leading sheltered lives. They were perfectly different
from men. It had never occurred to him to try and
explain the differences. His views about women, in
fact, were quite conventional, touched with the theatrical
glamour that is common enough in extreme youth.

And still the tears lingered in Gabrielle’s eyes. No
one can tell what the girl really thought and felt,
excepting that she heard the simple note of sincerity
in all that the young apprentice said and which cannot
be written down. As for Hillary, the material world
had passed from his sight. Gabrielle wept, but what
did it matter? Weeping must be some natural
attribute to real happiness. So he thought.

It may have been the noisy rats or the creak of the
blown rigging that slightly dispelled the romantic
atmosphere. “Even the ecstasy of insanity is denied
men,” thought Hillary as a haunting thought
suddenly disturbed him. “She is weeping because I’ve
frightened her. That’s what it is. She’s only a child
after all—does not understand! I’m too passionate,
too headlong in my way of making love. She’s
frightened of me and so she weeps.” Suddenly his
manner altered. He led her to the bulwark’s side.
The moon had already risen, and as they both leaned
over, looking down into the dark waters, they could
see their shadows in the silent depths below. Neither
spoke; some fascination held them. As the apprentice
looked at the girl’s face her shadow-eyes seemed to
glance sideways at him. He fancied that he saw
something distorted in the movement of her shadow.
A puff of wind seemed to drift down from the stars;
the hair was outblown, the features unfamiliar. But
it was only for a second; in another moment Gabrielle’s
full outline developed in the light of the tropic moon.
There they were, Hillary with his arm on the shoulder
of the girl, who was still staring intently into the
still water.

“Why did you sigh like that, Gabrielle?” he said.
Then he looked on the western sky-line. The ghostly
flush, the pale aftermath of the departed day, still
lingered. Hillary vaguely recalled how near human
happiness is to sorrow; he felt sure there was some
sorrow in the girl’s heart. Rajah Koo Macka had
looked into Gabrielle’s eyes; but he knew that there
are many different ways in which a woman may look
at a man. None knew better than he.

Gabrielle’s eyes to-night held a different expression
as she again scrutinised the young apprentice.

“Do you love me, Gabrielle?”

She responded by clasping his hand tightly and
looking at him in some fright. Her voice was hushed
and trembling as she replied: “I’ve got a feeling for
you that I’ve never had before for anyone. I think
I could die with someone like you.” Saying this, she
looked steadily into his eyes, and then added in a half-sorrowful
way: “I wouldn’t care if we jumped into
the sea and died together; I’d be much happier if I
were dead.”

“Well now,” said Hillary as she continued: “I’m
a hateful girl; I’ve already told you I’m wicked;
besides, I’m haunted by a shadow-woman: she follows
me, curses me, but I can’t explain it to anyone.”

She became excited and raised her voice as he had
never heard her raise it before. The apprentice rubbed
his eyes. “Jump into the seas and die!” he gasped
as he realised all that the girl had so passionately
poured forth. “Not if I know it.” Then he added:
“What do you mean about a shadow-woman and being
haunted by her?”

He looked steadily into the girl’s pallid face, then
gently pulled her towards him and folded her to his
heart.

“You’re only a romantic child. *I’ve* made you ill
through my love-making. You don’t understand.
Some day, when you are a woman, you’ll know how
a fellow must feel, how he can really love such a one
as you. Forgive me, Gabrielle, will you?”

The girl gently took hold of his hand and, looking
steadily into his eyes, said: “Perhaps you are only a
boy and it’s *you* who do not understand. You are
too good a fellow for me. Don’t you believe it; you’ve
not made me ill. It’s something that I don’t quite
understand.”

“But why be ill at all?” was Hillary’s brief summing
up after she had rattled this off. But still she
ran on: “You’d never believe what happened the other
night. I went mad, I think.”

“Good Lord! You must not encourage such ideas.
You’ve been dwelling with your own thoughts too
much.”

“I’m not mad, though you may think I am. I
could easily prove to you that I’m haunted; you don’t
know the horrible things that happen to people of
the Papuan race. I’m afraid that even you would turn
against me if you knew of my terrible heritage.”

“Terrible heritage!” gasped the apprentice, as he
leaned over the side and hardly knew what he was
saying or doing as he followed Gabrielle’s stare as she
too leaned over and looked down into the deep, silent
waters. “Is she mad? Perhaps she is.” Then he
thrust the thought from his mind. “Phew! Rubbish!
She’s beautifully eccentric; if anyone’s mad it’s me!”

“Gabrielle, your father’s continual bullying has
made you ill—and a bit neurotic. Don’t worry, I’ll
protect you.” For a moment he was silent; the father
had given him the pluck and the opportunity to say
what he longed to say. “Gabrielle, why put up with
a father’s bullying? Let’s both clear out of Bougainville;
come with me! We can go away to Honolulu.
I’ll swear that I’ll look after you well, never say one
word that you may not wish me to say. I can easily
make money by my violin playing.”

Having blurted out the foregoing, Hillary almost
trembled as he waited to see the impression his outburst
had made on the girl. He watched Gabrielle’s
eyes. “I’ve gone too far again. How rash I am!”
was his miserable reflection as she nearly swooned
into his arms.

“I’ll go anywhere in the wide world with you,
Hillary,” she said, to his unbounded delight and
astonishment.

“Will you!” His eyes shone, his voice was almost
shrill, like a happy schoolboy’s over the possibilities
of some childish scheme.

“How can we manage all these things you’ve mentioned?”
said Gabrielle softly, as she glanced earnestly
at the young apprentice.

It was not Hillary’s imagination, it was all true
enough; Gabrielle wanted to go at once—no delay!

Hillary knew nothing, guessed nothing of the cause
of the girl’s desire for hasty flight. He only saw that
the light in here eyes was as sincere as death.

“The Solomon Isles! And now an elopement with
a haunted, beautiful white girl,” was his mental
ejaculation.

If he had had the slightest hint of the real reason
of Gabrielle’s hurry, would he have hesitated? No!
He would have flown with her that very night and
never let her go back to the homestead behind the beach
at Felisi. Neither the wreck, the stars nor the whisper
of the beating seas hinted the truth to him. He looked
shoreward across the straits. The night was so clear
that he fancied he could see the smoke rising from the
crater of Bangana, fifty miles away.

“Gabrielle, will you meet me by the lagoon again
to-morrow night? We will then arrange everything,
and you can tell me if you will come.” Then he added:
“I can manage everything splendidly.” He spoke
enthusiastically and with assurance, as though he had
had a large and successful experience of this kind of
thing. Then he continued: “We can fly away to
Honolulu, or anywhere you like from this cursed place—even
to England.”

Gabrielle was so affected and dazed by the apprentice’s
enthusiasm that she could only stare in the dusk
at his flushed face and brightening eyes as he continued
with his emotional tirade: “You don’t know what I’ll
be to you, how I’ll love you, dear. I’ll write songs and
music and dedicate all to you! I’ll write poems——”
Then he paused and exclaimed: “Gabrielle, I’m a
poet—you don’t know what I am! You don’t know
what I’m capable of achieving in this world if I had
someone like you to encourage me.”

Even Gabrielle forgot her vanity and felt some sad
sense of shame over her own unworthiness, as he swore
that the veriest vagabonds of the streets would aspire
to fame if they had someone to inspire them beyond
their unambitious selves. Hillary poured forth a
flood of impassioned words; his eyes shone in his
earnestness, and his lips trembled. Then he suddenly
realised that his overwhelming flood of words might
appear foolish to the girl. He stopped short. He
watched her half in fright, wondering what impression
he had made upon her.

Gabrielle replied by falling into his arms. She could
not help feeling something of his almighty boyish
sincerity. There in the friendly shadows she told
Hillary that he had beautiful eyes. She laid her head
on his lap so that he could gaze down into her eyes
as their lips met over and over again. How it thrilled
him when she said: “Hillary, my Hillary!” And
while the torn rigging wailed and the deep waters
boomed and resolved into gentle monotones against
the derelict’s wooden side she sat by him and sang.
A silver sea-bird swooped over the deck and, sighting
them there, gave a startled cry as it sped away.

“Gabrielle,” he whispered, as he thought of all that
he had rehearsed in his mind and of how little he had
accomplished now that the girl was quite alone with
him on that wreck. Then he softly pulled down the
delicate blue neck-fringe of her blouse and exposed the
whiteness of her warm throat. And Gabrielle, with
an artless vanity that inspired his waning courage,
gently let her head fall back so that he might touch,
just once, the soft whiteness of her throat with his lips.

The apprentice reddened to the ears and blessed the
darkness as he thought of his boldness and softly
pulled the delicate folds together again. “I’ve done
it now! She’ll think I’m a terrible fellow,” was
Hillary’s hasty reflection as the girl remained silent.
Then he tried to excuse himself. “I’ve read of men
doing that in novels and poems,” he said in a semi-apologetic
tone.

“So have I,” replied Gabrielle; then she laughed
softly. And Hillary wondered what wondrous deed
of virtue he had done that God should shower such
unbounded happiness on his head.

It was a perfect night in Gabrielle Everard’s life.
No shadow came to haunt the silence of those moments
as she sat by Hillary’s side. Only the shadows of the
torn sails waving to and fro in the warm tropic wind
fell from aloft to touch their happy faces. The soft
confusion of Gabrielle’s hair harmonised with the
bright thoughts that floated in his mind. The smell
of the rotting tarred ropes and the palmy fragrance
of the south wind over the sea mingled together and
formed a part of his sensations.

It was close on midnight when the apprentice
remembered the flight of time, which passes with
greater swiftness over the heads of lovers than of sad
old men and women. Even the rats seemed to scamper
and squeak in regret as they both rose and reluctantly
crept across the silent deck. A slight breeze had
sprung up from the south-east

“Make haste!” Hillary whispered as they arrived
by the rotting bulwark near the risky rope gangway.
The apprentice looked with apprehension out to sea
when he noticed that the former calm expanse of ocean
was slightly ruffled. “Quick! Quick!” he said, and
then Gabrielle went over the side and trusted her
weight to the taut gangway rope. “Thank God!”
murmured Hillary, as she stepped from the swinging
gangway into the canoe. Then to his infinite relief he
noticed that the wind had dropped. Though she had
embarked, he had still stood hesitating as to whether
it was safe to venture back to the shore.

“I don’t think it will blow, and it’s only a mile to
the shore,” he thought, as the girl carefully took her
place in the prow. The moon was just setting as the
gangway swung back and Hillary stepped into the
fragile craft. Then, like two ghosts, they paddled
away, back to the mainland.

CHAPTER VII—WHEN THE STARS DANCED
=================================

The day after Hillary and Gabrielle’s love
tryst on the derelict off Bougainville old
Everard sat in his bungalow rubbing his hands
with delight. He had been over the slope in Rokeville
“celebrating” at the grog bar, had been to
the store and flirted with the trader’s pretty half-caste
daughters, and had tapped his wooden leg significantly
as the schooner skippers heard how he’d done things in
his day; then he had returned home, full of the best
Jamaica rum. It wasn’t the rum, or the praise and
encores of the shellbacks in Parsons’s grog bar, or the
surreptitious kiss he’d given pretty Mango Pango on
his way home that made him so jovial; it was because
he’d met Rajah Koo Macka, who was calling at the
bungalow that evening. Already the shadows were
falling over the mountains. He was still busily shouting
directions to his daughter as though he stood on
the fore-deck of that wondrous ship that had sailed
all seas and found all that is considered impossible and
absurd in this new day. He had artfully enticed
Gabrielle to dress herself up, so that she might appear
at her very best when Rajah Macka arrived.

“Put the flowers in yer ’air, and don’t forget to put
thet blue robe thing on,” said the ex-sailor, as he
critically surveyed his daughter and tapped his wooden
leg to punctuate his appreciation. “That’s it! That’s
it! You do look nice!”

Gabrielle’s eyes were shining with pleasure as she
listened to her Dad’s praise. He so seldom praised her.
Then she gazed into the bamboo looking-glass. Her
vanity was excusable, for the scarlet and white hibiscus
blossoms made the bronze-gold tresses shine as the
sunset shines on a mountain lagoon.

“You’re a good gal when yer like,” said old Everard,
little dreaming for whose eyes Gabrielle had so tastefully
arrayed herself.

“Mitia, savee! Nicer ladie!” said the tiny Papuan
maid, who at that moment arrived with her basket of
fish at the door. The fish were all alive, splashing
about in the grass-plaited basket, as frisky as the little
savage maiden, who took her purchase money and sped
away under the palms like a nymph of the wilds.

“You’re as beautiful-looking as your mother was,”
said the white man as he sighed. Then he followed
his sigh by taking a good pull at the rum bottle. Possibly
the memory of his dead wife impelled the weak
ex-sailor to take so many extra drops, for he was
known to sit for hours like a man in a trance when folk
sang certain old songs.

“That’s right, tidy the place up! Put the green
cloth on. Macka’s mighty particular. Those civilised
’eathens like things just so,” said the fuddled, idiotic
old man. He was expecting the Rajah at any moment,
for it was past seven o’clock and he had promised
Everard to be at the bungalow before eight. It seemed
incredible that the old ex-sailor could not see through
such a one as the Rajah. But sailormen are not very
wise when it comes to judging human nature. And
it didn’t want twenty-four jurymen to discern the sort
of glance that lurked in the Rajah’s eyes when he gazed
at his women converts. Had the Rajah been correctly
placed in an ethnographical classification, he would
have been placed somewhere between the orang-outang
and the lowest negro type. But circumstances had
invested him with the power to act as a mediator
between God and the souls of decent men and women.
His outward life, his fleshy, handsome face were
splendid assets. They stood him in good stead, giving
him an extra distinction in the eyes of ignorant natives
and even low-caste whites. Not the least of his stock-in-trade
were the frock-coat, top hat, kid gloves,
spotless patent boots, scarlet waistcoat and the turban
swathing, the purchasing value of the lot being about
twelve dollars in Beratania Street, Honolulu.

Old Everard gazed eagerly at the clock. “Time’s
getting on,” he mumbled. And was Everard’s
daughter as eager over the Rajah’s expected visit as
her father? Not a bit of it! She hadn’t the slightest
idea of being in that dismal parlour when Macka
arrived. She had made up her mind to make a surreptitious
departure as soon as she had tidied up the
room. She longed to meet Hillary again. She had
been more than thinking about his proposal to fly to
Honolulu, for she had planned everything in her mind.
And if anyone could have peeped under her bed at
that moment they would have seen a small carpet bag
packed with those things that she valued. She had
so often rehearsed the whole business and her sudden
flight that she had several times looked fondly on her
wicked parent, as she imagined his oats and distress
to find her gone for ever.

“Where yer hoff to?” suddenly yelled old Everard.
The girl had quickly snatched up her cloak and had
bolted.

Her inward knowledge of Hillary’s love for her
tremendously minimised her fears over her father’s
wrath if he managed to catch her.

It was just dusk. One or two stars were already
out when she opened the door and made the final bolt
out of the front door into the night. She gave a
startled cry—she had rushed straight in Rajah Koo
Macka’s outstretched arms!

Fate seemed to have planned that it should be so.
The Rajah held the girl’s hand tightly, almost fiercely,
in his swarthy grip. A strange fire was burning in his
terrible eyes.

“Miss Everard, Gabri-arle! Langi, O ke mako,”
he murmured, lapsing into his native lingo as he gazed
steadily into the frightened girl’s eyes. It was a
masterful gaze, serpent-like in its malignant fascination.
The girl bravely returned that gaze. The Rajah
realised the struggle that was going on in her soul.
His instincts told him the truth. Gabrielle wasn’t
the first. He knew why her face was pallid, why the
cold beads of perspiration stood out on her brow, distinctly
revealed to his gaze, as though the moon would
shed its beams and show the pity of it all.

“Let me go! Do! Do!” she murmured in an
appealing voice.

“Gabrie-arle! I’ve come, not to see your father
but to see you, you, my lovelier whiter girl, lovelier,
nicer!” he whispered, as in his emotion he reverted
to the old pidgin-English of his boyhood, before he
had joined the first missionary society in Honolulu.
And still Gabrielle stared into those terrible eyes. Her
lips half smiled as she struggled with herself. It was
a terrible moment for her as she stood there, her frame
trembling as she felt those two terrible rivals struggling
to strangle each other—the struggle of the white and
the dark woman in her soul.

He whispered swift, passionate words: “I lover you,
wine of my heart, stars of my soul, O voice of the waves,
seas, night storm and darkness! O stars that are like
the children of our souls to be!” he wailed, as he
switched off into his beloved *verse libre*, so popular
with his kind. He still held her in his clasp, just as
so many helpless women had been held by the devil
who reigns in tropic climes.

Gabrielle felt that the struggle was coming to an
end. The cold perspiration stood in beads on her
brow. She felt faint. And the devil, who always
helps his own, sent a shadow across the silvery track by
the ivory-nut palms. That shadow touched the small
vine-clad verandah of the bungalow. Gabrielle’s heart
nearly stopped as she saw it, and its darkness fell over
her own soul. Her horror was not to be wondered at,
for the silhouette had taken human form as something
rushed out of the thick jungle-growth hard by.

There was no real cause for Gabrielle’s terror at
seeing this particular object. It was nothing more
than one of the Rajah’s native servants, who had
rushed from the bamboo thickets, thinking he had
heard the Rajah call him.

All the foregoing and the Rajah’s successful domination
over the girl occupied about two minutes. He had
rained kisses on her face, had whispered impassioned
words in her ears, using the names of the Apostles and
even the name of Christ to lure the girl back into
the bungalow and her soul into darkness. Gabrielle
felt as though she had had a paralytic stroke as he
gripped her hand and pushed her into the front doorway
of the bungalow. She could hardly believe her
senses as she went half willingly forward. He was an
old bird at the game; years older than Hillary. He had
the father on his side too, and that was natural enough
when one thinks of the way the world wags. Most
men of the Rajah’s type, by means of their successful
hypocrisy, secure the father’s help to buttress up their
desires. Besides, the Rajah had no personal drawbacks,
for he had no idealistic views, no sensitiveness
about girlish innocence and what might be considered
impropriety. So he was strongly equipped for furthering
his requirements; moreover, he had the mighty
power of the Christian creed and the glory of its
apostles on his side, so far as hypocritical protestations
could make them useful to him.

Old Everard was leaning over the table, swearing
like a genuine ’Frisco shellback, as they entered the
parlour.

“Thought you’d cleared out for the evening,” said
he, as he stared querulously into his daughter’s face.
He was too drunk to notice her terrified, helpless expression
as he staggered to his feet. He had suddenly
sighted Koo Macka, who stood erect, standing with
all his grand insignias of Rajahship behind the girl.
“Glad to see you, bully boy! Bless me soul, I thought
that the girl had made a bolt, and blowed if she hadn’t
rushed out at hearing yer footsteps. She’s a bit gone
on you already, eh? Nothing like a woman’s ears
when they want to hear!”

The old man gave Macka a friendly nudge and at
once lifted a bottle and began to pour out a tumblerful
of Parsons’s best Bougainville Three Star.

So did the Rajah once more enter Gabrielle’s home
and gaze with his magnetic eyes at the girl on that very
night when she had promised to meet Hillary!

The three of them sat down at the parlour table.
For quite a long time Gabrielle sat like a sphinx,
a dazed look in her eyes. The Rajah, who sat opposite
her, noticed that look. But was he embarrassed?
Not he! He simply rubbed his hands and gave an
extra curl to his moustache. He had tackled very
obstinate ladies in his time down in the native villages.
And it was immensely gratifying to him to think that
Everard was a kindly disposed white man and did not
dine with a war-club by his side—as old chief Mackeroo
did when the Rajah sought his wife for a convert.
Blowing his hose in his handkerchief, he at once began
business. Gabrielle quailed before his sinuous, reptilian-like
glances. She was trembling, for she knew that
she had met her master—and he knew that she had too.
He was watching her as a cat watches a mouse. He
saw her eyes roam in a furtive way to the door more
than once. He knew that she was ready to spring at
the first unguarded moment and fly out into the night.

Old Everard wondered why they both sat staring
at each other. He suddenly burst into speech, and
brought his fist down with a bang on the table. “Why
the h—— don’t you speak, blind me eyes?” he roared.
He was decidedly drunk. Macka lifted his eyebrows
and then looked at the old sailor and began to quote
applicable Scriptural texts. His voice took on quite
a melancholy wail, the old ecclesiastical drawl habit,
as he remonstrated with the ex-sailor for roaring in
such a rough manner at so sweet a girl. Everard
relented, even apologised. Macka stretched forth his
hand in a grandiloquent manner and forgave! About
half-an-hour later the Rajah’s hopes had returned:
the girl was his!

For the stars had begun to dance before Gabrielle’s
eyes. She felt that he wasn’t so wicked after all.
And the reason for this sudden change in her was not
far to seek. The Rajah had slipped some rum and
opium into her tea, some kind of mixture that is still
used prolifically by the natives who wish to dope
artless girls, and sailormen too! “Tea’s the thing!
Good old papalagi’s tea, wholesome drink,” he had
chuckled beneath his virile moustache.

“Whisky, I say!” Everard had wailed, as he stared
with bleary eyes. But the Rajah would have none of it.
He dearly loved tea, nothing to beat tea, he swore.
That settled it. Everard told Gabrielle to make a pot
of tea at once. But Gabrielle still sat at the table
and wouldn’t move, so Everard got up and made the
tea himself and thought of how he would get his own
back on his daughter when the Rajah had gone. Let
it, however, be said that old Everard would never have
made that pot of tea had he had the slightest hint of
the consequences. But he was a fool. The ex-sailor
was not so much to blame: civilisation has shrivelled
up the white man’s God-given weapons of instinct, and
so he stands to-day a slave to dull reason, and is
positively nowhere when a native’s cunning is concerned.
It was only natural, therefore, that sinful old
Everard should fall into every trap that the wily
Malayan-Papuan, made for his daughter’s destruction.
As the hours passed things began to look brighter to
Gabrielle. She forgot the night and all that she had
intended to do. As for Everard, he got quite boisterous
when she laughed, at last, at one of his antiquated
jokes. And then, as the old man listened to the Rajah’s
mellifluous voice, he became so emotional that he forgot
and wiped his nose on the edge of the best green
tablecloth. “Dad!” whispered Gabrielle, in an
awestruck voice over her parent’s preposterous act in front
of the twelve-dollar suit of clothes and jewellery from
the Honolulu slop-shop.

The ex-sailor lifted his grizzled face and, staring
with his bleary blue eyes, gave his daughter a half-apologetic
look. Gabrielle reddened to the ears at the
thought of her sudden good fortune. It seemed that the
impossible was occurring. A Rajah of holiest soul
looked fondly upon her and her late swearing old
father sat there gazing into her face apologetically!
It was more wonderful than any fairy tale or any
novel she had read. She could have risen from her
chair and sung; could even have snapped her fingers
with derision at the phantom-woman who she half
fancied was lurking outside the bungalow.

Gabrielle hardly spoke as the Papuan Rajah waved
his hand and glorified himself in the eyes of his host
and his daughter, expatiating on the virtues of Christianity
and his own true belief. Old Everard said
“Amen,” opened his mouth in surprise and hung his
head for shame as Macka chided him over his habitual
drunkenness. The Rajah pointed his dark finger at
the daughter, and said: “See yon sacred maid. White
is she as the spotless snow on the mountains of Kaue.
Art not ashamed, O white man, to set so bad example?”
Saying this, the Rajah opened his prettily bound
pocket Bible and in sombre tones read Scriptural passages
till the old ex-sailor’s heart quaked in fear of
God’s wrath and his own remorse over his treatment of
his daughter. And still the dark missionary proceeded
with his exhortations. “Art not ashamed, O man
Everard?” “Yus, I ham,” almost wailed the derelict
representative of the great white races, as Macka continued
his Scriptural denunciations in a sombre voice.
Thus did Macka the half-caste missionary further his
desires. But why record all that really happened that
night? It is sufficient to say that Everard’s eyes
brightened as Macka’s heart softened, until the brown
man quite forgave the white man for his sins. Indeed
that dim-lit parlour became a kind of confessional-box,
whilst Everard fell on his knees and Gabrielle trembled
in mighty trouble at her former wicked thoughts over
so noble, so holy a missionary.

Then the Rajah bode Everard rise, and said: “O
white Everard, think no more of thy sorrows and thy
sins; frailty is the great inheritance, it is the dark
shadow that maketh the light to shine and so doth
beautify human existence.” Then Everard took another
swill at the whisky bottle and most foolishly mixed
his drinks. And still the heathen man meandered
on, and murmured into the ex-sailor’s ears: “O heed
not the great pearl scheme that I wished you to venture
upon; for I say unto these that I’ve other business
on hand. And more, for the sake of thy friendship
and contrite heart, and thy hallowed daughter” (he
pointed with outstretched finger at Gabrielle), “I’ll
give thee double the sum that any pearl scheme may
have brought thee.”

So spoke Macka as he dropped into the Kanaka’s
usual Biblical style, since it was from the Bible that
most of them derived their first lessons in our tongue.
Indeed, it is no exaggeration to say that the heathen
was considerably overcome by his own self-glorification.
As for the white man, he said holy things, wailed out
that he believed in the Holy Ghost, the holy Catholic
Church, the Communion of Saints and the sacramental
drink of the best rum! Then the aged drunken idiot
swallowed another tumblerful of whisky and fell forward
on his knees.

Gabrielle began to think that she must be dreaming
it all: that scene as she sat in the wicker chair watching.
Then the noble Rajah sang weird songs. His voice
was mellow and pathetically sweet, nicely tinged with
tragedian-like sadness that lingered in Gabrielle’s ears.
It was all strangely blasphemous. Old Everard simply
fell forward on the floor, holding the rum bottle tightly
in his hand. Gabrielle and Macka laid him down
comfortably on his settee. There he lay, his head
forward, mouth dribbling, one arm dangling to the
floor, so drunk was he.

Gabrielle cried softly to herself as she placed his head
in a more comfortable position and bunched the pillow
up. Then she turned aside in a terrible despair and
gazed in mute appeal into those masterful eyes. “Let
me escape,” her lips mumbled, and her voice sounded
far off.

It was no good; the man was relentless. He still
moaned his beautiful words, whispering warm Malayan
phrases into her ear. She did not understand his
native tongue, but her instincts heard. The hour
was late.

Gabrielle half heard the rustling of swift-moving
feet outside the bungalow. A thick mist seemed to
lie over the furniture. She felt that something had
crept into the room, something terrible and not to be
denied. A swarthy expression passed over her face
as she leaned forward and listened, for once more she
could hear the tribal drums beating somewhere across
the centuries. It did not horrify her as before. Macka
was there and his eyes had an all-powerful look: why
be frightened in his masterful presence? But still she
tried to struggle to her feet and rush out of the parlour
door. For a moment she forgot and fancied she
was standing on the derelict out in the straits. “Hillary!
Hillary!” she wailed, as she thought of the
stranded apprentice and fancied she still looked into
his eyes. Slowly the fumes did their work, fumes of
opium and the drink slipped into her tea. She still
heard the Papuan’s voice; it was not a voice near her,
it was a call coming across distant spaces. And still
she struggled, as she called out the long-forgotten name
of the missionary, one who had taught her in the mission-room
from her earliest childhood. But no answer
came, only the snores of her drunken father and the
sounds of tribal drums a hundred years away. Then
the lights burned low. Even the Rajah was overcome
with heathenish emotion as she stood by the window
and, lifting her face, looked out on the stars and in a
strange way scraped her pale hands up and down the
glass, as though she would tear aside the veil that
divided her from freedom and the outer world.

And Hillary, who waited by the lagoon, walked up
and down, up and down, full of hope, full of faith.
And he was still walking silently on the silvery sands
by the tossing seas, like a pale figure of romance, as
dawn crept over the mountains and the stars went
home. And still Gabrielle did not come.

CHAPTER VIII—HEATHEN LAND
=========================

In the morning old Everard awoke with a swollen
head.

“Gabby! Gabrielle!” He shouted. Then,
wondering why on earth the girl did not reply, he
struggled to his feet, opened the door and went up the
three steps that led into her bedroom. Her bed was
neatly made—it had not been slept in. He was so
puzzled about it all that he looked out of the small
open window to see if she’d fallen out—notwithstanding
that the window was six feet from the ground.
Then he passed his hand across his brow and remembered
Rajah Macka’s visit. “Rajah Koo Macka!” he
shouted.

“God damn it! I don’t remember ’im going,” he
mumbled, as he stumped his wooden leg about the
room till the bungalow shook, and began whimpering
like a fretful child, nearly falling down with sudden
dizziness. Recovering himself, he got into a frightful
rage and began to roar mighty oaths. “Gabby!
Gabby! I’ll a-murder you! Where are you? Damn!
My eyes! Ter ’ell with Macka! Ter ’ell with everything!
Where are you?” Then he swung his wooden
leg round, poked it right through the velvet-lined
screen that Gabrielle had so neatly lined, and gave a
terrible oath.

Then he cooled down. The reaction had begun to
set in. His brain began to reason over it all. He
rushed outside, stumped about and stumped back
again. “Where is she? What’s it all mean? She’s
not the kind of girl to go off by night with Macka,”
were his reflections. All day long he called and called.
Then he left the bungalow and roamed away to the
native villages in search of her. He kicked up an
awful commotion. The natives for miles thought a new
kind of spirit with a wooden leg had escaped from
shadow-land, for as they peeped from their hut doors
they saw old Everard frantically waving his arms,
shouting vehemently, swearing and calling out:
“Gabby! Gabby!” He arrived back at his bungalow
at dusk. “Gab!” he shouted. But she was still missing.
The old ex-sailor realised all that Gabrielle had
been to him in his desolate life.

He wept. He got terribly drunk and kept calling
out: “Gabrielle! My Gab! Come back to your old
father!” Then he mumbled in a self-soothing way:
“She ain’t really gone. Macka’s so relygious. ’E
wouldn’t take ’er from me. No! P’r’aps she’s gone
to the b—— German’s wife at K——, or the mission-room
at Tomba-kao.” Once more he got up and
began to stump about. He seemed to go mad. He
rushed again and again into the girl’s bedroom, caught
his peg-leg in the fibre mats and fell down. “It’s ’er
gown, ’er pretty gown,” he wailed. The tears rolled
down his cheeks. He actually put his lips to the
girl’s washed-out, torn garment and kissed it. Poor
old man! He had never really found his true self.
All the chances and virtues that might have been his
had been shattered by gross surroundings.

After a while he cooled down again. “Who’d ’ave
thought it! Who’d ’ave thought it!” he wailed. He
returned to his parlour. The room looked dark and
comfortless. A terrible suspicion was haunting his
mind. But it was too late. His faith in Macka’s supreme
holiness had begun to slacken slightly. Old
remembrances and God-given instincts that had been
his in the long-ago, pre-rum days came back to him.
But he sought the weak man’s support, and poured
fiery liquid between his trembling lips.

“Gabby! Gabby! Come to me! I’m ill, so ill!”

Then he jumped, and looked quite startled and
sober. He’d never hurried so much in his life as he put
the bottle down and, with his eyes gleaming with half-fearful
delight, stumped towards the front door. Someone had knocked.

So great was his hurry that he stumbled as he rushed
from the room. “She’s come back, me dear gal, come
to ’er old pa!”

He opened the door and stared at the form in the
gloom for a moment, then swayed and fell down—fell
in sheer misery and disappointment, for it wasn’t
Gabrielle who stood there—it was Hillary.

Hillary did not gasp or say one word that would
suit the pages of a novel; he simply brought out the
unromantic words: “God, what luck! He’s drunk!”

The young apprentice swiftly leaned forward and
picked up the old ex-sailor.

Hillary’s whole soul was bursting to know why
Gabrielle hadn’t kept the appointment by the lagoon.
He was delighted to see Everard drunk. It had
flashed through his sanguine, hopeful soul that there
had been a domestic rumpus and that was the cause
of Gabrielle not turning up at the trysting-place, where
he had waited all night.

He carried the old man as tenderly as possible into
the parlour. The thought that he was really Gabrielle’s
father made him feel quite tender towards the drunken
man. He’d never been in that parlour before. He
looked round. Where was she?

“Gabrielle, your poor father’s taken ill—it’s Hillary
who calls!” And then he stood holding the old man
up, his heart thumping with the mighty expectation
of seeing the girl enter the room, with secret joy at her
father’s blind, drunken eyes at such an opportune
moment.

Hillary had come straight to Everard’s bungalow
determined to risk all, to defy the old man outright
and get one glimpse of the girl’s face and some kind
of an explanation, even if he had to fight his way in.
He called again: “Gabrielle! Gabrielle! Why don’t
you come?” But the expected rustle of her dress,
the glorious look of surprise in her eyes at seeing him
as she rushed into the room, all that his imagination
anticipated, was only mocked by the echo of his own
voice.

He sat the old man in the big arm-chair. Everard
opened his eyes and stared like an imbecile at the
youth.

“Where’s my Gabby? Who the ’ell are you?”
moaned the ex-sailor.

“I’m Hillary, Gabrielle’s friend. I’m teaching her
to play the violin; it will be a great help to her. She
can make money by teaching, and be able to help you
too,” blurted forth the apprentice in that inspiration
that comes to lovers who have rehearsed a thousand
excuses for suddenly appearing before a prospective
father-in-law.

Old Everard was too far gone with rum and grief
to be interested in the commercial side of a prospective
son-in-law.

“You’re ’Illary! Violin! Play musick! You b——
villainous scoundrel! What have you done with ’er?”
yelled the old man, as he struggled to his feet, a
terribly vicious look in his eyes.

“Done with who? Where’s Gabrielle?” Hillary
shouted out in a voice that somehow managed to tell
the old man that the youth before him thought that he
*too* had a right to know where Gabrielle was.

In a moment the ex-sailor’s mad passion subsided.
He leaned forward and stared into Hillary’s eyes and
saw the despair, the appeal, the light of sincerity and
truth, everything that he had not seen in Koo Macka’s
eyes. In a moment the old man relented.

“Ain’t yer seen ’er, kid? She’s gone! Bolted with
Macka, the Rajah! Find ’er, boy, find ’er for me. You
can ’ave her, she’s my Gabby!” wailed the despairing
father.

Hillary’s heart nearly stopped beating. He couldn’t
sum up courage enough to ask the old man to explain
what he meant. He dreaded to hear something, he
knew not what. Then the old man continued:

“God forgive me for thinking ill of you. *He* sent
you ’ere ter-night to comfort ’er ole father.”

Hillary still held the man’s hand, to give *himself*
courage as well as to comfort the old man.

“’Ave a drop er rum, boy?” said the old man.
Hillary did not hesitate. He held the tumblerful of
liquid to his lips and swallowed the lot. Everard
clutched the youth’s trembling hand and almost shed
tears as the rum loosened the apprentice’s lips and he
told the ex-sailor all that he felt for his daughter.
Even Hillary was astonished to find that saturnine
old drunkard so tender-hearted, so friendly towards
him.

After Everard had taken terrible oaths and sworn
vengeance against the Rajah, he finished up by yelling
into Hillary’s ears that he would give Hillary, or anyone
else, two hundred pounds if they could trace
Gabrielle’s whereabouts. Hillary took the distracted
father’s hand and said: “I don’t want money; I
only want to see Gabrielle, to bring your daughter back
to you, and take her away from that man.” The
apprentice couldn’t persuade himself to mention the
name of the man who had apparently done him this
great injury. Hillary had only seen the Papuan Rajah
twice, but the man’s face was as vividly before him
as if he had known him for a thousand years.

At that moment he did not want Gabrielle’s father
to see his eyes. He felt ashamed that they should be
dimmed with emotion. He was overcome by the feeling
that he was the first to love and have faith in
woman; the first to have idealistic views about honour
and the ways of men; the first to run away to
sea with fourpence in his pocket to fight the world,
to aspire for fame and wealth, only to find himself
sleeping out in a strange land—in a dust-bin with the
lid on! But at the thought of Gabrielle’s manner on
the wreck, her tears, her eagerness to fly to Honolulu
with him, the look in her eyes, his dark thoughts
fled like bats from his brain, and once again hope
reasserted itself.

Hillary took the old ex-sailor’s hand and promised
to stop the night with him. “Don’t let us waste the
time, it will be dark soon,” said the apprentice. After
a little rebellious talk Everard promised to drink no
more, then putting on his cap he went off as obediently
as a child to make inquiries. And so Everard went
down to Rokeville, while Hillary went off on a voyage
of discovery into the surrounding villages. His faith
in Gabrielle had by now completely returned. He
knew that she had strange notions, and had many
girl friends among the Polynesian natives who dwelt
with the native tribes. He so far recovered his spirits
that he even whistled as he went off down the track.
He made straight for the native village of Ackra Ackra,
where the great head-hunter chief Ingrova dwelt. It
was near to sunset when he at length passed through
the great forest of giant bread-fruits that divided the
native villages from the south-east shore. As he
entered the tiny pagan citadel the women and girls
greeted him with their friendly salutations and the
usual cries for *tam-bak* (tobacco).

The unlit coco-nut-oil lamps were swinging from the
banyan boughs and flamboyants that sheltered the
small huts and palavanas as he strode across the *rara*
(cleared space). The shaggy-headed native women
clapped their hands as he passed. Some of the elder
tattooed men and chiefesses puffed their short clay
pipes and stared stolidly upon him. Just by the village
patch Maga Maroo, pretty Silva Sula and some
more dusky flappers threw their brown-stockinged legs
skyward with delight as the dusky Lotharios gave wild
encores in a strange barbarian tongue. Even Hillary
smiled as he saw the artless, picturesque vanity of the
girls as they sported their fine clothes on the tiny
promenade that was the lamp-lit Strand of their little
forest city. He saw at a glance by those demonstrative
exhibitions of European toilets, and fringed swathings
of yellow and scarlet sashes, that the artful traders
had been that way exchanging their trumpery jewellery
and gaudy silks for copra and shells.

Arriving before the Chief Ingrova’s palatial palavana,
Hillary was pleased to find that the great chief
was at home. As the big, muscular, mop-headed
islander stood before him, he made numerous stealthy
inquiries to find out if the chief had the slightest hint
of the girl’s whereabouts. But seeing that the chief
was quite sincere in his protestations that he hadn’t
seen her for quite two weeks, Hillary at once told him
that she was missing from home. Hillary had persistently
had the idea in his head that Gabrielle might
be hiding in one of the villages in fear of her father’s
wrath, for he could not help thinking that the old
man had had a row with the girl and had deliberately
kept that fact from him. The aged chief, who was a
fine example of his race, swayed his war-club and
wanted to go off in search of the missing girl at once.
His eyes blazed with delight at the prospect of obtaining
the head of the miscreant who had lured the girl
from her home. The chief had a fierce idea of equity
and justice; he was a stern disciplinarian in following
the tenets of his religion, the code of morals laid down
by his tribal ancestors. Indeed it was well known that
he would not deviate from his ideas of honest finance
by one shell or coco-nut. And it can be recorded that
the mythological gods and legendary personages who
were the great apostles of his creed were more to him
in his inborn faith than the Biblical wonders of the
Christian creed are to nine-tenths of the Sunday
church-goers who worship at its altars.

Hillary listened silently to the chief’s moralising
and his loud lamentations over Gabrielle’s absence
from home and felt assured that the chief knew nothing
about it. It was true enough, Ingrova had never
heard of Macka, otherwise Hillary might have been
considerably enlightened, for the old chief was usually
friendly to the white men. The apprentice gave the
chief a plug of ship’s tobacco, then implored him to
kill no one and secure no head for the adornment of
his hut till he was quite certain that it was the head of
the real culprit. Though Hillary was convinced that
Ingrova had spoken the truth, he still nursed the idea
that Gabrielle was somewhere in the vicinity of her
father’s home. He could not bring himself to believe
that Gabrielle had really bolted or been carried off
by the Rajah. The idea of such a thing had left his
mind. He had thought of her manner on the wreck
only an hour before. “A girl so innocent that I
wouldn’t utter a coarse word in her presence—she—go
off with an abomination like that—a dark man—impossible!”
had been his final summing up, and then
in his vehemence he had kicked his Panama hat
sky-high.

Hillary’s face was flushed with the thoughts that
surged through his head as he turned back and, gazing
at Ingrova, said: “Look here, Ingrova, old pal, if you
can find any trace whatsoever of the girl I’ll give
you a lot of money and my best grey suit of clothes,
see?” The apprentice knew that he was offering the
chief inexhaustible wealth by promising him a suit of
clothes. For if a Solomon Islander has one weakness it
is a heartaching desire to possess European clothes.

In a moment Ingrova’s ears were alert; his deep-set
eyes twinkled with avarice. He immediately rubbed
his dusky hands together and, lifting one hand, swore
allegiance to Hillary’s cause. “I find girler if she
bouter ’ere!” said he, bringing his war-club down with
a terrific whack on the fallen bread-fruit trunk as they
stood there in the silence of the forest.

“What’s that?” The apprentice could hear approaching
footsteps.

He rubbed his eyes. What on earth had happened
to Ingrova? There he stood, stiff and erect, his arms
crooked; he had suddenly undergone a wonderful
transformation—looked like some gnarled old tree
trunk that had been carved so as to resemble a man.
For only the eyes blinked. At the sound of approaching
footsteps he had swiftly succumbed to the old
primitive instincts, and become, as it were, a part of
the silent tropical forest.

Looking swiftly round, Hillary observed a dusky,
wrinkled face and bright eyes peeping cautiously
through the tall, thick ferns that grew around the
spot where they stood. Ingrova’s form immediately
relaxed; it was no enemy who sought to club him;
it was only the friendly face of old Oom Pa. It was
very evident that Oom Pa had heard the speech of the
Englishman, and knowing that the white missionaries
disapproved of very many of the things his priesthood
called on him to do in the performance of heathen
rites, he had approached warily. Seeing that only one
white papalagi was there, Oom Pa stepped forth from
the thickets and forced his finest deceitful smile to
his thin lips.

“Nice day,” quoth Hillary.

“Verra nicer, papalagi,” muttered the heathen ecclesiastic,
after looking up at Ingrova, who winked
and raised his tattooed brows to reassure the suspicious
priest. Oom Pa prostrated himself in his most
gracious manner before Hillary. In a moment he had
risen to his feet, and standing with head inclined he
listened to Ingrova, who had begun to tell him the
cause of the white man’s visit.

“Oo woomba!” said the priest, rubbing his chin
reflectively, then said: “Nicer white girl’s goner?
She who gotter eyes like sky when stars walker ’bout,
and gotter hair liker sunset on rivers?”

“That’s her!” ejaculated Hillary dramatically.
His heart thumped with hope. Oom Pa’s manner
made him think that Gabrielle was somewhere close
behind him, hiding in the palms. The old priest
winked and put on a wise look. Then he looked up
and, shaking his head all the while that he spoke, he
told Hillary that he had not the slightest idea as to
the girl’s whereabouts.

“I not know where girl is, but I knower you mean
white girl who comes and jumper on *pae pae* and dance
at festival, one, two nights. But she did fly away like
beautiful *tabarab* (spirit) in forest.”

“Dance on *pae pae* and run away into the forest!”
said Hillary in surprise. “Good gracious! She’s not
the girl I’m looking for. It’s a white girl I’m after,
one who wears a blue dress, coiled-up tresses of gold
that fall over her brow; she’s white and beautiful.
Dance on your damned *pae pae*! Phew!” said Hillary,
putting his foot out and kicking vigorously.

Oom Pa also metaphorically kicked himself. He
wondered what trouble his incautious remarks might
cause both to himself and the girl. He swiftly realised
that it was an unusual thing for a white girl to do a
jig on a *pae pae*; he also knew that the white men
might think that he had something to do with the
girl’s strange leaning towards his heathenish creed, and
so would blame him for anything that might have
happened to her. Consequently he at once put his
hand to his brow, shook his head and intimated that
he was “old fool” to make such a mistake.

Ingrova, who had immediately realised how near
the priest had been to letting out that he knew
something about Gabrielle, astutely changed the conversation
and begged Hillary and the priest to enter his
palavana. In a moment Ingrova had bent his stalwart
figure and entered the low doorway of his rather
palatial hut. Hillary and priest followed.

The apprentice, who had never been inside a primitive
homestead, was surprised as he entered the gloomy,
tightly thatched dwelling-place of Ingrova. It was
sheltered by the branches of two huge bread-fruits,
was conical-shaped and had a large domed roof. The
rooms were spacious, about twelve feet from wall to
wall. Each room was lit up by primitive window holes.
These windows had no glass in them, but were fashioned
of twisted, interlaced bamboo twigs in a clever
ornamental style, making them look like casements
that opened on to feathery palm-trees. Indeed, often
by night one could have peeped through those casements
and seen the festival maidens dancing on the
village green while rows of coco-nut-oil lamps twinkled
from the palm and bread-fruit boughs. As the apprentice
stared round the room, the dim light intensified
the surroundings. They *were* strange ornaments,
no mistake about that. On the wooden walls hung
the human skulls and bones of the sad departed.
Noticing Hillary’s curious stare as he regarded the
beautifully polished skulls, many of which still had
hair clinging to the bone, Ingrova waxed sentimental,
stepped forward and took the smallest skull down from
its nail. Pointing to the empty sockets with his dusky
finger, the chief murmured in sombre tones: “Ah papalagi,
’twas in these holes where once sparkled like unto
stars in the wind-blown lagoon the eyes of her who
was my first *parumpuan* (wife).” Then he sighed,
and continued: “’Tis true, O papalagi, that those eyes
did once gaze and look kindly on him whom I did
hate overmuch. But ’tis over now, these many years;
and moreover, man, too, doth much which he no ought
to do. And I say, O papalagi, does not the moon stare
with kindness on more lagoons than one?”

As he said this the old chief made several magic
passes with his forefinger, pushing it across and within
the sockets as he sighed deeply. Then he proceeded:
“Here, between these teeth, was the tongue that sang
to me when my head was weary and mucher trouble did
come to my peoples.” At this moment the old warrior
looked sadly through the doorway and sighed. Once
more he put forth his hands and took down the remaining
portion of that delicate skeleton. Hillary gazed in
intense wonder. He noticed that the white bones were
fastened together with finest sennet, joined with great
artistic dexterity, not a bone being out of place. His
thoughts about Gabrielle for the time being had vanished,
as the mystery of that hut clung like a shroud
about him. “What’s that?” he murmured, as he gazed
on the gruesome object that Ingrova held up before
him. He felt shivery in the gloom, notwithstanding the
tropical heat and the buzzing sand-flies.

As the two old hags who were squated on mats in
the far corner of the room revealed their presence by
giving a deep sigh, Ingrova proceeded: “Tis all that
remains of her form, which I did lover overmuch.
Look, O papalagi, here was her bosom; ’twas here that
she gave unto my children nicer nourishing milk, children
who now am great chiefs and chiefesses.”

Saying this, the warrior ran his fingers down the
curves of the dead woman’s throat bones till he arrived
at the tiny bones of the breast, then his finger swerved
to the right, passed round by the ribs and moved
downward towards the sharp white bones of the thighs.

“Good heavens!” was Hillary’s only audible comment,
as he inwardly thanked God that white people
did not keep their dead so that they could be inspected
like grim photo albums on visiting days.

Ingrova gently hung up those sad heirlooms of his
past affections on their several nails again. Hillary,
who by now had entered into the tragic spirit of the
weird homestead, pointed to the various gruesome
remains and asked Ingrova whose were the fourteen
skulls that hung on a kind of clothes-line that ran
across the room, close to the roof. Even old Oom Pa
sighed as he watched Ingrova take down each bleached
skull and solemnly point to the empty sockets, telling
of bright eyes and gabbling tongues that once made
music, sang songs, and knew laughter and tears.
One had been a great high priest who had died at the
hands of the white men sooner than swerve from the
spiritual path that he deemed the right one. He was
one of the old Solomon Island martyrs. Hillary noticed
that this special skull was high-domed, revealing
by its protuberance the reverence that man has for
higher things, and also imagination. The teeth were
perfect. Another was quite flat-headed, the hair woolly
and the eye-sockets small. After much preamble on
Ingrova’s part, Hillary gathered that this skull belonged
to the social reformer of the tribe. Yet another
high-domed remnant had bulging bone brows, the skull
being altogether curiously shaped. “Who was he, O
mighty Ingrova?” said Hillary with a good deal of
reverence.

Ingrova answered in this wise: “He was, O papalagi,
the great witch-singer of these lands. It was
in that little skull-hole where flamed the magic that
sang unto us, telling the sorrow of the dying moons,
and of the voices of wandering rivers and ocean caves.
He looked through those holes” (here the chief pointed
to the empty eye-sockets), “where stare the light of
the stars, the sunsets and moonsets, when he did once
stand beneath these very palms, by that doorway, and
say to my tribe: ‘Man am no long to live, and, too, his
love and joy oft depart ere his body go its way. All
things must die, though the corals rise and the palms
stand for ever before the eyes of day, man’s songs must
cease and he got to sleep.’”

“Dear me! What a nice old fellow he must have
been,” muttered Hillary.

Ingrova had gesticulated and spoken in such a way
that he almost saw the sorrow of the poet’s long-dead
eyes looking through the sockets of the skull.

“Well, if this is a typical Solomon Island homestead,
I’d sooner go out visiting in dear old England,”
thought the apprentice, as Oom Pa suddenly prostrated
himself on the prayer-mat and, turning over on his
back, blew his stout, wrinkled stomach out with enormous
breaths in some religious rite. Hillary made a
solemn face and, responding to Ingrova’s appeal,
placed his brow against a dead man’s beard that hung
by the window hole. It was with a feeling of considerable
relief that he so graciously bowed when two
pretty native girls suddenly rushed into the room and
stared at him with wonder-struck eyes. His white face
fascinated them. They were attractive-looking maids,
their massive crowns of hair tastefully ornamented
with frangipani and scarlet hibiscus blossoms.
Threaded shells dangled from their arms. One had
large earrings hanging from her artificially distended
lobes. They were two of Ingrova’s granddaughters.
They at once proceeded to flirt with the apprentice,
giving captivating glances from their fine dark eyes.
And when he accepted a flower from pretty Noma, the
tallest girl, he swiftly accepted a like offering from
her companion, who had shot a jealous glance at her
sister from her warm dark eyes. In the meantime,
Oom Pa and Ingrova had met under the palms just
outside the palavana.

Ingrova’s eyes flashed with fire as old Oom Pa spoke
close to his ear, for they liked not a white man to call
in their village without asking. Though Ingrova was
a brave chief, he too was a religious bigot, and his
heart swelled with much devotion as he thought of
what his gods would think to see the apprentice’s skull
hanging amongst his most sacred religious trophies.
He felt that a skull adorned with dark bronze curls
would be a prize worth securing. Oom Pa placed his
dusky hand to his mouth, coughed and looked around to
see that none heard; then he said: “I say, O mighty
Ingrova, this white papalagi may seek our hidden idols
and be after no maid at all. What think you?”

And Ingrova replied: “O mighty Oom Pa, favoured
of the gods, did I not hear you say that you had seen
such a one as this white maid?”

Oom Pa puckered up his wrinkled eyebrows and
swiftly told Ingrova how a white girl had danced unbidden
on his great tambu *pae pae* and then run away
into the forest. On hearing this much Ingrova looked
towards the palavan to see that the white man was not
within earshot, and then, swelling his majestic, tattooed
chest and shoulders, said scornfully: “It seemeth
a grievous thing for a white maid to be missing, yet, I
say, do not these cursed papalagi come into our bays
on their ships and steal those we love, our wives,
our sons and daughters, taking them to slavery, O
Oom Pa?”

“’Tis as thou sayest,” responded the priest. For a
moment he reflected, then he looked up into Ingrova’s
eyes with deep meaning and said: “Methinks ’tis true
that he seeks a white maid, for he who hath a leg of
wood did pass this way, calling in strange tones to all
whom he met; and mark you, O Ingrova, this papalagi
who is there in your palavana hath one eye that is the
colour of the day and one the hue of the night.”

Ingrova at this wisely nodded, as though to say
that he too had noticed this strange thing. Then Oom
Pa continued: “To have such eyes must mean that
he is favoured by the gods of his own race, and so
’twere well that he should receive our friendship. And
maybe, after all, ’tis the white man’s god who tattoos
the skies!”

Ingrova sighed deeply as he thought of the exquisite
skull that might have adorned the walls of his palavana.
Then he said: “’Tis well, Oom Pa, for the youth is to
my liking.” And as they both stooped and re-entered
the palavana doorway the young apprentice little
dreamed how inscrutable Fate had given him one eye
blue and the other brown so that he might not be
killed that day by a Solomon Island chief. Fondest
affection seemed to beam forth from Ingrova’s eyes as
he looked at the apprentice. “Nice old heathen,”
thought Hillary, as the big warrior sighed in deep
thought and then placed his hands with regret among
the rare bronze curls of the apprentice’s skull that
*might* have been his. But to give them their due, both
Oom Pa and Ingrova were relieved that things were
running smoothly. Together they took Hillary outside
that he might inspect the wonders of the village.
As he crossed the tiny *raras* (village greens) the dusky
maids placed their hands where their hearts beat and
sighed over the beauty of his eyes and the wondrous
whiteness of his face.

“Damn it all! I could take an interest in all this
if I only knew where Gabrielle was,” thought Hillary,
as he looked on the strange scene of native life around
him. Notwithstanding his sorrows, he could not help
thinking how akin primitive life was to civilised life.
“One blows his nose on a palm leaf and the other on a
silk handkerchief,” he murmured to himself. “Bless
me, though it is a heathen village in the Solomon Isles,
its dusky, tattooed inhabitants seem imbued with the
same ideas and aspirations as my own people.”

It was true enough: some of the tiny streets under
the trees were clean and had large, well-built huts that
were covered artistically with flowers of tropical vines.
Other huts were small and very slovenly. Some of
the maids had flowers in their hair and shining traduca
shells hanging on their arms. Others wore tappa
gowns, a few some remnant of European clothing,
such as cast-off skirts, blouses, bodices and stockings.
One or two wore only those undergarments that are
frilled at the knees and succeeded in showing off their
terra-cotta limbs in a most conspicuous fashion. Some
had made real doors to their palavanas, whilst others
still had doors that were made of old sacking. One
played a cheap German fiddle while the kiddies on
the *rara* danced with glee. In front of the native
temple stood a monstrous idol, its big glass eyes apparently
agog with laughter. And on a stump, facing it,
stood the embryo parliamentary genius, Hank-koo,
waving his skinny arms, beseeching the high chiefs
to pass a law that would compel all the other chiefs
to make their hut doors so that they opened inwards.
“Why not have doors that open inwards when ’tis
as well as opening towards?” he yelled, as he wiped
his brow with a palm leaf. It was then that another
fierce-looking being jumped on to a stump. He too
swore by Quat (first god of heathen land) that for a
door to open outwards was indeed beautiful. “Can
not a dying man’s soul take flight with ease to shadow-land
instead of being compelled to pull the door back
ere departing hence?” And so the chiefs were always
busy remaking doors that opened inwards or outwards,
as they continually changed their minds over the virtues
of such great things.

“Comer, papalagi!” said Ingrova, as he beckoned
Hillary to return towards his palatial palavana. “All
is wonderful that I have seen, O great Ingrova,” said
Hillary, as he stood once more outside the chief’s
homestead.

And then, as the chief leaned on his war-club, swelling
his massive chest and bowing graciously, Hillary
intimated that he must depart at once.

Indeed the apprentice was getting impatient. “It’s
no good hanging about here; this won’t find Gabrielle,”
he thought, as he cursed the old skulls and the
atmosphere of gloom that Ingrova’s gruesome exhibition
had cast over him. “Why should I be made
melancholy through Ingrova’s dead relatives? I don’t
bring out the bones of my dead aunts and old uncles to
make men miserable.” Such was his inward comment
as he left the chief and hurried away. Thoughts of
Gabrielle’s strange disappearance returned to him with
redoubled force. He recalled how she had touched his
hand for the first time. And as Hillary passed along
by the forest banyans and saw the deep indigo of the
far distant ocean, he stared on the rose-pearl flush of
the sea horizon. “What a fool I was! I could have
easily persuaded her to bolt that night on the derelict,”
he thought, as he once more started on his way back
to Everard’s.

In due course he arrived back at Everard’s bungalow.
The old man was terribly upset when Hillary
told him that he had heard nothing about his daughter’s
whereabouts. He trembled violently as he looked
up at Hillary and said: “I’ve been up to Parsons’s
shanty: no one has seen Gabby, or heard of her. What
can it all mean?”

Hillary made no reply. He did his best to cheer the
old sailorman up. His unbounded faith in Gabrielle
had returned. He recalled her innocent manner when
she had offered him the little flower out of her hair
when he had first met her on the lagoon. “No girl
who gave a flower like that could do wrong,” he
thought. Not only would he not entertain the idea that
a dark Papuan man could have influence over Gabrielle,
but he also persuaded the father to make no inquiries
about the Rajah.

“What proof have you got that the Rajah is the kind
of man who would take advantage of any woman?”
he inquired of Everard. Possibly he was influenced
to make these remarks by a kind of Dutch courage.
He imagined that there was far less chance of Everard’s
suspicions being true if he himself blinded his
own eyes to the possibilities of what a dark man might
persuade a white girl to do. Over and over again he
had recalled to memory Gabrielle’s eyes as she had
gazed into his own on the derelict ship. “No! Impossible!”
thought he. “I’ve got boundless faith in
Gabrielle; I feel certain she’s only gone up to K——.
She’s probably stopping with the German missionary’s
wife and will be back to-morrow.”

“Why the blazing h—— didn’t you go there to
K—— and see?” said the old sailor in a petulant voice,
as he suddenly looked apologetically at the apprentice.
He had gripped Hillary’s hand gratefully in the
thought that a strange youth should have such unbounded
faith in his daughter.

“I’ve only just thought of Gabrielle’s friendship
with the missionary’s wife at K——,” said Hillary.

Then Everard suddenly remembered that he had
already sent a native servant up to K—— to inquire.

All that night the old ex-sailor sat huddled in his
arm-chair, crying softly to himself. He swore that
he’d never drink again or hurt a hair of the girl’s head
if she returned safely home.

Hillary slept little. Once he walked into Gabrielle’s
bedroom, gazed on her tiny trestle bed and thought
of all she had said to him. Then he was obliged to go
out of doors and walk up and down under the palms
in an attempt to stifle his grief. In the morning he
helped Everard to get the breakfast. The old man
spoke kindly to him and repeatedly muttered to himself
about his foolishness in thinking the youth was such a
villain because he happened to be stranded in Bougainville
and hadn’t a cent to bless himself with.

“What did old Ingrova say?” suddenly asked the
old man, as he swallowed some hot tea.

“Oh, he had never even heard of Gabrielle.”

“Never heard of her! The old liar!” almost yelled
the old man.

Hillary turned beetroot-red. He swallowed some
hot tea and nearly fell on the floor. “You don’t mean
to say Ingrova’s fooling us?”

“Don’t worry, boy, Ingrova’s all right. I know
’im!” said Everard.

“Thank God!” muttered Hillary. For he had suddenly
called up terrible visions of ferocious head-hunters
dancing round Gabrielle’s dying form.

Anyway, his fears were quite dispelled by Everard’s
manner and all that he proceeded to tell him. As the
ex-sailor and the apprentice talked and then lapsed
into silence over their own thoughts, the visitors began
to arrive. It appeared that the grief-stricken father
had been about telling all his friends that Gabrielle
was missing from home. The first one to arrive at the
bungalow after breakfast was Mango Pango. When
Hillary opened the bungalow door she pretended to
faint. Then she lifted her hands above her head and
went on in a most dramatic fashion as Hillary explained
to her that Gabrielle was still missing.

“Whater you do ’ere?” said the pretty Polynesian
girl, as she looked out of the corner of her eye as
only a Polynesian maid can look without squinting.
“I never knew that you knew Misser Gaberlielle,” she
added, as Hillary smiled. Then she went on in a terrible
style, for she had known Gabrielle since she was
a child. “O Master Hill-e-aire, she kill! Some one
fiercer head-hunter gotter her and cutter her head
off!” she wailed, as she rolled her pretty eyes and
then looked at Hillary in a swift flash that said “No
gooder you loving girler without head—eh?” Giving
this parting shot, Mango Pango ran off home to follow
her domestic duties. And then a batch of native
women and two white men arrived outside the bungalow
to inquire if Gabrielle had returned. After a
deal of jabbering and unheard-of ideas as to the cause
of the girl’s absence, they put the coins in their pockets
and went off mumbling. And still the old man gabbled
on, saying: “How kind people are when folk are in
trouble.”

Hillary at last put on his hat and went off to make
further inquiries. As he stood shaving himself before
the mirror in the bungalow parlour, he thought of all
that Gabrielle had told him about the haunting
shadow-woman. He was half-inclined to tell the father
of the girl’s strange talk on the derelict ship out in
the bay. Then he decided not to do so, thinking that
the old sailor had quite enough trouble on his shoulders.
Somehow the thought of all that Gabrielle had told
him about that shadow-woman eased Hillary’s mind.
It gave him greater faith in the girl. He remembered
the look in her eyes when she had sung the weird songs
to him by the lagoon, and also in the forest once when
they were parting. “Perhaps she’s a bit eccentric,
and that accounts for her strange absence,” he thought.
And the thought eased his mind and was more pleasant
than the thoughts that had begun to haunt him. He
recalled Rajah Koo Macka’s handsome face. He also
recalled how he had read that dark men had strange
and terrible influence over romantic girls. He knew
very well that Gabrielle was terribly impressionable.
Hillary gave himself a gash with his razor as he thought
of this, and his hands began to tremble. Then he
hastily dressed himself and told Everard that he was
off to make inquiries about Macka. “We don’t know
*who* he is; he might be anyone, and villainous enough
to lure your daughter deliberately away, after all,”
said the apprentice, as he lit his pipe, said good-bye to
the old man and went off to search and make inquiries.

It was nearly dusk when Hillary returned from the
villages and going down to the beach by the grog bar
came across a Papuan sailor who, he had been told,
was an old deck-hand off one of the Rajah’s ships.

The artful Papuan at first swore that he did not
know Macka, shook his head and said: “Me no savee!”

Then Hillary took a handful of silver from his pocket
and shook it before the Papuan’s eyes and hinted that
if he could tell him of anyone who *did* know about
Macka’s social position he would get well rewarded.
In a moment the native’s manner changed. He took
Hillary under the palms and told him a tale that fairly
made the young apprentice gasp. And it was a story
that would make anyone gasp.

It was from this native’s lips that Hillary heard for
the first time that Macka was an ex-missionary from
Honolulu, and that he was a native from one of the
coastal tribal villages of New Guinea, a tribal race who
were the most ferocious and god-forsaken heathens in
the Pacific world. The half-caste native sailor turned
out to be a rather intelligent man. Indeed it appeared
that he too was a converted heathen and had first got
acquainted with Macka while attending mission-rooms
in New Britain.

“Do you mean to tell me that the Rajah Koo Macka
is a member of a religious society?” gasped Hillary,
as the native took a nip of his tobacco plug and then
grinned from ear to ear.

“It am so, boss!” said the man. Then the native
continued: “’E am Rajah Makee and belonger misselinaries
everywheres. ’E kidnapper too, and often
taker Papuan girls, boys, men and women by nighter
when no one looker!”

“What do you mean?” said the apprentice with
astonishment, only vaguely realising what “kidnapper”
meant. Then the native calmly proceeded to
enlighten him, and in a few moments Hillary had heard
enough to convince him that the noble Rajah would
not only be likely to abduct Gabrielle from her home,
but old Everard and himself too if he thought they’d
fetch a few dollars in the slave markets of the Bismarck
Archipelago or elsewhere.

So did Hillary discover that Rajah Macka was an
inveterate cannibal, living on the flesh and weakness
of people of his own race. For it appeared that he
had sailed the Pacific for years, creeping into the bays
of remote isles and kidnapping girls, boys, men and
women till his schooner’s hold was crammed up to the
hatchways with a terrified human merchandise. He
usually sold the girls to chiefs in the Bismarck Archipelago
and New Guinea; the boys and men he disposed
of in New Guinea for plantation work or to be fattened
up for sacrificial festivals, the *pièce de résistance* of
some mighty chief’s cannibalistic orgy. Macka was not
the only one who dealt in the terrible blackbirding
trade; Germans, Dutchmen and even English skippers
made it their prime stock-in-trade.

Hillary could hardly believe his ears as he listened
to the character of the man who had been Everard’s
welcome guest. He took the native sailor into Parsons’s
grog bar, primed him well with drink and finally got
all the information necessary to follow on the Rajah’s
track. He discovered that he was a native of New
Guinea, that he possessed a tambu temple there and
was known as the “great Rajah” for hundreds of
miles in Dutch New Guinea because he had been well
educated by his heathen parents, who had sent him to
Honolulu to be initiated into the virtues of Christianity.

Though the sun was blazing down with terrific vigour
from the cloudless sky, Hillary half ran as he stumbled
across the tangled jungle growth on his way back to
tell Everard all that he had heard about the Rajah.
The native girls ran out of the little doors of the huts
and begged him to give them one brass button from
his apprenticeship suit. Crowds of native children,
quite nude but for the hibiscus blossoms in their mop-heads
and a wisp of a loin-cloth, rushed by the palms
with loaded calabashes, crammed with fish caught in
the shore lagoons. They were flying onward to the
market village, the Billingsgate of the Solomon Isles;
a place where shaggy-headed, sun-browned women exchanged
shells for the fresh, shining fish. But Hillary
had no eye for the scenes around him. He steamed
like a wet shirt stuck out in the tropic sunlight as he
hurried on; and the constellations of jungle mosquitoes
and fat yellow sand-flies made their presence felt,
driving their proboscis spears deep into his flesh, buzzing
their musical appreciation to find he ate so well.
The apprentice’s heart was beating like a drum; already
the tale that he had heard had upset his ideas
over the cause of Gabrielle’s absence. “Did she go
off voluntarily with the Rajah, or had he kidnapped
her?” That thought haunted him, tortured him. He
stared towards the summits of the distant smoking
volcanic ranges to the north-west and thought how they
resembled his own heart, that was near to bursting
with emotion, and how he too would like suddenly
to shout his passionate desires to the sky. He sighed
as he cut across the silver sands by the beach. He was
going the long way round, for he dare not pass by
the lagoon where Gabrielle had once sung to him.

He was nearly dead with fatigue when he arrived
at the bungalow. “Found ’er, boy?” came the dismal
query that always smote his ears when he returned to
Gabrielle’s home. Hillary simply shook his head and
stared into the glassy eyes of the old man. Then he
sat down and told the ex-sailor every word he had
heard about Macka’s schooner and his reputation
as a clever kidnapper of native girls and men in the
Pacific isles.

Old Everard jumped to his feet and hopped about
on his wooden leg like a raving madman. Hillary
tried to hold him down.

Crash! The old man had stabbed the screen four
times with his wooden member. Crash! He had picked
up his spare, best Sunday wooden leg and smashed all
the crockery off the shelf.

“Don’t be a fool! Everard! Everard! Don’t go
mad!” yelled Hillary at the top of his voice, as the
demented sailor still smashed away.

“I’ll save your daughter! I know where she is!”
yelled the apprentice, as he endeavoured to stop the
ex-sailor’s demented yells.

The furniture of the bungalow and all the crockery
were smashed before the mad old man calmed down.
Then he took a pull at the rum bottle, sat down on
the settee and recovering his breath stood up again and
shouted: “Where’s the *Bird of Paradise*, ’is ship?
’Is ship—has it sailed?” yelled the old man. Then
he shouted: “He’s got her on the *Paradise*! He’s got
’er, my Gabby! I see it all now! He’s an old blackbirder.
Not a Rajah! Not a godly missionary! By
the holy Virgin, forgive me, forgive me for being a
damned fool!” the old fellow moaned, as he recalled
Rajah Macka’s sombre voice and his exhortations when
he had hesitated as to whether he’d give up drinking
rum or no.

Then the ex-sailor looked at Hillary and yelled:
“Go, you blamed fool! Go and see if the *Bird of
Paradise* has sailed from the harbour.”

In a moment Hillary rushed away over the hills.
In an hour he returned to the bungalow and told Everard
that the *Bird of Paradise* had not been seen in the
bay of Bougainville since the night when Gabrielle
had been first missing.

“She’s sailed in the night! ’E’s got ’er! ’E’s got
’er! She’s gone! She wasn’t willing! ’E stole ’er,
just like ’e steals native girls! Boy, don’t worry.
She’s a good girl, she is—one of the best,” said the
distracted father, his voice lowering to a wailing monotone
as he steadily beat his wooden leg on the floor in
despair and hope.

“Of course she’s a good girl,” said Hillary. His
heart nearly stopped beating at *that*, a thought he
would not allow to haunt him.

“There’s no time to lose, Mr. Everard. I’ll get a
berth on some ship that’s bound to New Guinea. I’ll
find a ship. I’ll stow away, I’ll do anything to get
there and find his tambu house and rescue Gabrielle
from his grasp. I’ll steal, I’ll rob anyone if it is
necessary.” And as the apprentice said those things
his eyes flashed fire, his face flushed with all the hope
and the emotion that was in him.

“I’ve got money, I’ve been saving for years, saving
for ’er, but she didn’t know!” Everard suddenly exclaimed.
Then he looked at Hillary and continued:
“Get a schooner; hire one; I’ll pay! I’ll spend a
thousand to get Gabby back and smash Macka up!”
As he finished he brought his spare wooden leg down
crash on the table. Then he gripped the apprentice by
the hand. “Don’t leave me yet, boy, I’m nervous.
In the morning you can go out into the bay and see
if you can ’ire a schooner. It’s three weeks’ sail to
the New Guinea coast. Find out exactly where his
blasted coastal village is. Get all perticulars about
’im.”

“Do you really think he’s kidnapped Gabrielle? It
seems extraordinary in these enlightened times!”
gasped the young apprentice, as he thought of Gabrielle
on a three weeks’ voyage with Rajah Macka, the
ex-missionary.

“Don’t think! She’s gone! Where is she?”
Then the old man roared with dreadful vehemence:
“Why, damn it all, *I’ve* been in the slave-trading line!
*I’ve* crept into the native villages by night and stolen
the girls as they slept beneath the palms! Cloryformed
’em! Smothered ’em! Tied ’em hup! Shot
the b—— chiefs as they rushed from their dens to save
their darters and wives! *I* ’ave! *I* ’ave!”

“No!” That monosyllable expressed all the horror
of which Hillary was capable over Everard’s sudden
confession and his private thoughts as to Gabrielle’s
fate on that schooner with Macka.

“It’s retribution—that’s what it is,” wailed the
old man.

Hillary took his hand and did his best to soothe him.
Then he lit the oil lamp and sat down by the weeping
ex-sailor.

“My Gabby’s like ’er mother, beautiful gal, but she’s
’aunted in ’er ’eart by them spirits of the Papuan race.
’Er mother seed a spirit-woman spring out from under
the bed one night afore she died!”

“A spirit-woman!” gasped Hillary. Then he continued:
“Do you mean to tell me that there are such
things as spirit-women running about Bougainville?”

The old man looked vacantly into the apprentice’s
eyes for a second, then said languidly, as though, he
was too grieved to talk: “I seed a shadder meself
ther other night, ’ere in this very room!”

Hillary looked sideways at the empty rum bottles in
the corner of the room, then back again at the old man’s
bleary eyes. “He’s got a touch of the D.T.’s,” thought
the young apprentice.

Before midnight Everard lay in a drunken sleep.
Hillary had made up a bed by the couch, but he
couldn’t sleep. The idea of the girl being really abducted
nearly sent him mad. Then he thought of
Gabrielle’s strange talk on the hulk about shadow-women
and of all that Everard had just told him about
his wife’s being haunted by similar shadows. The idea
of the shadow-woman haunted his mind in an unaccountable
way, although he was naturally sceptical
about such things as ghosts and enchantments.

He sat by the small open window of the bungalow
and, as the scents of the orange-trees drifted in on
the cool night zephyrs, thought over all he had read
about sorcerers, of the haunting shadow-figures that
played such a prominent part in the love affairs of the
medieval ages. Then he looked out of the window on
to the moon-lit landscape and saw the tall, feathery
palms; he even heard the rattling of the derrick of some
schooner that was leaving before dawn. He thought of
Mango Pango singing her old legendary songs in a
chanting voice as she peeled spuds and chopped up the
indigestible bread-fruit and tough yams for dinner,
and finally summed up his belief in spirits in the one
word “Rot!”

And as old Everard lay just by him, snoring with a
mighty bass snore, he felt half sorry that he couldn’t
bring himself to believe implicitly that a
shadowwoman *had* lured the girl away from her home and had
stopped her from keeping the tryst.

“A shadow leaping about—preposterous! Sounds
like Doctor Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Perhaps she’s been
reading that book, and told her father about it while
he was under the influence of drink,” reflected Hillary.
He even brightened up as he persuaded himself that
the girl’s wild sayings and her evident terror had all
been brought about through reading that book. “She’s
under the influence of Jekyll—that’s what’s the matter
with this Everard family. Why, bless me, it’s all
natural enough. I myself am out here in the Solomon
Isles through reading books. I’d never have met
Gabrielle, never heard of strangling shadows and that
cursed Rajah Macka if it hadn’t been for Captain
Marryat, Fenimore Cooper and Stevenson.”

The young apprentice began to brighten up considerably
as he reflected over the whole business. Everard’s
snores sounded quite musical. He even began
to think that if a terrible tragedy *had* occurred and
Gabrielle was abducted and he was destined to go off
and search for her across the seas, it was not so dreadful
as nothing happening at all.

So he thanked God that he was in the Solomon Isles,
living amongst tattooed natives and strange old ex-sailormen
who saw shadows and evil enchantresses
dodging about their bungalow verandahs or racing
under the moon-lit palms.

And as he pondered and listened to the faint, far-off
thunder of the surf on the coral reefs off Felisi beach
he heard the guttural voices of the German sailors
singing a chantey as their grey tramp-steamer went
out on the tide, bound for the Bismarck Archipelago.
Old Everard was still wheezing heavily, and at last Hillary
too fell asleep to the sound of that steady snore.

CHAPTER IX—THE HOMERIC SPIRIT
=============================

When Hillary awoke in the morning he found
Everard in a most sober condition. “Boy,
thank God you’re here; I’m down in the
mouth. I’ve been thinking.” Then the old man
looked wistfully at the apprentice and said: “You
can’t go off to New Guinea and rescue my Gabrielle
from that damned villain on your own, can you?”

“No, I don’t suppose I can,” responded the apprentice,
as he sipped his tea and eagerly drank in the old
ex-sailor’s words. He knew that Everard was a man
of the world and a seafarer, although he was such a
fool in his domestic affairs. He also knew that Everard
knew more about hiring schooners than he did. Indeed
Hillary had found it a hard enough job to secure the
most menial berth on board the boats. So he felt that
to get a schooner to sail specially out of port on his
behalf was a dubious prospect, to say the least.

“Look you here, boy, directly you’re feeling fit go
up to Parsons’s bar and see if you can get in with some
of the shellbacks. They’re the men for us. Tell them
you want to negotiate with a skipper who would go to
New Guinea, and don’t forget to say that you’ve got
a man behind you who’ll pay the necessary expenses
for the whole business.”

“Bless you! How good of you!” replied Hillary,
as he gripped the old sailorman’s hand, quite forgetting
that he was Gabrielle’s father and was thinking of his
daughter and not of Hillary’s prospects.

“Don’t thank me, boy; it’s my daughter, ain’t it?”

“Yes; but it’s good of you to give me the chance to
hire a schooner to help get your daughter back again,”
said Hillary, as he realised the exact position and all
that the girl’s future welfare meant to him.

The old man took his hand and said: “You’re a
good lad, and I can see that you’re as much interested
in my daughter as I am.”

“I am!” exclaimed Hillary fervently. Then at the
old man’s request he put his cap on and went off to
seek some kindred spirit, someone who would help him
to negotiate with a skipper who was likely to let his
schooner out on hire. It wanted some negotiating too!
Skippers don’t let their ships out on hire every day.

“I’ll make for the grog shanty; that’s the only likely
spot where something that no one expects to happen
will happen,” was his comment as he walked off.

Hillary seldom visited the grog shanty at Rokeville.
Once or twice, as the reader may recall, he had gone
to the shanty after dusk just to hear the sunburnt men
from the seas sing their rollicking sea-chanteys.

The German consul, Arm Von de Sixt’s edict that
native girls were not to go near the grog shanties after
dark was still being strictly ignored. Only the night
before old Parsons had waved his signal towel and
chuckled with delight at the bar door as the brown
maids from the mountains performed Tapriata and
Siva dances under the moon-lit palms in front of his
secluded shanty. As everyone knows, this drew custom;
and the sights the sailormen saw—the wild dances
and rhythmical swerves of the girls—gripped their
imaginations. Indeed the festivals outside Parsons’s
grog bar were so well known that as far away as
’Frisco, Callao and London sailors could be heard to
remark after leaving some music hall: “Pretty fair
show, but nothing like the dancing brown girls outside
Parsons’s grog bar in Bougainville!”

As Hillary came within three hundred yards of the
grog shanty he could hear the faint halloas and chorus
of oaths that mingled with the sounds of drunken
revelry in the shanty. Someone was playing an accordion
that accompanied some hoarse voice that roared
forth: “White wings they never grow weary.” For
a moment the young apprentice lingered beneath the
palms, then realising that he had the whole afternoon
before him, he turned away and went down to the
beach. After walking about for some time he managed
to get a native to row him out to some of the schooners
that were lying at anchor in the bay. He went aboard
two of them and asked to see the mate or skipper;
but, as luck would have it, they were both ashore.

“Where’s she bound for?” he asked of a sailor who
was holystoning the schooner’s deck.

“Barnd fer ’Frisco,” said the man, as he stared at
Hillary, and then asked him if he wanted a job.

“Not on a boat that’s going to ’Frisco,” said Hillary,
as he looked over the side and beckoned the native
to come alongside with the canoe.

Then he went over to the tramp steamer that lay
near the promontory, and after a good deal of trouble
managed to see the skipper, who, when he found that
Hillary wanted a job, roared out: “If yer don’t git
off this b—— ship in two seconds I’ll pitch yer off!”

And so Hillary bowed his thanks and gracefully
withdrew into his native canoe. He had made up his
mind to go back and visit the grog shanty. “Perhaps
I’ll see some skipper there, or at least someone who
knows the way to get in with a captain who might
sail for a price to New Guinea,” was his reflection.

When he arrived once more on the beach off Rokeville
he could hear the sounds of revelry in Parsons’s
grog bar going strong. It was getting near sunset, the
busy drinking time. For the Solomon Island climate
is terribly hot and muggy at times.

“I shall be glad to go into the bar and see men that
laugh; it’s better than mooching about in company
with my own reflections,” thought Hillary, as he
walked up the grove of palm-trees that led to the beach
hotel. As he approached the entry to the rough wooden
saloon he was startled by hearing a mighty voice—a
voice that sounded like the voice of some Olympian god.
It was the voice of some man who was singing, someone
gifted with a vibrant, melodious utterance. It was
strangely mellow, for distance softened the gigantic
hoarse-throated rumbling till it sounded peculiarly
attractive, as though a woman sang in a man’s heart.

As Hillary listened he felt confused. Where had he
heard that voice before? Then he strode beneath the
two bread-fruit trees that stood just in front of the
shanty and, with strange eagerness, entered the little
doorway, anxious to see the one who sang so loud and
inspired the shellbacks to yell so vociferously.

As the young apprentice came into the presence of
that motley throng of drinking seamen he stared with
astonishment at the big figure of the man who had
just finished singing. Hillary had seen him before;
there he stood, the Homeric personality who had so
rudely intruded when he had been listening to Gabrielle’s
song by the lagoon. It was the huge sailorman
who had disturbed him by inquiring for the nearest
Solomon Island gin palace.

Hillary almost forgot his troubles as he stared on
the scene before him. The big man was waiting for
the chorus to cease before he proudly took up the solo
with his vibrant voice. Heaven knows why the apprentice
dubbed him “Ulysses” in his mind, for by
his own account he was anything but an example of
the Homeric hero—that is, if his own accounts of his
faithlessness to his absent spouse, whoever she might
be, were true. There he stood, one muscular arm outstretched,
his helmet hat tilted off his fine brow, revealing
his bronze curls, his eyes sentimentally lifted
to the low roof of the shanty. He looked like some
forlorn, derelict knight as, with one hand at his van-dyke
beard, he began to roar forth the fourth verse:

   | “For I went down south for to see my Sal,
   | Singing Polly-wolly-doodle all the day.
   | For I’m off to Lousianna for to see my Susiannah,
   | Singing Polly-wolly-doodle all the way!”

And all the while he made gallant signs to the two
pretty Polynesian girls who had rushed from the store
hard by to see who sang so loudly and well. At the
close of each verse he placed his hand on his heart and
bowed to the girls in such a way that their awestruck
eyes fairly shone in the sudden glory of it all. Heaven
knows what land and among what people he had
been reared in his youth, but it was certainly a bow
that would not have shamed an actor in any courtly
love scene. The traders and sunburnt shellbacks—a
mixture of various nationalities, yellowish, whitish,
greenish and olive-hued men, decorated with a multitudinous
variety of whiskers and beards—stamped
their sea-booted feet and thumped their rum mugs till
the shanty vibrated to their hilarious appreciation.

Suddenly Ulysses caught sight of Hillary. For a
moment he stared at the apprentice in surprise. Hillary
became the cynosure of all eyes as the shellbacks
looked over their shoulders at him. “You! You here!”
he yelled. Then he strode forward and, bending himself
with laughter, struck Hillary on the back with his
open hand, nearly fracturing his collar bone.

“How’s the gal! By the heathen gods of these
sun-boiled Solomon Isles, she was a real bewt!” Saying
this, he gave a massive wink, pushed his antediluvian
helmet hat on one side, stood upright till his
head bashed against the grog bar’s roof and shouted:
“Give the boy a drink. Hey there, you son of a
gorilla potman, bring us a *deep sea* for two!”

In a moment the bar-keeper disappeared to obey
that mighty voice. Bringing the drinks, he obsequiously
placed them on the counter and asked for the
wherewithal. The onlooking shellbacks rubbed their
eyes and chuckled in their glee as Ulysses yelled:
“Money! Damn yer cheek to think I pay drink by
drink!” Saying that, he brought his fist down with
such a crash on the bar that old Parsons without more
hesitation ticked off the drinks on his big account slate
that hung behind the bar and trembled in some fear.

Hillary buried his nose in the cool liquor. He wanted
a drink badly, but not so much to quench his thirst
as to drown his thoughts.

No presence in the world could be more welcome to
the young apprentice than that of the big man standing
amongst the motley crew of shellbacks. Those men
were all Hillary’s opposites, so far as temperament
goes, and so all the more welcome to him in his sorrow.
Nothing worried them. They were the grand philosophers
of Bougainville, for each night they summed
up the whole mystery of life and creation with an
infallible certainty.

The supreme personality inside that grog bar was
the giant stranger who had disturbed Gabrielle and
Hillary in the forest and had now recognised the apprentice.
Hillary’s new-found friend, for such he
turned out to be, had an individuality worth a thousand
ordinary people. The very expression of his face
was infectious as his eyes roamed over the bar and
fathomed the weakness and strength of the faces round
the room. Yes, Ulysses was a judge; only one glance
and he knew which man was likely to stand a drink
with the least argument. He had only been a visitor to
the bar for a few days when Hillary appeared on the
scene, and yet he was the acknowledged king of beachcomber-land.
Parsons’s bar echoed with wild songs,
laughter and impromptu oaths of glee as he sang.
Neither Hillary nor the shellbacks had ever heard or
seen anything like him before. And the tales he told!
He’d been everywhere! He swallowed half-a-pint of
rum at one gulp. Then he took a large parchment chart
from his capacious inside pocket, unfolded it on the bar
and made the shellbacks and traders turn green with
envy as he ran his huge forefinger along the curves and
lines of the latitudes and longitudes of endless seas.
He told of remote isles where pearls lay hidden that he
alone knew. Millions of them! Then he looked unblushingly
into the faces of those grizzly, sunburnt
men as they stuck their goatee whiskers out in astonishment
and, bending over his map once more, ran his
huge forefinger up to the north-west, right up to
Sumatra in the Malay Archipelago, and switched off
to the Loo-choo Isles in the Yellow Sea. “Treasure
hidden there,” said he, giving a potent sidelong wink
before he ran his finger, bang! right across the wide
Pacific Ocean down to the Paumotu Group and onward
south-west to the tropic of Capricorn. His descriptive
ability was marvellous: with upraised forefinger and
laughing eyes he described the weird inhabitants of
remote uncharted isles and the beauty of their native
women. Even the astounded Polynesian maids sighed
when his countenance flushed in some rapturous
thought as he re-described the wondrous beauty of
maids who dwelt on those remote isles of the wine-dark
seas. He hinted of tattooed queens who had favoured
his presence! He had ascended thrones! Discarded
kings had sat, and still sat, forlorn in their isolation,
cursing their heathen queens and the melancholy hour
when Ulysses entered their barbarian halls. Not *one*
Penelope but a score awaited *his* return.

“Well now! Who’d ’a’ thought it!” was the solitary
comment of the most garrulous shellback to be
found within a hundred miles south of the line. That
remark was followed by a critical glance at Ulysses’
massive frame, his rugged, handsome face, the virile
moustache and fierce-looking vandyke beard, to say
nothing of the omniscient-looking eyes that flatly challenged
anyone who would dare doubt their owner’s
veracity. Hillary took to him like a shot. He made up
his mind to keep him in sight or die in the attempt.
The young apprentice felt that it had been almost
worth his while to have travelled the world if only to
run across that magnificent vagabond. “He’s the man!
He’ll find Macka, polish him off the earth and save
Gabrielle. He’ll hire a schooner if a schooner’s to be
hired on this planet!” reflected Hillary, and he wasn’t
far wrong in his swift summary of Ulysses’ character.
Then he took a moderate sip of his rum, for he had
laid a half-crown on the bar and called for drinks,
and Ulysses with inimitable grace had gazed admiringly
into the apprentice’s eyes, pocketed the change
and treated him! This natural courtesy of the South
Seas amused Hillary immensely. To him it was a true
act of brotherhood; in its liberality it vividly illustrated
the divine creed of “One-man-as-good-as-another.”

As the night wore on the shellbacks and traders
began to roll off from the precincts of the bar, some
to their ships in the bay and some to their native
wives. As the last stragglers went out of the doorway
and the oil lamps began to burn low Ulysses lay down
on the long settee. He had taken up his abode in the
shanty—never asked the bar-keeper’s permission, not
he. He had simply taken possession of the bar by day
and the settee by night. Hillary, who had lurked by
his side through the whole evening, had quite thought
to follow him home to his lodgings or back to his
ship, for though Ulysses told much of his past he was
extremely reticent about his present affairs, where
he had come from or where he was bound for. Hillary
was disheartened to find that he was stopping in the
shanty for the night, but his need of that mighty
personage made him determine not to be outdone.

A few old sea-dogs were still lurking about and
arguing over their quart pots, talking softly as they
saw Ulysses settle himself for the night. Hillary did
not heed them, they were mostly muddled and not
curious. Going straight up to the big man, he said
softly: “I say, I’d like to speak to you outside for a
moment, if you’ve no objection.”

It wanted a bit of pluck to make a bold bid to that
huge adventurer.

Ulysses had nicely settled his recumbent form and
closed his eyes when Hillary thus addressed him.
For a moment the big face rested on the settee pillow,
then slowly the head turned, the unflinching eyes
stared hard at the young apprentice, the massive,
curly head slowly lifted. Did the young whipper-snapper
have the cursed cheek to want his change
back? Such was the apparent thought that flashed
through Ulysses’ mind as his eyes fixed themselves on
Hillary. But in a moment he saw the earnest expression
in the young apprentice’s face and with marvellous
instinct gathered that Hillary’s request was
worth granting. “Any money in it?” he whispered
in a thunderous undertone. For a moment Hillary
looked abashed and rubbed his smooth chin thoughtfully.
It was the last thing on earth he had expected
to hear from that hero of the seas.

“Maybe there’s a lot of money in it,” he quietly
replied. That reply acted like magic on Ulysses’
weary limbs. In less than two minutes they had
passed outside the shanty.

When they arrived outside the wooden South Sea
pub the large, low yellow moon lay on the horizon,
staring across the wide Pacific. The scene could not
have been staged with better effect. The background
of the mountains in Bougainville, the tin roofs of
the township, moonlight falling on the sheltering
palms and over the small doors of the huts, gave an
individual touch to the whole scene. The landscape
looked like some mighty oil-painting showing two
men standing on a silent shore staring out to sea
at the full moon. Then the two figures, engaging in
deep conversation, once more began to walk to and fro.

As Hillary walked up and down with Ulysses he
told the man all that troubled him, and begged his
assistance in rescuing Gabrielle from the hands of a
kidnapper.

“You don’t mean that golden-haired girl that I
caught yer with? The girl I saw swinging on the
banyan-tree when I first had the enormous pleasure
of spying on ye?” said Ulysses, as he towered over
the apprentice till Hillary’s five feet eleven inches
appeared quite diminutive.

“Yes, that was Gabrielle, that’s whom I’m talking
about. She’s missing! Gone! Stolen! He’s got her,
a blasted heathen missionary! He’ll take her away to
New Guinea and put her in his tambu harem in some
devilish coastal town! He will sacrifice her purity to
his filthy desires! God in heaven!”

For a moment his companion stared at the flushed
face of the youth, who had waxed so grandiloquent
as emotion got the better of him. Then he said:

“Are ye drunk, boy?” Then, without waiting for
an answer, he smacked the apprentice on the back and
looked into his eyes. Then he gave a loud guffaw
that echoed to the hills and made Hillary look round
in apprehension. Next he swelled his chest, tugged
his mighty moustachios and said: “Don’t ye worry,
lad, I’m yer man!”

Hillary was not wrong in his hasty summing up of
that big man’s character. Ulysses had a large heart
notwithstanding his own strange confessions of far-off
isles, discarded queens and melancholy kings.

“Blow me soul, by the heart of God, you’ve got it
bad; it’s in love you are,” said he, as he laid his huge
hand across his waistcoat, over his vagabond heart.
Then, continuing he said: “So this Rajah Macka’s
boss of a plantation and owns a ship?”

“That’s so,” ejaculated the apprentice.

Ulysses immediately took from the folds of his red
shirt a large parchment-like scroll, presumably his
mysterious chart, and then opening it out at a spare
page wrote down: “A b—— heathen Kanaka missionary
owns a ship, got plantations, and most probably
in possession of money too through being a black-birder,
and it is now herein written down, stated and
agreed, between Samuel Bilbao and myself, that all
the aforesaid cash and goods are due to the aforesaid
Samuel Bilbao, by God;” And as the giant sailorman
wrote on, he accompanied each word with a musical
chuckle.

Hillary gazed at the man in incredulous wonder; but
still, odd as it may seem, he began to feel a vast confidence
in Ulysses’ ability for doing anything that he
set out to do. “Heavens, who ever saw such a human
phenomenon off the stage?” was his reflection as he
realised that the original being before him was certainly
a master of his own actions. The apprentice
instinctively saw that his new-found friend was invaluable
as a leader in a forlorn hope, whereas a practical
man who carefully weighed all possibilities to a nicety
would be a “dead horse” and a bugbear to boot.

“What kind of a maid is this glorious girl of
yours?” said Samuel Bilbao after a pause.

“Why, she’s as white a girl as ever lived; only the
vilely suspicious would think ill of her. I’ve never
met a girl like her before!”

“Ho! Ho!” roared the sailor, who had been
mightily in love on more than one occasion. Then,
looking straight into the apprentice’s face, he said in a
hushed, sympathetic voice: “That all ye got to say
for the poor girl?” Seeing how the wind blew, he
at once became sympathetic. He too had loved and
sorrowed, he said; and then he spoke soothingly and,
patting the apprentice on the shoulder, said with tremendous
solemnity: “How sad! Tell me everything,
lad.”

Hillary, who had imbibed rather liberally, became
emotional, and after going into many details about
Gabrielle and her disappearance suddenly blurted out:
“She’s a strange kind of girl too; she says she’s
haunted by a shadow thing, a woman, I think, some
sort of a ghost.”

Just for a moment Bilboa renewed his intense scrutiny
of the apprentice’s face, then roared: “By God!
Abducted by a Rajah, whipped off to a tambu temple
to be sacrificed at the altar of one by name Macka
Koo Raja—and she’s haunted!” The big man
roared the foregoing so loudly that Hillary thought he
would awaken the whole township! But still the
sailorman yelled on: “God damn it, youngster, I’ve
cuddled queens and princesses on a hundred heathen
isles, but never has such a strange story come out of
my wooing.” Then he added swiftly: “Cheer up!
I’ve had numerous abduction jobs both for and
against: kings and queens have paid me in pearl and
gold for such things, and never yet did I fail in finding
a pretty maid’s hiding-place or the weakness in
a queen’s virtue! I tell ye this—your Rajah Macka’s
done for! I’m his man.” Saying this, he gave Hillary
a quizzical look and continued: “You’re sure the girl’s
not stealing a march on ye? She didn’t run off on
the abduction night in front of the Rajah, eh?” Before
Hillary could give his emphatic assurance in reply to
this query the sailorman gave a huge grin and said:
“What’s the dear old pa think of it all? Worried
much? Got cash?” Whereupon Hillary at once told
Bilbao how old Everard had promised to give anything
up to a thousand pounds to anyone who would
go to New Guinea in search of the girl.

The effect was magical: Bilbao’s face flushed with
rapturous thoughts; he blew clouds of tobacco smoke
from his lips and chuckled: “I’m bound for New
Guinea! Bound for a heathen, a Macka Rajah!
Good old Macka—he’s mine! He’s destined to meet
one by name Samuel Bilbao. I’ll find him! I’ll claim
the girl too!” he added, as he nudged Hillary in the
ribs and winked. Following this sally, he gave the
apprentice a tremendous thump on the back and said:
“Youngster, don’t get down in the mug; come to Parsons’s
parlour in the morning and we’ll see what’s best
to be done to secure the girl.”

Then he took the apprentice back into the grog bar
and called for drinks. “Git it down,” said he, as
Hillary hesitated over the fiery liquor. And there for
quite one hour the huge man told of his mighty deeds
far and near, and multiplied his credentials, so that
Hillary might not go off seeking someone else for the
position which he, Ulysses, knew he was especially
suited for.

Before Hillary departed for home Bilbao impressed
upon him to be at the grog bar on the following
morning.

Hillary could never remember how he got back to
his lodgings that night. All that he ever did know
was that when he arrived in his small bedroom he
imagined that Koo Macka lay helpless on the floor
before his window. Mango Pango, and two natives
who slept just by, and the landlady rushed in in their
night attire to see what was the matter, and found
Hillary singing, “O! O! for Rio Grande!” as he
swayed a big war-club and smashed an imaginary
Rajah Macka’s head into pulp.

In the morning Hillary made a thousand apologies
to his native landlady and to pretty Mango Pango.
Mango Pango graciously accepted each apology, and
grinned with delight to think that at last the young
Englishman had taken to drink, and that fun was
going to begin as the craving strengthened.

As soon as Mango Pango had given Hillary his clean
shirt and breakfast he got ready and then once more
left his diggings, bound for Parsons’s grog bar. When
he arrived the shellbacks were very numerous, for a
schooner had just put into Bougainville, and the crews
were standing treat.

Samuel Bilbao met the apprentice in his usual volcanic
style.

“Where’s yer fiddle, youngster,” said he, as though
Hillary had come to perform violin solos.

“Damn it! Left it at yer lodgings?” Then he
continued: “Why, bless me, you ask me to help you
find a Macka, and rescue a beautiful——” He stopped
short, thinking it would not do to let the bystanders
know everything, and continued: “Go and fetch your
fiddle, boy.”

Hillary felt little inclination to play a fiddle, but
there was something about the personality of that
man that told him that if he asked a favour he expected
it granted.

He soon returned with his violin, and it was a sight
worth seeing to watch Samuel Bilbao’s face as Hillary
obediently performed the songs that he asked him to
play. And as Hillary played that strange man lifted
and moved his hands in rhythmic style, half closed his
big-lidded eyes, looking most sentimental, as he drank
in the melody and huge sips of rum.

“Play that again! Bewtif-ool! You’re a genius,”
he ejaculated, as the shellbacks who stood round looked
into one another’s eyes in wonder to see a man who had
confessed to such a past almost weep over an English
song.

All was going merrily as a marriage bell in heathen-land
when one by name Bill Bark appeared on the
scene. He was a big gawk of a fellow, and lived mostly
by cadging drinks. Going up to Hillary as he stood
in the grog parlour playing his instrument, he deliberately
knocked his bowing arm upwards.

“That’s a silly joke,” said the apprentice quietly.
Then, as the aggressor used several foul epithets, Hillary
continued: “You’re an awful fool if you really
think that your disgusting language is more attractive
to these men standing here than my violin playing.”

At this gracious compliment, paid to the listening
shellbacks, traders and the three pretty native girls,
the rough audience blushed. It really *was* said so
politely, so courteously, and reflected such credit on
their musical taste that one or two of them took a huge
sip from their glasses and bowed to Hillary.

Bill Bark felt extremely wild at the laughter that
followed that invisible blush, and then once more
knocked Hillary’s bow-arm up, just as he had begun
to play again.

“Why not be pleasant, friendly like?—though
you’re not much of a catch, even to look at,” said Hillary
in quiet tones as he stopped playing once more.

“’Ain’t ’e soft-o!” said Bill Bark, *sotto voce*, to
three boiled-looking sailormen who sat on tubs itching
to see a fight.

As for Ulysses, who was watching the whole proceeding
quietly, his face was a study. He had not travelled
the South Seas for nothing; he saw further ahead
than all the brains of Bougainville put together. He
was peering steadfastly into Hillary’s eyes. He seemed
to be quite satisfied with what he found there, for he
gave a tremendous guffaw, smacked his big knee and
chuckled inwardly. He knew! Old Samuel Bilbao
knew; “Knock the ass’s bow arm up again, Bill
Bark! How dare he think your oaths are worse than
his damned fiddling!”

Hillary noted the deep undertone of Ulysses’s voice
as he roared forth that demand to the loafer, and the
apprentice felt gratified to hear the subtle note, for
it told him that Ulysses, at least, knew that true pluck
is always humble.

To Samuel Bilbao’s immense delight, the loafer, Bill
Bark, once more knocked Hillary’s bow arm up again.

It seemed incredible! The audience in the grog
bar had never seen anything so sudden before—Bill
Bark’s two front teeth were missing! The scene inside
the shanty reminded one of an exhibition of statuary
done in marble and terra-cotta clays, so thunderstruck
were they all. It was the beards and whiskers that
spoilt the statuesque effect. For who ever saw marble
statues with soft whiskers?—or smoke issuing from
black-teethed mouths that gripped short clay pipes?
The shellbacks, traders, Polynesian maids, indeed all
had sprung to their feet and were staring in astonishment
at the crimson fluid that poured from Bill Bark’s
wide-open, astonished mouth.

Hillary was the only one who appeared calm. He
was methodically placing his violin carefully by the
bar counter so that it should not get damaged in the
coming fray. He thought of Gabrielle, and cursed his
luck, as he slowly took off his coat. It seemed terrible
to him that he had to conform to the ways of a materialistic
world when he believed Gabrielle was a prisoner
in a slave-ship on the high seas. So bitter were his
feelings that he could have picked his violin up before
them all and smashed it to smithereens on the bar,
just to relieve his feelings.

Ulysses solemnly led the way as the whole company
followed in glee to see the fight between the apprentice
and Bill Bark under the palms outside the bar. At
last the giant umpire tossed his antediluvian helmet
hat right over the highest bread-fruit tree and
shouted: “Time, gents, time!” Bill Bark lay stiff
on his back and looked straight up at the soft blue
of the sky. And it was good to see the rapturous
light in Ulysses’ eyes as he stood there pulling his
vandyke beard, his outstretched moustachios stiff with
pride. It is certain that the apprentice had successfully
revealed to Bill Bark the force of one great truth,
a truth that no travelled man will deny: that often
quiet-looking young men in the South Seas have been
found to be endowed with a wonderful gift for fist
repartee and a fine ability for getting their own back
and keeping their features intact.

Had the apprentice accepted all the drink that was
about after that fight he would have undoubtedly died
of alcoholic poisoning and gone out of the story altogether.
As it was, he seemed to have entered the
realms of enchantment. He played the fiddle as the
shellbacks and beachcombers danced. He had never
seen such a strange lot of men dance together before.
They were certainly a mixed crew, and represented the
adventurous, rum-loving individuals of all nationalities.
They blessed Hillary’s generous soul as he
shouted: “Rum for six!” As they danced a jig on the
bar floor they looked like some peculiar human rainbow
of faded hues that had suddenly come out of the
night of storm-stricken seas. It wasn’t so much their
eyes and rum-coloured noses as their skins that gave
that peculiar impression. Yellow-skinned, tawny-skinned,
greenish, brownish and bilious, saffron-hued
reprobates they were. Some wore grizzled beards, some
scarf-shaped beards knotted thickly at the throat and
tasselled at the ears; billy-goatee whiskers abounded—and
couldn’t they dance too!

“Tumpt-er-te-tumper-te tump-te tump!” the sea-boots
went, as Hillary, bunched up in the corner, fiddled
away and the beards and caps tossed in the dim
light of the oil lamps. Then the chorus came:

   | “Blow! blow! and damn yer eyes!
   | Haul the old gal by the leg!
   | And that’s the way the money flies
   | When we’re out with Joan and Meg!”

And still they danced on, their chests and brawny
arms visible, for they had long since cast their coats
aside, owing to the terrific heat. The native men and
women peeped through the open doorway in delighted
astonishment to watch the dancing sailormen with the
tattoo on their arms and chests.

Sarahs, Betsy Janes and romantic maids of Shanghai
and Tokio were deeply engraved on their sunburnt
skin: women they had loved and who had jilted them.
One old man danced mournfully, his chin bent forward
as he contemplated the pretty tattooed maid on his
own chest and hummed in a melancholy fashion as he
thought of—what? The apprentice continued to play,
inspired by the shifting scene. Slowly the room
became obscured as though by a ghostly mist. Then a
puff of wind came through the door and blew three
of the dancers away!—old beards, sea-boots, legs and
melancholy eyes suddenly crumpled up, all blown
away! Even the big substantial wooden bar faded
and vanished like a dream!

When the apprentice awoke an hour or two later
he found that most of his comrades slept. He took
a deep drink from the water-jug, after which he realised
that he must have had a good deal more to drink
than was good for him.

CHAPTER X—THE WINE-DARK SEAS
============================

On the evening of the day that followed Hillary’s
stand-up fight at the shanty he went off
with Samuel Bilbao to visit Gabrielle’s father.

“Must see the old man first, you know,” said
Ulysses, as he chuckled over the immense possibilities
that loomed before his all-embracing vision. He saw
money as well as wild adventure ahead: “A coastal
native town in New Guinea! A beautiful maiden
stolen, hidden away, abducted by a damned Macka
Koo Rajah—and Samuel Bilbao hired to find her and
pound old Macka to dust—splendid!” he chuckled,
as he walked on under the palms, pulling his large
viking-like moustachios.

Hillary glanced at the big man’s flushed, happy face
and thanked God that such hearts still existed, that
men with Herculean frames longed to do unheard-of
things quite outside the ordinary business of life.

Then, as Bilbao tugged his vandyke beard, chuckled
and continued to roar over his own thoughts, Hillary
said: “Do be quiet; don’t for heaven’s sake mention
anything about your discarded queens and melancholy
kings. You know Everard has been an old sailor and
he consequently knows what men are.” Then the apprentice
added, in soft tones: “He might draw wrong
conclusions as to your character and not be willing
to trust you, you know.”

The big face expressed massive disgust that such
an ignoramus of a youth should dare advise such a
one as he.

Hillary only smiled at seeing that look. He had
read Ulysses like a book, and knew exactly how far
to go.

“So here’s where the old man’s put up,” suddenly
said Bilbao, as they stopped. They had arrived outside
Everard’s bungalow and Hillary softly opened
the door.

Old Everard struggled from his chair and immediately
lit the oil lamp, for it was nearly dark.

“Well, boy, ’eard anything about my Gabby?” he
mumbled, as he struck matches, never looking behind
him, since he thought that Hillary had returned alone.
Then, getting no reply, he turned round and looked
straight into Samuel Bilbao’s eyes. He stared at the
giant sailorman for quite ten seconds, as though a
vision had suddenly come before him. Then he said:
“You!”

Bilbao stared also for ten seconds, then roared out:
“By thunder, it’s you!”

“Who?” echoed Hillary’s lips, as he surveyed the
two men and wondered what next was going to happen.
The two men, Bilbao and old Everard, had gripped
hands!

It appeared that Samuel Bilbao had sailed as boatswain
under Everard when he had been chief mate
of a full-rigged ship in the Australian clipper line,
about eleven years before.

Hillary almost cursed that sudden recognition as the
two men rambled on, and Bilbao shook his fist, bent
himself double with glee and took monstrous nips of
rum and whisky as he discussed everything, of the past
and future, but the vital matter in hand.

But it turned out a good thing, for before the night
grew old the big sailor had lifted his hand to the roof
and in a thunderous voice had called all the tropic stars
to witness that he would find Gabrielle and scatter
Rajah Koo Macka’s dust to the four winds of heaven.
He swore to Everard and Hillary that he knew Macka
(whether he really did know him at that time was
something that was never known for a certainty).

“I know him, the old heathen kidnapper!” he
roared, as Hillary and old Everard stared at the massive
face with its vikingesque moustache stuck out like
spears from the corner of his grim mouth. “Seen ’im
off Tai-o-hae five years ago, when he abducted two
princesses—twins—from O le Mopiu’s royal seraglio!”

It was marvellous the change of atmosphere Bilbao
made in Gabrielle’s old home, as he thought over his
plans, consulted his chart, ran his finger down the
degrees and murmured: “Easy as winking!” Indeed,
he made everything look so rosy that instead of
Gabrielle’s abduction being a tragedy it appeared a
blessing in disguise.

And it can be truthfully recorded that though Samuel
Bilbao held the advance of two hundred pounds
in gold and notes in his mighty palm, and said that he
didn’t like taking money from an old pal, he really
*meant* what he said. All the same, he gave a huge
sigh of relief when he felt a mass of gold coins and
notes safe in his capacious pocket. But it must again
be admitted, in all fairness to Bilbao, that he could not
go off and hire a schooner for a voyage to the coast
of New Guinea to search for Gabrielle without some
cash in hand.

After that little business matter was settled to the
satisfaction of both parties, Bilbao looked at the old
man and said: “Ah, pal Everard, she was a beautiful
maid, well worth the money, this Gabrielle of yours.”
Then he continued: “I had great pleasure in meeting
the girl, and introduced myself to her as she sat swinging
on a bough in the forest not far from here: and
didn’t she sing to me! Lord! I think the girl fell
madly in love with my handsome face. I little dreamed
that I was being passionately wooed by my old shipmate’s
daughter.”

Everard at hearing this large contortion of the truth
only looked absently at the big man and said nothing.
Then Ulysses said in a soft, sympathetic voice: “Ah,
pal Everard, I can easily imagine how ye loved the
gal, soothed her pretty face and made her love ye—eh,
pal?”

“I did! I did!” wailed the distracted old man,
his wretched heart quaking as he looked for a moment
into Bilbao’s keen blue eyes and dropped his own in
shame.

Hillary, who had told Ulysses a good deal about
Gabrielle’s home life while he was under the influence
of about four whiskies that Ulysses pressed upon him,
gave his comrade a hasty pinch in the leg as he wondered
what Bilbao might say next.

Ulysses only replied by a ponderous wink, right in
front of Everard’s eyes too! But the ex-sailor was
too far gone to notice that. It took a good deal of
persuasion to stop him from going on the voyage to
New Guinea himself, if they were successful in hiring
a schooner. “You’d better stay at home; the poor
girl may return while we’re away at sea, and what
would she say at missing her dear old father,” said
Bilbao sympathetically.

The big man looked at the apprentice and gave
another wink, and said: “We don’t want no old pa
with us, eh?”

Hillary responded by a vacant look; then, seeing
Ulysses’s broad, friendly smile, lifted his hand and
smacked the giant on the back uproariously. Alas!
even the apprentice was under the influence of drink.

Gabrielle’s father sat huddled in his arm-chair;
his wooden leg shivered pathetically as he mumbled:
“So she’s on the *Bird of Paradise*, my daughter, my
Gabby.”

As for Ulysses, when he heard the name of the ship
he smacked his mighty knees and roared out: “Ho!
ho! for a bottle of rum! The *Bird of Paradise*!” The
adventurous sailorman had made all possible inquiries
about the aforesaid vessel when it sailed from the
straits, etc., and had calculated to a nicety when it
would arrive in New Guinea. “There’s no time to
lose, by heaven!” he thundered, as he swallowed his
ninth whisky and looked at the parlour clock. Then
he shook Hillary, woke him up with a start and said:
“Come on, lad, let’s put the old man to bed; he’s tired;
it’s the least we can do for him.”

Before Everard fell to the floor they both lifted him
and placed him comfortably on his settee. Drunk as
the prematurely aged ex-sailor was, he looked like some
bedraggled apostle as he lay there on his couch, his
hands crossed, a smile on his lips, as though he still
laughed to himself over Ulysses’ wild jokes.

Then they both left the bungalow. If Hillary staggered
slightly as he gripped Bilbao’s arm, and thought
that the coco-palms were doing a hushed step-dance
on the moon-lit slopes of Bougainville, it must be taken
into account that he had to be sociable. He could
not very well stand like a mute as those reunited
shipmates drank to the sprees of other days and finished
up in wild farewells and sanguine toasts to the success
of the venture they were engaged upon. As the
apprentice softly closed the front door of the bungalow
Bilboa said, “Wait a tick,” and hurriedly returning
into the parlour he picked up the whisky bottle and
swallowed the remaining contents. He excused himself
before Hillary by saying: “Ah! youngster, I had
to drink once again to the success of our venture and
to the pretty eyes of that girl; we’ll find her, don’t
you fear.”

“I know we will,” replied the apprentice, as he
clutched the big man’s arm.

As they stole along under the palms Bilbao’s heart
fairly bubbled with mirth as he realised the possibilities
of this new adventure. It would take him out on
the seas again! It was evident that his present quiet
life was palling upon him. No one knew why he was
hiding from the arm of the law in Bougainville, and
no one cared. All that can positively be stated here is
that his heart was bursting to escape from the rough
settlement where Germans drank lager and beach
combers slept between their drinks. Such happiness
was too much for him.

“Splendid!” he reiterated, as he brought his open
hand down on Hillary’s back. But Hillary cared not;
his heart sang within him like a bird: whisky and his
comrade’s mighty belief in the success of all that they
might undertake had made him entirely careless of
the moment. “Go it, boy!” said Ulysses to the young
apprentice, rattling the money in his capacious pocket,
and Hillary joined lustily in the rollicking chorus of
some Spanish chantey.

When they eventually arrived outside Hillary’s
lodgings Samuel Bilbao swore that *he* lived there.
And Hillary? Well, he was so confused that he obsequiously
followed Ulysses in at that worthy’s kind
invitation. And Mango Pango lay on her little bed-mat
in the outhouse and could not believe her ears that
night, as she mumbled to herself: “Surely not nicer
Hill-eary shouting wilder song in ze middle night, up
dere in his bedrooms?” And then the astounded
Mango Pango heard no more, for Ulysses was comfortably
fast asleep in Hillary’s bed—while the apprentice
slept on the floor.

In the morning Hillary’s landlady fairly gasped to
see so big and so handsome a man in her quiet young
lodger’s company. And as for pretty Mango Pango,
she opened her eyes and stared at Ulysses as though
God sat there in front of her. And when Ulysses
swallowed a quart of boiling tea and then sat her on
his massive lap, her eyes shone like diamonds. Though
Hillary’s head felt a bit heavy after the preceding
night’s libations he could not help smiling as Samuel
Bilbao kissed the Polynesian maid’s dusky ear and
whispered pretty things to her. And was Mango Pango
abashed? Not in the least. It was very evident that
Samuel Bilbao was smitten with that dusky maid’s
charms.

But all these recorded things are small enough compared
with the great venture that they were entering
upon. Even Ulysses realised that time was valuable
and that many difficulties might beset their path before
they could hire a schooner and keep their promise
to Everard. And more, the young apprentice quickly
gave Bilbao a hint that they’d better be off, and that
Mango Pango’s charms could wait till a later date.

That same day Ulysses went down to the beach and
tried to get round all the schooners’ skippers off
Bougainville. But it turned out that none was willing
to accept the fee Bilbao offered for the hire of a
schooner, or to take him as passenger to the coast
of New Guinea.

Just as Hillary and his comrade were getting dubious
about their chances they heard that a schooner, the
*Sea Foam*, was about to sail for New Britain and then
on to Dutch New Guinea. In a moment Bilbao had
hired a boat and was rowed out to the *Sea Foam*, which
lay a quarter of a mile off, by the barrier reefs. Bilbao
at once went aboard and interviewed the skipper, and
found that he was a mean man and wanted more money
than Ulysses possessed to alter his course or take
Ulysses for a passage at all.

When Bilbao returned to Parsons’s grog bar, where
he had arranged to meet Hillary, he looked worried.
It was evident to the young apprentice that he had
entered heart and soul into the whole business. The
fact was that he was anxious to clear out of Bougainville,
and so the scheme in hand offered him all that
he wanted: money, a change, and the forlorn hope and
excitement that were meat and drink to his volcanic
temperament.

“Don’t despair, boy,” said he to Hillary, “Bilbao
never caved in yet while the world went round the
sun.” Then they both went back to Hillary’s lodgings.
Ulysses seemed deep in thought as they passed under
the palms. Then he said to Hillary: “The chief mate
of that *Sea Foam* is an old pal of mine.”

“Is he?” said the apprentice, wondering what
Ulysses was driving at.

“Yes, he is,” responded Bilbao. Then he added:
“I’m going out to see that mate, and I wouldn’t
wonder if the *Sea Foam* doesn’t sail to-morrow night
with you and me on board.”

“Really?” said Hillary.

“Yes, really!” responded Bilbao, as he told his
surprised comrade to get his traps packed ready to
sail the next night.

“But didn’t you say the skipper wanted eight hundred
pounds?” said Hillary after a pause.

“We don’t get all we want in this world,” replied
Ulysses, as he gave a massive wink.

When they eventually got back to Hillary’s lodgings,
the apprentice was so sanguine over Bilbao’s hopeful
outlook that he too felt quite cheerful. He opened
his sea-chest and showed his big comrade Gabrielle’s
photograph. Ulysses stared at the face, smacked Hillary
on the back, then kissed the photograph gallantly.

After that Hillary sat down in his room and fell
into deep reflections over the mysterious disappearance
of Gabrielle. Then he played his violin so as to soothe
his own feelings. He was quite undisturbed by Bilbao.
For that worthy had sneaked off outside beneath the
palms so that he could woo pretty Mango Pango.
Hillary heard shrieks of laughter coming from the
dusky maiden’s lips as Ulysses whispered heaven only
knows what pretty things into her ears. Anyhow,
Mango Pango fell desperately in love with Samuel
Bilbao. And when he and Hillary left Mango Pango’s
kitchen that evening the young apprentice noticed
that his comrade was full of glee over some new
scheme that had originated in his versatile brain.

Mango Pango’s eyes shone like fire as she waved her
hand to Bilbao and behaved as though she’d known
the giant sailorman since her earliest childhood.

“She’s mine!—mine for ever!” chuckled Bilbao.

Hillary took little notice of Bilbao’s wild utterances,
but it was not long before he discovered that there
was a good deal of meaning in all that Ulysses said,
and also in the humour of his chuckles.

It would be a mass of wearying detail to tell all that
occurred before Ulysses secured the *Sea Foam* so that
they might sail straight for the coast of New Guinea
without the charge for her hire unduly diminishing
his private exchequer. It is sufficient to say that
Ulysses made the very best of his old friendship with
the chief mate of the *Sea Foam*. And perhaps it will
enlighten the reader a good deal to know that the
chief mate came ashore that night and had a long
private conversation and multitudinous mixed drinks
with Bilbao in Parsons’s grog bar. Hillary stood aside
as the two men spoke in very low undertones and
Ulysses poked the mate in the ribs and showed him a
handful of gold. Then the mate began to get jovial
and gave Ulysses a receipt for several of the golden
coins. Of course it was none of Hillary’s business
as to *how* the *Sea Foam* was to be hired. Ulysses
had taken that part of the job on, and as an innocent
girl’s very life was at stake, what might appear to be
a shady transaction in getting hold of the schooner
was only a necessary part of the day’s work, so far
as Ulysses was concerned. He chuckled inwardly to
see the mate’s delight over the bribe he’d given him.
But his success with the mate of the *Sea Foam* was as
nothing when he discovered that the *Sea Foam’s* skipper
was a terrible drunkard; and to make things easier
still the skipper himself came into that very bar and,
seeing Ulysses flush of cash, swallowed several good
strong nips of rum at his expense.

“No, never!” said Skipper Long John (for such was
the *Sea Foam* captain’s name), as good old Samuel
Bilbao spun his mighty yarns, telling of the wondrous
deeds in his seafaring career. Still the skipper continued
to drink, so that when at last he fell down on
the floor of Parsons’s saloon bar after drinking his
nineteenth rum no one was surprised. What may
have been the surprising matter of the whole business
was this: That *same* skipper was arrested that *same*
night for using bad language and insulting two Polynesian
girls on the beach! No one *saw* the girls who
had been so grossly insulted; all that was known about
the matter was that the skipper was seen staggering
about the beach that night, trying to hire some natives
to paddle him out to his schooner, when he was suddenly
seized from behind by two Herculean-framed
members of the native police and taken off to the Bougainville
*calaboose* (jail). It was rumoured long after
that he was fined fifty dollars or two weeks’ solitary
confinement. How the poor old skipper took his hard
luck is not known. Anyway, one can rest assured that
he never dreamed that Samuel Bilbao knew the head
of the native police force in Rokeville, and that whilst
he languished in jail that worthy chuckled with delight
over the success of his scheme; and the head of the
native police was mightily pleased with the bribe he
had received from Samuel Bilbao! So was the schooner
secured.

It may seem wonderful how the thing was done.
But the civil authorities in those parts and the owners
in Sydney can vouch for it that the *Sea Foam*, with
Samuel Bilbao on board as captain, sailed out of
Bougainville harbour at midnight on 10th February,
and no one knew for what port she had sailed.

Hillary half wondered if he was in the throes of some
marvellous dream as he stood on the *Sea Foam’s* deck
just before she sailed. Ulysses was walking about the
deck shouting orders to his willing crew. And the
crew were singing their chanteys cheerfully as they
thought over the conviviality of their new skipper,
who had so generously primed them up with the best
Jamaica rum. Not one tear was shed when they heard
that their late skipper, Long John, had broken his
leg and was lying helpless in the tin-roofed hospital
at Silbar, in Bougainville. For such was the sad news
Ulysses imparted when he had mustered them on deck
and told them that he and the chief mate had orders
to sail at once. There was not the slightest need to
tell them verbally that he was henceforth their captain.
The old boatswain saw the imperative command
of those eyes and saluted the new skipper, and every
man on board instinctively straightened his backbone.
In a moment Ulysses had cast off his faded coat and
pants and old boots. None wondered when he appeared
on deck in the late captain’s best sea-going
clothes, and on his head the brass-bound, badged peak-cap
that he had found in the skipper’s large sea-chest.
Everything went well. The south-west trades were
blowing steadily; no night could be more favourable
for setting sail and clearing the harbour. “Set to!
Haul the anchor up!” he roared.

When Hillary heard the rattling of the chain and
saw the men aloft fisting the sail he rubbed his eyes.
“It’s another hopeless dream,” he said.

Ulysses all this time was leaning over the gangway,
peering down into the gloom, as he tugged at a rope.
And as Hillary watched he saw that he was pulling
something up that dangled in space; he had distinctly
heard a musical voice that he was astonished to recognise.
“Hold hard! Gently there, you son of a gun!”
yelled Ulysses, as the deck-hands and the boatswain
stood by grinning from ear to ear. And still three of
the crew and Ulysses hauled carefully at the taut
tackle, as they repeatedly looked over the vessel’s side.
“God damn it, slew her up! Mind her starboard leg!
Over! Over there! Right-o! Up she comes! Gently,
lads; gently does the trick! Let go!”

“God in heaven!” gasped Hillary, for out of the
basket hauled up from the outrigger canoe that had
just arrived alongside, plomp! down on the deck
jumped pretty Mango Pango!

Hillary did not dream. There she stood, her pearly
teeth visible by the light of the oil lamp in the gangway,
her eyes sparkling as she laughed with glee, like
some happy child. Ulysses had persuaded her to bolt
from her mistress’s kitchen and accompany him on
that voyage out to New Guinea.

“Well, I’m blest! He can do anything he undertakes,”
said Hillary to himself, as he realised why
Bilbao had chuckled so much when the two of them
had last said good-bye to Mango Pango.

Before the moon was well up the *Sea Foam* had
sailed, disappearing silently out of Bougainville harbour,
bound for the great unknown, so far as the crew
were concerned. Not a soul aboard the *Sea Foam* slept
that night. When everything was snug aloft, and they
were tacking before a steady breeze for the coral seas,
Ulysses called all hands aft and served out rum. Several
of the crew were Britishers, three were Kanakas,
one a Jap and the other a nondescript nigger. The
crew wondered what was going to happen next when
they saw Ulysses at the cuddy table and Mango Pango
installed at the head. And they too joined in the
songs and laughter, as the glasses clinked and the late
skipper’s champagne disappeared. It was only the
mate who did not seem to appreciate the wild hilarity
on board. He was a bilious-looking fellow and looked
terribly nervous as Ulysses roared at the top of his
voice. The mate had already regretted his share in the
scheme that had cast his late skipper into jail and installed
Ulysses in his stead. He was unable to persuade
himself that he would be acquitted by any jury when
they learnt that he had sailed under the jovial orders
of Captain Samuel Bilbao. Bilbao had smacked him
on the back and sworn that everything would be all
right. “You’ve nothing to worry about; all you’ve
got to do is to say that I came aboard this ship and
proved my legitimate right to install myself as the new
skipper.” Saying this, Ulysses tried to ease the mate’s
mind by pulling from his pocket the late skipper’s
pocket-book and papers, also a note-of-hand that was
presumably written in the late skipper’s handwriting.
This note stated that the care of the *Sea Foam* was to
be given over to Captain Samuel Bilbao, who had
instructions to sail at once. Such was the whole
scheme, so far as Hillary could make it out. Anyway,
though the mate became gloomy and sallow-looking
as the days went by, Ulysses got redder in the face and
even perceptibly fatter. It would have pleased the
devoutest hearts could they have seen the modest
decorum of Mango Pango’s private cabin on the
cuddy’s port side. Ulysses had made the cabin-boy
fix it up in quite artistic style. A little German bronze
mirror swung to and fro by the small port-hole, pictures
of Biblical subjects decorated the low roof and
walls, and all the niceties that a maid might
require were to be found in the quickly extemporised
apartment.

It must be admitted that the first few days were
monotonous and quite unromantic. For a bit of a wind
came up and made the *Sea Foam* heave and lurch.
This instability caused poor Mango Pango suddenly to
rush from her chamber and groan with anguish as she
knelt by the port-side scuppers. She was terribly seasick.
Ulysses would give a ponderous, sympathetic
wink as she rushed back to her bunk and closed the
door of her cabin. Then the little Papuan cabin-boy,
Tombo Nuvolo, would stand sentinel just by the saloon
port-hole to see that no one quizzed or came near the
modest maiden’s abode. But Mango Pango soon
recovered from her illness, and attired in her pretty
blue robe, scarlet and yellow ribbon in her mass of
coral-dyed hair, came out on deck to bask in the hot
sunshine.

When Hillary sat down by her side and told her that
the *Sea Foam* was bound for New Guinea, and that
Ulysses and he were going in search of Gabrielle
Everard, she opened her pretty eyes and mouth in
unbounded astonishment and said: “Awaie!—Wearly!
Going in searcher of poor Gabberlel who ams
in New Ginner! Never!” And then, while she lifted
her hands and uttered her quaint Samoan exclamations
(she was born in Apia, Samoa) Hillary told her
as much about the reason of the voyage and of all they
had heard about Rajah Macka as he thought advisable.

Mango Pango was a real blessing to the apprentice;
she was so full of childish vivacity, song and laughter
that she dispelled his gloomy thoughts and made him
quite cheerful at times. “Thank heaven that she
was fool enough to be persuaded to come on this
extraordinary venture,” thought Hillary, as the girl performed
a native step-dance while he fiddled, and didn’t
appear to trouble about her position in the least.
Samuel Bilbao would stand by, his mighty viking
moustachios rippling to the sea-breeze as he sang some
romantic strain and gazed admiringly on the dancing
Mango Pango, who revelled in his praise. Heaven
knows what Bilbao’s alleged harem of island Penelopes
would have thought could they have seen their absent
Ulyssess’ massive gallantry and the glance of his eyes
as Mango danced by the galley amidships. It is true
that several of the sailors made eyes at Mango Pango
when Ulysses was having his afternoon nap in the late
captain’s cosy bunk. And it must be confessed that
she didn’t seem to take the sailors’ advances as though
she thought them amiss. But still, she behaved with
considerable propriety, and only very slyly blew surreptitious
kisses back to the aged bottle-nosed boatswain,
Jonathan Snooks, who looked at the dusky maid
and said more with his eyes than he should have done,
considering that he had a wife in Shanghai and two
more in ’Frisco!

What a voyage it was! Hillary thought of England,
of his home. “What would the mater, the governor,
my sisters and Uncle William think could they see me
sailing across the coral seas to rescue a white girl from
the heathen temple of a Papuan Rajah?” He would
incline his eyes from the sky-line and look back on
the deck of the *Sea Foam* to convince himself of the
reality of it all.

“Don’t stand there mooching about with that
mournful look on yer ugly mug!” yelled Samuel Bilbao,
as he stood there, nearly seven feet high, watching
Mango Pango’s five feet five inches dancing exquisitely
beneath the shaded awning that he’d ordered to be
rigged up by the cuddy’s private deck. Then he yelled
for the cook, demanding that worthy’s presence aft
to play the accordion and make up the *Sea Foam’s*
scratch orchestra for a song and dance. Ulysses began
to play his bone clappers (he was a crack hand
at the clappers). And it was a sight worth seeing as
the crew stood obediently in a semi-circle, opened their
bearded mouths and exercised their big, hoarse-throated
voices to the full extent as they all roared
the chorus of old Malayan sea-chanteys till far into the
night. And if the pretty Samoan maid, Mango Pango,
couldn’t dance like a sea-faery, or mermaid, on the
*Sea Foam’s* deck, under the full brilliance of the tropic
moon, then no one on the seas ever will be able to do so.

Even the remorseful, bilious chief mate opened his
mouth, mumbling a belated melody when Ulysses put
forth his long arm and conducted the chorus of—

   | “For I went down South for to see my Sal,
   | Singing Polly-wolly-doodle all the way.”

Then he inclined his massive, curly head and, gazing
sideways into Mango Pango’s delighted eyes, he
continued bellowing forth in such tones that the startled
sea-birds far out of the night gave a frightened
wail:

   | “Fare thee well, fare thee well,
   | Fare thee well, my Faery Fay;
   | For I’m off to Lousianna for to see my Susiannah,
   | Singing Polly-wolly-doodle all the way!”

So did Samuel Bilbao pass his spare time on board
the *Sea Foam*. There were only one or two cases of
insubordination amongst the crew. Ulysses discovered
that they’d had several stand-up fights on grog
nights. And he was in a fearful rage when he heard
of it. For if he had one weakness, it was his mad love
of being umpire at a stand-up fight.

Excitement did not always prevail on the *Sea Foam*;
sometimes the atmosphere became quite subdued.
Hillary would sit for hours dreaming of Gabrielle,
Mango Pango dreaming of her late mistress and
Ulysses presumably thinking about his melancholy
heathen kings and forlorn queens. The weather became
terrifically hot. Even the crew became subdued
in the heat of that tropic sea. It was only when the
stars came out and a tiny breath of wind swept across
the calm sea that things began to liven up on board.
The sound of a faint, far-off song of England would
come from the forecastle. Then Bully Beef, the boatswain’s
pet dog, would look through the scuppers and
bark like a fiend at the mirrored stars that twinkled
in the ocean as the *Sea Foam* plopped and the rigging
wailed. It was on such nights that Hillary, Mango and
Bilbao would sit together and talk or sing.

One night as the sun was sinking and throwing
magic colours over the western sky-line, and the hot
winds flapped the sails, making a far-away musical
clamour, Hillary sat by the cuddy door reading poems
to Ulysses and Mango Pango. As the apprentice read
out Byron’s *Don Juan*, Ulysses stamped his mighty
feet for an encore. Then he read them passages from
*The Corsair*, till Samuel Bilbao, with hand arched over
his blue eyes, fell into a poetic mood, as Hillary’s musical
voice rippled off:

   | “She rose, she sprung, she clung to his embrace
   | Till his heart heaved beneath her hidden face,
   | He dared not raise to his that deep-blue eye.”

And when he read out the description of Medora
and Conrad’s sad farewell—

   | “Her long fair hair lay floating o’er his arms
   | In all the wildness of dishevell’d charms”—

Ulysses almost wept. Hillary seemed to draw the romance
of the sea out of those sparkling stanzas.

“Wish we had the cove who wrote those things on
this venture,” said Bilbao; then he added: “Is it all
true? Who wrote ’em?”

“It’s all written by Byron; and it’s as true as
gospel!”

“Byron? Is that the cove’s name? I wish we had
him here; he and I would hit it well, I know,” muttered
Ulysses. Then he leaned forward and sang a
song to Mango Pango’s pretty eyes, as the youth read
on. It was a strange sight to see that romantic swashbuckler
of the seas so interested in all that Hillary
read, and to hear his critical comments. The highly
coloured, rebellions poetry, written mostly by anæmic
youth, did not appeal to Samuel Bilbao at all.

To him adventures came as a matter of course. To
be on that vessel bound for New Guinea to rescue a
maid in distress did not excite his emotions unduly;
it was all in the day’s work. Hillary often noticed
this fact about Bilbao. The apprentice was astonished
at the calm way he spoke of rescuing Gabrielle from
the heathen’s clutches; of killing Macka and sending
his bleached skull, carefully packed up, to old Everard
in Bougainville, as a substantial proof that he’d killed
the man and rescued the daughter, and so had fulfilled
the contract according to terms.

Hillary, as time went on, was inclined to be nervous
and impatient, and Mango Pango became extremely
superstitious and swore that every shadow was a ghost.
As for Ulysses, he roared with laughter about Solomon
Island shadows, and when Mango spoke about such
things he told her she was “potty.” It may have been
Bilbao’s liberality with the cases of champagne that
were found down in the lazaret that upset Hillary’s
nervous system. And if he did take a little more than
was good for him he was to be excused, for the weather
was terribly muggy and hot at times. Anyhow,
Bilbao often cheered him up when he was down in
the mouth.

“Don’t get down in the mug, boy; we’re making
headway quick enough. The Rajah and his damned
ship are not so far ahead. We’ll be in New Guinea
before him yet.”

But Hillary knew that Ulysses did not control the
winds of heaven. And yet at times it seemed to him
that these same winds were blowing in perfect sympathy
with his wishes as the *Sea Foam* went racing
before the steady breeze.

On the evening of the eighth day out from Bougainville
a typhoon blew the *Sea Foam* leagues out of her
course to the north-west. Ulysses roared forth his
oaths as only *he* could roar, while the crew slashed
away at the tackle, endeavouring to relieve the thunderous
flappings of the torn sails. Two boats were
washed away. The boatswain nearly wept when the
huge sea came and washed Bully Beef, his pet dog,
overboard.

“Lower the only boat we’ve got left to save your
b—— dog,” roared Bilbao, as he stood on deck, his
vandyke beard and moustache stiff, and rippling to
port as the wind struck him and mountainous seas rose
level with the bulwark side to windward. The chief
mate, gazing aloft with sunken, socket-like eyes,
seemed almost pleased with the idea that the *Sea Foam*
might any moment turn turtle and so cut short his
eternal fear about the jury’s verdict if ever his duplicity
got him into the clutches of the law. He was slowly
fading to a shadow through all the worry that Bilbao
had brought on to his trembling shoulders. Even at
that early date a decided looseness in his brass-bound
reefer packet was noticeable, clearly indicating the
shrinkage of his once plump form.

Mango Pango, hearing the seas beating against the
schooner’s side, looked through the cuddy’s port-hole,
and seeing the wild confusion, as the crew slashed at
the wreckage aloft while the schooner heeled over,
cried aloud: “Awaie! Awaie! O tellible *matagai*
(storm)! O Bilbalos, saver poor Mango Pango!”

“Don’t cry, Mango, it’s all right now,” said Hillary,
who had just crept into the cuddy from the deck, for
he too had been taking a hand in the desperate work
of that buffeted crew. In half-an-hour every man on
board was thanking his lucky stars that the *Sea Foam*
was still plunging along on her keel. Her storm-sails
had been set and the taut jib-sails were just keeping
her steady with head on to the seas after the first great
onslaught of the elements. Though the wind had
blown across the heavens with inconceivable velocity,
not a cloud had smudged the face of the sky.

An hour before dawn the typhoon had quite blown
itself out. Only the universal heave and tumble of the
ocean swell told of the tremendous buffeting an hour
before. The moon was sinking to the south-west.
Ulysses, Hillary and the melancholy mate stood on the
poop.

“Glad that blow’s over,” said Samuel Bilbao, as the
mate’s obsequious voice echoed his own thankfulness.
Then they all stared seaward, for the look-out man on
the forecastle head roared out: “Land on the starboard
bow!” That cry caused tremendous consternation
amongst all on board. It was evident that the *Sea
Foam* had got many leagues out of her course. The
mate put it down to the typhoon, and swore that it
wasn’t the fault of his navigation. Anyway, Ulysses
gave him the benefit of the doubt. Even Mango Pango
stood amidships on deck with the crew as they all huddled
together and stared at the foam-flecked reefs of
some strange isle that loomed up about a mile away
to the south-south-west.

“What isle’s that, for God’s sake?” said Bilbao, as
he got his chart out. For he had quite thought that he
was far away from any islands.

“Can’t make its reckoning; must be some small
island off the Admiralty Group,” said the mate in a
hollow voice, as he leaned over Bilbao’s arm and stared
at the chart. Half-an-hour after that all hands stood
by the anchor, for the *Sea Foam* was plunging dead on
for the mighty burst of spray that rose high over the
barrier reefs. Then they once more stared in surprise,
for quite visible to the naked eye lay the wreck of a
ship, a steamer, on the reefs, over which the thundering
seas were still breaking. It was easy enough to see that
she wasn’t lying calmly at anchor, because of the great
white-ridged line of curling breakers that rose and
went right over her listed decks.

“It’s some tramp steamer run ashore,” said the
mate in a hollow, sepulchral voice; “a Dutch or a
German boat, I think,” he added, as he looked through
the telescope.

An hour after Bilbao shouted: “Stand by! Let go!”
and in a few moments the *Sea Foam* swung safely at
anchor in a few fathoms of water to the north-west of
the strange isle.

Hillary looked mournful enough as he thought of
the delay.

“Don’t you worry, it’s all right; besides, there’s
sure to be a dead calm after that blow last night, and
we may just as well lie here as anywhere else, eh?”
said Bilbao as he rubbed his hands with delight. For
his all-embracing mind had already conjured up
visions of that wreck being possibly crammed up to the
hatches with chests full of gold and a valuable cargo
of pearls. All day long the *Sea Foam* lay off the
island, as Ulysses stared through his telescope to see if
he could discover signs of life on the derelict, or on the
island. He wasn’t taking any risks by going ashore,
or going on that wreck before he was quite certain
that no one was about. He knew it was quite possible
that the original skipper of the *Sea Foam* had been released
from the *calaboose* by the German consulate, and
that he and the missing *Sea Foam* were already being
followed up by the skipper in another hired schooner.

The sallow mate clutched Ulysses’s arm and nearly
dropped with fear as he too looked through the telescope.
Then he wailed: “You know, Captain Bilbao,
they might be after us and would just as likely be
there on that island in wait, knowing what you are.”

Ulysses only responded by shouting the irrelevant
lines of some sea-chantey. Then he said, as he stared
once more through the glass: “Must have all gone
away in the ship’s boats. There’s no one aboard that
wreck, I’ll swear.” His eyes brightened over his
prospects.

Then he smacked Hillary on the back and shouted:
“Don’t be downhearted! I’m damned if we haven’t
anchored off a treasure-trove wreck! You and yer
pretty Gabrielle will be able to keep one of the finest
seraglios in the South Seas if all goes well.”

Hillary couldn’t help smiling at the big man’s levity
as he too looked towards the derelict and watched the
grandly picturesque sight of the curling breakers beating
against the hulk.

Every now and again, as dawn stole over the seas,
they could hear the long, low swelling roar and thunder
as a big swell collided with the far-off barrier reefs.

“P’r’aps it’s the *Bird of Paradise* run ashore, and
cursed Macka’s on that isle with Gabrielle, hidden
in those palms,” was the thought that struck Hillary.
He was certainly impressionable, and if there was a
peculiar construction to be placed on a commonplace
incident, Hillary was just the person to do it. Even
he realised the foolishness of his thoughts, for the
wreck was that of a steamer, not a sailing ship. Samuel
Bilbao got terribly impatient; the long tropic day
seemed endless. He was awaiting the friendly dusk of
evening before he lowered the boat and went forth to
overhaul the wreck.

A quarter of an hour after sunset a boat left the *Sea
Foam*. In it were Ulysses, the mate, two sailors and
Hillary. After half-an-hour’s hard rowing they softly
beached on the silver sand of the isle, just where the
wreck lay.

“*Salier!* A German steamer!” whispered the mate
in subdued, frightened tone, as he slowly made out
the big black letters on the grey-painted stern. Then
the five of them softly walked round the sands on the
shoreward side, where the sprays and seas would no
longer drench them. All was perfectly quiet on the
shore; only the noise of the incoming sea swell and
the soughing of the high winds in the belt of mangoes
and coco-palms disturbed the silence.

The derelict lay right over, her deck like a wooden
wall on the shoreward side. In a moment Ulysses,
the mate and Hillary had clambered over the reefs
and climbed over the listed bulwarks. There was
something uncanny about the silence of the mouldy-smelling
saloon as the three of them crept into it and
climbed along the listed floor. Ulysses went about his
job as though he had done little else all his life than
search wrecks on uncharted isles in the South Seas.
Flash! flash! went his lantern as he went down into
the lazaret hold and began to peer into all the likely
places for treasure.

“What’s that, O Maker of the Universe?” wailed
the mate, as he nearly fainted and fell forward so
abruptly that he almost knocked Hillary off his feet.

“What’s what?” said Samuel Bilbao, as he flashed
his lantern in the direction of the mate’s pointing
finger. “Why, it’s a derned old tom cat!” said Ulysses
as he flashed his bull’s-eye lantern on a monster fluffy
black cat. It looked at them all with its green, flashing
eyes that had so frightened the mate and yawned! It
was the ship’s cat. There it lay, as plump as might be,
and all round it were the bones of mice and rats that
had evidently made the beast decide to stop on its old
ship in preference to going ashore to catch the fierce,
sharp-beaked cockatoos that swarmed on the isle.

As soon as the mate had taken a pull at his brass
whisky flask and recovered his self-possession they continued
their search. Bilbao went down into the main
hold. Hillary and the mate held the taut rope as he
swung himself down, down into those inky depths.
After a deal of hunting and swearing Ulysses yelled
out: “Haul me up!” In a few moments his curly
head appeared above the rim of the hatchway. Then
he uttered a tremendous oath that harmonised with
the look of disgust on his face. He had discovered that
someone had been there before them and had evidently
searched the hulk in a most drastic fashion, for they
had emptied the hold and had cleared off almost every
movable article of value. All Ulysses managed to find
was one case of Bass’s pale ale, a pair of the late
skipper’s sea-boots and a few mouldy articles of clothing
under the bunks in the forecastle.

“By thunder, let’s clear out of this!” said Ulysses
as he looked into the eyes of the sallow mate and
breathed his disappointment. Samuel Bilbao had
really thought that at last he’d come across a prize.
It was only natural he should think that a ship sailing
across the South Seas should have some kind of valuable
cargo on board. So many times had he sat in
grog shanties and listened to wonderful tales told by
old sailors who had found “treasure troves” lying
about on the reefs of uncharted isles of the Southern
Seas.

“Blimey! waiting all day long to search a bloomin’
wryck hon an hiland, and only faund a five-shilling
case of Bass’s ale—and sour at that—and a bob’s
worth of old clothes,” groaned the Cockney boatswain,
as he expectorated viciously over the mate’s head.
They were standing on the shore again, almost ankle-deep
in the shining coral sands. Bilbao and the two
sailors who had watched on the shore while the search
was on were looking up at the rigging, and the huge
listed funnel when they received a shock.

“God in heaven, what’s that!” said the mate so
suddenly that everyone instinctively turned to make
a bolt from some unspeakable horror.

Even Ulysses looked a bit startled as they all stood
stiff, like chiselled figures, staring inland. There, before
their eyes, not three hundred yards away, on a
little hill, a dark figure was jumping about, whirling
and waving its hands.

“Holy Moses!” said one.

“Gawd forgive me sins!” breathed another.

“It’s a phantom of the seas—a nigger phantom,”
wailed the mate.

The figure was certainly a dark man, and perfectly
nude; he was quite visible, for the moon was just
coming up over the horizon to the south-west, sending
ghostly fires on the wreck’s broken masts and torn
rigging and canvas.

“It’s Macka!—gone mad! He’s got Gabrielle Everard
somewhere back there in those palms!” gasped
Hillary.

“No!” said Samuel Bilbao before he had recovered
from his astonishment and realised the obvious absurdity
of the young apprentice’s remark.

“Why, it’s a maniac Kanaka!” said Bilbao, who
had started coolly to walk up the shore so that he could
discern the features of the leaping figure, that was
still waving its hands and behaving generally like a
frenzied lunatic.

“What the ’ell’s the matter with ye?” roared
Bilbao.

Still the figure danced, and only the echoes of
Ulysses’ big voice and the screech of disturbed cockatoos
in the banyans responded.

In a moment the dark figure had bolted. In another
moment Ulysses, Hillary, the boatswain and the two
sailors had joined in the chase, all rushing like mad
after the flying figure. Only the sorrowful mate stood
still on the sands just by the wreck, his loose clothing
flapping over his shrunken figure as though he was
some mysterious scarecrow left there by the late crew.

Hillary led the way in that chase, Bilbao following
just behind, yelling forth mighty bets as to the winner,
his big, sea-booted feet stirring the silvery sands into
clouds of moon-lit sparkle as he thundered behind the
apprentice.

“It’s Macka! It’s Macka Rajah!” Bilbao roared,
as he stopped a second and held his stomach, that
heaved with a mirth which seemed considerably out
of place at such a time. Suddenly the flying figure
fell down. The white men, who were rushing down
a steep incline, could not stay themselves, and in a
moment they had all fallen on top of the gasping,
terrified figure.

“O papalagi! Talofa! No kille me! Me nicer
Samoan mans. Me shipwreck; savee mee!” yelled the
frightened native, as he felt the full weight of the white
men on his recumbent form. There was something
so appealing and sincere in his voice and broken English
that they all realised in a moment that the poor
devil was not to blame for his lonely position on
the island.

When all was safe, and they had led the trembling
Samoan castaway back to the sands, the chief mate
breathed a sigh of relief and gave the poor castaway
a drink from his whisky flask.

It turned out that he was a Samoan sailor, one of
the crew of the wreck that lay on the reefs. She had
left Apia about six months before, bound for the Bismarck
Archipelago, and had run ashore in a typhoon.
The German crew had taken to the boats whilst the
Samoan sailor had lain ill under the palms (just like
Germans). And so he had awakened to find himself
alone on the island.

“Where’s all the cargo, and the skipper’s property?”
said Bilbao, as a great hope sprang up in his
breast, for he thought that perhaps the native had
taken them off the wreck and hidden them on the
island. Then the native told them that about two
moons after the wreck had been lying on the shore a
fleet of canoes sighted her and came out of their course
to the islands.

“They came one day, again next days and next
days, for a longer times,” said the castaway.

It appeared that Tampo, the Samoan, for that was
his name, was too frightened to show himself to the
Malabar natives, who toiled from sunrise to sunset in
robbing the wreck of her cargo. The poor native well
knew that many of the natives of the isles in the coral
seas were inveterate cannibals. And he didn’t feel
inclined to take any risk of being cooked and eaten.
He preferred to hide in the tropical growth till a white
man’s ship sighted him or the wreck. And certainly
he was wise in taking this course.

The castaway was delighted when Ulysses said:
“Come along, old Talofa, get yer traps together, pack
yer fig-leaf up and come aboard.”

A few minutes after that the lonely isle was once
more uninhabited. There was no trace of humanity
excepting the wreck on the shore. And long before
dawn flushed the east with its silver radiance the *Sea
Foam* was flying with all possible sail set for the coast
of New Guinea.

“It wasn’t old Macka Rajah gone mad after all,”
said Bilbao to Hillary, as the apprentice stood dreaming
on the deck in the morning.

“It wasn’t a treasure trove on the reefs, crammed
up to the hatchway with chests of golden doubloons
and pieces of eight,” Hillary retorted quietly. Even
Mango Pango, that rival of how many sad heathen
Penelopes, revealed her pearly teeth when she understood
the meaning of Hillary’s sally.

Samuel Bilbao only laughed, then said: “Boy, we’re
only about three or four days’ sail from the coastal village
where your Rajah Macka has bolted.”

“Only three or four days before I know! Only
three or four days before I see Gabrielle, and find out—what?”
were some of the thoughts that flashed
through Hillary’s brain as Bilbao made that momentous
announcement. And it was true enough: the *Sea
Foam* was slowly but surely nearing the god-forsaken
barbarian forest coast of the land where the ex-missionary
and kidnapper was supposed to have taken
Gabrielle Everard.

CHAPTER XI—KIDNAPPED
====================

On the night when Rajah Koo Macka sat in old
Everard’s bungalow parlour and successfully
threw dust in the ex-sailor’s eyes and opium
and rum in Gabrielle’s tea, the Papuan half-caste’s
ship lay out in the bay of Bougainville, ready to sail
at a moment’s notice.

It may be difficult to believe that a white girl could
be successfully kidnapped from her father’s homestead,
carried half-a-mile across thick jungle to the
shore, thrown into a boat and rowed out to a ship that
was ready to carry her off to New Guinea; but however
incredible it may seem, that’s exactly what did happen.
And this business was accomplished by swarthy
half-caste sailors who were experts at the kidnapping
game. These kidnappers were men who had devoted
their lives to stealing and enticing ignorant native
girls, youths, children and native men from the Solomon
Isles and elsewhere by hundreds, nay, thousands,
carrying the boys and men off to be sold as cheap
plantation labour, and the girls for the seraglios of
heathen chiefs (and sometimes seraglios of white men)
in remote isles of the North and South Pacific. And
it was easy enough to carry on the slave trade in those
parts, for the German officials of Bougainville cared
little for their prestige so long as they received a sufficiently
large bribe from the slave skippers who
prowled along the coasts of Bougainville and Gualdacanar,
etc. The old white-whiskered German missionary
round at B—— made a tremendous fuss about the
depredations of the tribal head-hunters who went off
to the mountain villages to secure their terrible
trophies, but the depredations of the kidnapping thugs,
as they crept ashore and stole girls and youths from
the villages, were broadly winked at.

And these remarks do not apply only to the Solomon
Group, but also to islands as civilised as Samoa and
Fiji. So Rajah Koo Macka and his type calmly carried
on their hideous traffic almost in broad daylight.
But still the Rajah, on the present occasion, felt that
it would be a bit too risky to attempt to kidnap Gabrielle
while the sun was up, since she was a sacred white
maid. Old Everard was therefore honoured by that
last visit from him under cover of night. For the
Rajah was an experienced hand at the game. He had
prowled round the isles of the Pacific from the Coral
Sea to the tropic of Capricorn for years looking for
good-looking native girls and men who would make
profitable merchandise, and so had had many narrow
squeaks, although he always carried a large assortment
of religious tracts about with him to allay suspicion.
One may easily imagine, therefore, that the Rajah
did not look upon the kidnapping of a white girl as
something very much outside the ordinary routine of
his profession. Indeed, he well knew that white men
by scores indulged in the blackbirding trade, sailing
under the slave flag as they too prowled the Southern
Seas kidnapping people of his race. And so, as far as
the actual kidnapping of a white girl is concerned, he
was only doing what the white men did themselves.

When at last old Everard lay in drunken insensibility
on his settee the Rajah was master of the situation.
His hired kidnappers were within call.

In the little that he had seen of Gabrielle he had
realised perfectly that his old game of impassioned
looks and hypocritical phrases were utterly useless
where she was concerned. He soon realised that it
was one thing to succeed in making a white girl fascinated
by his handsome presence, but quite another to
make her cast aside the elementary principles of her
race. And so he had formulated his plans.

All that evening, while old Everard had been sitting
in his arm-chair listening to the Papuan Rajah’s
sombre denunciations of his sinful habits, and Gabrielle
stared at his swarthy, handsome face, fascinated
by its assumed noble expression, three stalwart Kanakas
squatted patiently, as they smoked, not twenty
yards from Everard’s bungalow. They were the forcible
part of the Rajah’s go-ashore retinue, all muscular
men. And as they sat there they wondered how much
longer the Rajah was going to keep them waiting
for one cursed Christian white girl, when they had
kidnapped hundreds of native girls and strong men
in half the time. But their patience, that greatest
of virtues, was at last rewarded. First the solitary
heathen kidnapping thugs saw shadows slip across the
dim-lit bungalow window. “Ugh! Me savoo!” said
the big man of giant mirth, as he got his strangling
rope ready in case the expected victim was obstreperous.
As the three thugs got ready for the fray the
first act of the wicked drama was in full progress inside
the parlour. Gabrielle was already swaying and
clutching at the air as she felt the influence of some
terrible sleep creeping over her. She fell towards the
window and clutched at the curtains in her endeavour
to awaken her father. But it was too late! The old
ex-sailor only smiled in his sleep; but he must have
heard the terrified cry of “Father! Father!” since he
muttered “Gabby, go ter sleep!” And she did go
to sleep!

The Rajah had fixed things up in no time and then
appeared outside the bungalow with the unconscious
girl in his arms. As he laid her gently down beneath
the palms, the kidnappers crept out of the jungle
thickets, stretched out their neat little rope ambulance
(always carried for intractable patients) and bundled
Gabrielle into its folds.

While this was going on Gob, a dwarf, kept watch,
and Rajah Macka kept his eyes on his Papuan retinue.
They were men of his own race, and he knew their vile
instincts, for was he not one of them? And so he
took good care not to let the girl out of his sight.
When all was settled, and Gabrielle lay insensible,
secure in the thug-ambulance, they lifted her carefully
and hurried across the slopes, passing by the lagoon
where she and Hillary had embarked in the canoe
to go out to the three-masted derelict. It was on that
very night that Hillary and Gabrielle were to meet
each other, and the apprentice had kept the appointment,
only to wait in vain for the girl’s appearance.
But had he not in his usual impatience, walked a mile
up the shore away from the trysting-place he could not
have failed to see the kidnappers pass and so might
have saved Gabrielle in a most dramatic fashion.

When Macka and his crew arrived on the shore they
flung the girl into the waiting boat, and in less than an
hour Gabrielle was a prisoner on board the *Bird of
Paradise*.

Not even the violent bump of the boat against the
vessel’s side disturbed Gabrielle ere they carried her
helpless form up the rope gangway and on to the
deck of the Rajah’s ship. When she awoke, that same
night, she could hardly believe her senses. She looked
across the gloomy, dim-lit room and thought she’d
overslept herself. She fancied she had fallen asleep
in her father’s parlour, for there was the settee in the
corner—but why was he not on the settee? She noticed
that it was still dark, only a dim oil-lamp burning,
hanging strangely, it seemed, from the ceiling when
it should have been standing on the table.

She rubbed her eyes and stared once more. Her
bed seemed to move. What did it all mean? The
settee was lined with blue plush; it should really have
been a very shabby brown. She jumped to her feet
and gave a scream as she spied the little port-holes on
the starboard side just opposite her—she had realised
the truth, that she was in the cuddy (saloon) of some
vessel that was rolling along away at sea!

“Don’t, Gabriel-ar-le, solawa soo!” said a voice very
softly.

It was the skipper of the *Bird of Paradise*—Rajah
Koo Macka. He had been asleep in the cabin just
near and had leapt from his bunk at hearing Gabrielle’s
frightened scream.

“Where am I? Oh dear! Save me! What’s it all
mean?” Even Gabrielle laid her hand on her fluttering
heart as she muttered those words in a weak voice
at finding herself out at sea in a ship’s cuddy instead
of in the security of her home.

There was an intense note of appeal in the girl’s
voice, such a note as would have touched the heart of
the vilest of men, but Macka never moved a muscle.
He had stolen so many girls, men and youths, watched
their tears, heard their heartrending appeals, and
thrown their bodies over the vessel’s side when they
had died of terror and malaria down in the stinking,
hot-fevered hold, that it seemed nothing awful to him
to see a girl kneel before him and weep.

He was overjoyed that the girl was awake. He had
quite thought that she had been doped too much and
that there was a possibility of her never recovering
sensibility again. As she stood before him, with the
oil lamp swinging to and fro to the heave and roll
of the flying ship, Gabrielle’s eyes, which had been
agleam with fright, suddenly changed, and shone with
a new strength. She had realised, with a woman’s unerring
instinct, the uselessness of appealing to the man
before her. As she steadily returned his gaze, the dark
man saw the courage of her father’s race.

A cowed look leapt into his face. Even in that swift
glance he had realised that all would not go as smoothly
as he had anticipated. To steal helpless Papuans,
Samoans, Marquesans, Tahitian maids, to defile them,
pitch them overboard when they were dead or dying,
and amuse himself by revolver shots at the poor, floating,
bobbing bodies was one thing; but to steal a white
girl and defile her was quite another. That much he
realised most forcibly, for before he could realise anything
more than that Gabrielle had rushed out of the
cabin and bolted.

She raced along the ship’s rolling deck. She looked
about her and called loudly in the dark, still hoping
that one of the crew might be a white man. When
she saw the fierce, mop-headed, dark-faced men rush
out of the forecastle at hearing her terrified screams
she almost collapsed in her despair. For one moment
she stood still and gazed up at the bellying sails as
they swayed along beneath the high moon. Nothing
but the illimitable sky-lines gleamed around her.
She heard the moan of the dark tossing ocean. She
did not hesitate, not the slightest indecision preceded
her act—splash! she had leapt overboard! It all
happened in a few seconds. The Rajah and the
mulatto mate at once gave orders for the crew to heave
to and lower a boat. It seemed ages to the Rajah
as the swarthy crew climbed slowly about like dusky
ghosts, as though they had a century in which to fulfil
his orders. At this moment the captain of the blackbirder
(to give him his correct title) revealed his solitary
virtue; he could see the girl’s struggling form in
the dark waters astern. Not a sound came from the
girl’s lips, only the tossing white hands were visible on
the moon-lit waters—then they vanished—she had
gone! In a second he had pulled off his coat and boots
and plunged into the sea. The men of his race could
swim like fish, and dive too, for they took to the water
before they could toddle. Even as it was, the Rajah
had to dive twice before he could grip hold of Everard’s
daughter. He had a tremendous struggle to
get the girl back on board, for the sea was a bit heavy
that night. When he did get her on deck the half-caste
mate and the crew stared on her prostrate figure
in astonishment. She had been kept from their sight
till then.

Lying there on the hatchway, her white face turned
towards the sky, she looked like some angel who had
mysteriously fallen from heaven and lay dead before
them. They were a superstitious lot, and several of
them began to moan some heathen death chant. Even
the Rajah was strangely influenced at seeing that
pallid face, the drenched, dishevelled hair, the curved,
pale lips. The bluish tropical moonlight bathed her
form like a wonderful halo. He looked at the watching
crew, a fierce light in his eyes. In a moment they
had all gone, slinking away. “Awaie!” he said to
one who, bolder than the rest, looked back over his
shoulder. And then, as the crew obeyed the mulatto
mate’s orders to get the vessel under way once more,
the Rajah lifted Gabrielle’s prostrate form and carrying
her into the cuddy laid her down on the low saloon
table. Grabbing a decanter, he poured a small drop
of spirit between her lips. Then he closed the door so
softly that only the sudden disappearance of the stream
of light on the deck from the lamp inside told that the
door *had* been closed.

They were alone, he and she—the frail, helpless girl
in the vile power of passion and hypocrisy. For a
second the Papuan Rajah gazed around the saloon.
Even he was startled by the look on the swarthy face
that gazed back on him from the long mirror—his
own reflection. Stooping over the recumbent form, he
gently rubbed her hands. They were cold and very
limp. He began to think that it was too late, that
she was dead. Gently pulling the wet bodice open, he
slowly unfastened the blue strings of her underclothing.
He gazed in silence on the curves of her breasts,
which were faintly revealed to his eyes by the dim,
swaying oil lamp. That fragile whiteness seemed to
appeal even to him; the mute lips, the closed eyelids,
the helpless attitude paralysed the dark cruelty of his
natural self. And it is only, we must think, because
God made all men, be they black or white, that he was
loyal to the great trust that the irony of inscrutable
Fate had placed in his hands—he of all men on earth.

The seas were beating against the vessel’s side as
she lay there. The vessel pitched and rolled as once
more it started on its course, and as it rolled the girl’s
recumbent form moved and swayed to the lurch of the
table. Her drenched bronze-gold hair fell in a mass to
the cuddy floor, the brown-stockinged ankles fully revealed
through the disarrangement of the soaking skirt.

Could anyone have peeped from the deck through
the cuddy port-hole they would have seen the Rajah
bending over the helpless girl. A strange fire flashed
in his eyes as he gazed and gazed and gently rubbed
where her heart lay. The gleam in his eyes died away,
but still he watched, waiting anxiously. His face was
set and wild looking. “Ar-a va loo!” (“She’s gone!”)
he muttered. He tried to feel the pulse of the wrist,
but he dropped it with a sigh. At last it came! His
hand visibly trembled as he lifted her arms up and
gently spread them away from her body. Then he
put his ear to her heart and listened—there was a
sound like a tiny echo coming from the remotest distance.
Throb! throb! it came—Gabrielle’s soul was
hovering between heaven and earth—in more senses
than one. Then the throb ceased as though for an
eternity of time, but once more it came—throb! throb!
throb! And before the Rajah was prepared for it
Gabrielle’s eyes were staring at him!

Instinctually the girl’s helpless fingers half clutched
the wet fringe of her loosened bodice. And, strange as
it may seem, the heathen Papuan even *helped* her cold
fingers to close the delicate folds.

The instinctive action of the girl told him more
of her true character than a thousand dissertations on
racial codes, morals and inherent virtue could have
done. In a flash he had realised that if he wanted to
gain her respect it had to be gained by astute cunning
based on strict emotional principles. Recovering his
embarrassment, he rolled his eyes and blinked—which
is the equivalent of a blush in New Guinea folk. He
was really pleased to see that she was recovering. Immediately
flinging himself on his knees, he sobbed out:
“Oh Gabriel-ar-le, Marsoo cowan, nicer beauty
voumna!” In his excitement he had lapsed into
execrable pidgin-English. He heard her sigh. He fondled
her hand. “’Tis I who saved you,” he murmured.
He fancied that he was a hero. In his perverted
ignorance he saw Gabrielle no longer a kidnapped
girl on his ship, but a maiden whom he had saved from
the cruel seas. He was bold enough to press her hand
to his lips.

Gabrielle watched him. She was terribly ill, too
dazed to protest. She was alone on the seas with this
man and what could she do? Her final response to
his miserable hypocrisy was to burst into a violent fit
of weeping.

For three or four days she was quite unable to move.
It was only through the careful nursing of the Malayan
cabin-boy, a frizzly headed, bright-eyed little fellow,
that she was at last encouraged to take food. He was
a child, and so he appealed to Gabrielle. The very
innocence of his eyes as he stared in delightful curiosity
at her golden hair and white arms when he crept in
with the food to her bunk cheered her as much as she
*could* be cheered under such circumstances.

Sometimes she would lie there helpless and think
that she was mad, strange fancies floating through her
brain. And sometimes Macka would step softly into
the dingy saloon and play on the melancholy organ that
he had once used in his tribal mission-rooms. His
voice would tremble with passionate appeal and subtle
seductiveness as he breathed forth Malayan melodies
that haunted Gabrielle’s ears. Those melodies had
a terrible influence over the girl, and one night when
the vessel was rolling wildly, being buffeted along
before a typhoon, the girl screamed out from her bunk:
“Stop! Stop! I’ll go mad if you sing that strange
thing again!”

Then the Rajah ceased as obediently as a scolded
child and softly crept away. He knew the potent
magic of those heathen Malayan melodies! He knew!
He knew! And when he had passed out on to the
vessel’s deck Gabrielle called out: “Tombo! Tombo!”
In a moment the little Papuan boy rushed into her
cabin.

“Whater you wanter? Whater matter, nicer
vovams?”

“Tombo, what’s that shadow-thing that runs about
the deck at night? I saw it through the port-hole
last night.” Then she said: “And I heard faint cries,
wails. What was it? What does it all mean,
Tombo?”

Tombo made no reply with his lips, but he softly
nestled up against the girl and looked up into her
eyes with terrible earnestness. Then he shook his head
and said: “I looker after you, Misser Gaberlelle.”
Suddenly the boy rushed from the girl’s side and out
of the cuddy in fright.

Gabrielle listened and heard a scream: the Rajah
had called the boy and, meeting him on the deck, had
kicked him. The Papuan skipper had noticed that
the kid was a bit too communicative with his kidnapped
prisoner. Possibly he thought that the boy
might let out the truth about the ship and give Gabrielle
some hint as to why it sailed by night with all
lights out, as it tacked on its course far off the beaten
track of trading ships.

It was quite a week before Gabrielle ventured out
of the small cuddy’s berth and entered the saloon.
Even when she did so she was apparently so weak that
she was obliged to secure the assistance of little Tombo,
who held her hand as she wandered about. The Rajah
immediately began his sinuous overtures and muttered
violent protestations of love into her ears. At times
the Papuan could hardly conceal his temper when the
girl persistently pestered him with questions, asking
him where the *Bird of Paradise* was bound for.

“You noa worry. You are all right. I take you
across the seas and some days you go back to your
peoples—when you lover me!” he would say, as he
gave a look of deep meaning that the girl persistently
pretended not to understand. He would not allow
her to walk out on deck unless he were close by. His
hungry eyes seemed ever on the alert. Probably he
had a fixed idea in his brain that the girl would make
another attempt to take her life. And still he swore
most earnestly by the virtue of the Christian apostles
that he had only kidnapped her from her father’s
homestead because of his overpowering love for her.

“You know not what men of my race love like,
what we would do for a white girl such as you, Gabri-ar-le,”
he muttered, as he glanced sideways at her.

Gabrielle saw the look in those flashing eyes of his.
She trembled as she realised how completely she was
in his power, and how once she had been fascinated
by his voice and his handsome mien. Even then, at
times, she half believed that he had repented the wrong
he had done her. And the girl was hardly to blame
for her credulity, for he never tired of pouring his
flamboyant rhetoric in Malayan *vers libre* into her ears.
He had some mighty faith in his maudlin Mohammedanistic
babblings over love, winds, seas, stars, night,
God and death. He was as crammed with pretended
artlessness as he was of villainy.

Sometimes the girl felt strangely calm. The religious
element that brings faith and comfort to men
and women in the direst moments of life was part of
her special birthright. She became more resigned to
her lot and even went so far as to read some of the old
books that she had discovered in the cuddy locker.
So did she endeavour to stifle her thoughts. Many,
many times she thought of the apprentice. What
did he think of her sudden absence from Bougainville,
of her not turning up at the trysting-place by the
lagoon? She thought of his impulsive nature. She
guessed that he must have gone straight to her home
to see what had become of her. She thought of a
thousand things that he would do in his attempt to
discover her whereabouts. She imagined how her
father raved, and must still be raving, perhaps grieving
over her disappearance. But she never dreamed of
all that really happened after she had left Bougainville
in the blackbirding ship. When she recalled the
incidents of the old derelict lying on the rocks off
Bougainville and of Hillary’s boyish but earnest declaration
of love she trembled in her anguish. She
remembered the look in his eyes, the wild, fond sayings
that had come spontaneously to his lips. Then she
laid her head down on the cuddy table and wept
bitterly.

One night when the *Bird of Paradise* had been at
sea about two weeks the heat was so terrific that she
implored the Rajah to let her sit out on deck. He
was obdurate and would not hear of such a thing.
“No, no, *putih bunga* (white flower)” was his only
reply, as he lapsed into the Malayan tongue, speaking
as though to himself. Then he walked away and disappeared
forward. In a moment Gabrielle made up
her mind and had slipped out of the cuddy, determined
to go on deck and breathe the cool night air. She
almost cried out as she rushed, plomp! into the arms
of the half-caste mate. “Savo, maro, Cowan, bunga,”
whispered the burly mulatto, as he lost his mental
balance at seeing the beauty of the girl. He caught
her in his arms, clutched her flesh like some fierce
animal, put his vile lips to her white throat and
breathed hotly on her face. He tried to press his
blubbery lips against her own. In a moment the girl
had managed to release herself from that hateful clasp.

“What’s the matter, my pretty putih bunga, marva
awaya?” said Koo Macka, suddenly coming up, as
the mulatto mate slipped hastily along the deck out
of sight.

“Nothing is the matter; I simply felt ill, faint; I’m
better now,” said Gabrielle fearfully, as she swiftly
realised that it would not do to make an enemy of the
mulatto mate. For a moment the Rajah looked suspiciously
around him, then he sternly ordered her to
go back at once into the saloon.

And so it was that Gabrielle sat in her bunk that
night and stared through the port-hole so that she
might get a breath of the cool midnight breeze that
drifted at intervals across the hot tropic seas.

The stars were shining in their thousands as she
sat there watching and crying softly to herself. She
could plainly see the bluish, ghost-like gleam of the
horizon, far away, as she stared out of the cabin port-hole.
It was then that she once more heard a mysterious
wail coming from somewhere out in the silence
of the night. Her lips went dry with fright as she
gazed and listened in her terror. She distinctly observed
a shadow slip across the deck. Then the wail
came again and was followed by a deep, retching
moaning and sounds of the hushed voices of men who
were speaking in a strange language. “What does it
all mean?” she muttered to herself, as once more her
ears caught the indistinct utterances of agony. And
still she listened and felt quite sure that what she
heard was no trick of her imagination, but was some
last appeal of helplessness to relentless men ere they
strangled their victim. In the terror of all that she
felt her overwrought brain became strangely calm.
She sat quite still and watched in a dazed way, crouching
in her bunk, her eyes peering through the port-hole.
She gazed up at the swaying sails as they glided
on beneath the stars. The wind had shifted to the
south-west, for she saw the canvas veer and darken
patches of starry sky as the yards went round and the
crew aloft chanted some Malayan chantey. So weirdly
bright was the tropic sky that the rigging and the
forms of the toiling crew were distinctly outlined with
the decks, sails, spars. She could even discern the
long cracks of the deck planks as the ethereal light of
far-off worlds pulsed in the sky and sent a glimmer
down between the masts and sails. A fearful curiosity
overcame the fright she first felt as she saw three
stalwart, mop-headed men standing by the lifted
hatchway amidships. The scene was directly along
the deck facing the cuddy’s cabin port-hole from which
she stared. The sight that met her astonished eyes
made her tremble: the three swarthy, demon-like men
were grabbing the bodies of the dead which were being
passed up from the vessel’s fetid hold! Some of the
crew were down below busily pushing those limp,
pathetic figures up to the outstretched hands of those
on deck. Gabrielle knew they were dead bodies, there
was no mistaking their limpness as the heads of the
silent forms fell first in one direction then in another.
And still they pushed up the limp bodies of dead
native girls and youths, and one by one passed them
along to that crew of sea-thugs, who carelessly pushed
them over the bulwarks into the sea! Gabrielle distinctly
heard the splash as they fell.

She half fancied that she heard long-drawn groans
coming from the direction of the sea. Nor was she
mistaken, for they pitched the dying overboard too!
The crew of slavers were not over-sensitive in such
matters.

The girl was still staring, dumbfounded, when the
men softly closed the hatchway over that terrible
drama of life below. Then she heard the dull thuds of
the locks being secured and rammed home. They even
placed the thick canvas covering over the hatchway
again and so closed the cracks that mercifully had
let a breath of fresh air into that breathing mass of
shrieking merchandise—kidnapped native girls, men
and women! As soon as Gabrielle saw those demon
undertakers steal away into the shadows towards the
forecastle she realised that it was no nightmare, no
horror of an imaginary world that she had felt and
witnessed. It was all real enough. In a flash her
brain had realised all that it really meant. She remembered
how her own father had talked about the
horrors of the blackbirding ships, and how the huddled
victims died in the fetid hold. She recalled how he
had even confessed that he too had once dabbled in
the slave traffic. And as she remembered she saw
herself as a child again, listening in wonder at her
father’s knees as he proudly told his beachcomber
guests of the “glorious good old blackbirding days.”

After seeing that sight Gabrielle became seriously
ill, mentally as well as physically. She lay sleepless
through the night and longed for forgetfulness. The
scene she had witnessed as they cast the kidnapped
dead into the sea had completely horrified her. In
her mind over and over again she found herself counting
the dead bodies she had seen thrown overboard.
It took her that way. She had often heard the mission
men talk about the cruelty of the kidnapping business,
but it required such a sight as she had witnessed to
make her realise the truth of what she had heard.
True enough, it is hard for anyone to realise the horrors
of the slave traffic till they see the actual results with
their own eyes.

Possibly the great poet will never be born who
could write the poem that would adequately describe
the Brown Man’s Burden so that the Western world
could read and realise that the White Man’s Burden
is not the only one that men have to bear through
spreading Western principles among the islands of
remote seas.

Gabrielle got out of her bunk that same night and
pushed every available article of furniture against her
cabin door. She realised what she was in for. It was
the first hint she had had that she was not the only
wretched victim that trembled in fear on that ship.
And as she lay sleepless, thinking of everything and
of those trembling, terror-stricken girls and youths
that made the cargo in the airless, fevered hold not
twenty feet from her bunk, she half envied her own
terrible position.

Next day when the Rajah noticed the look of horror
in the girl’s eyes as he rattled off his *vers libre* he retired
as gracefully as possible and quickly arrayed
himself in his most attractive attire of Rajahship.

He placed the rich, scarlet-hued turban on his skull.
He tied the yellow waist-sash about him so that the
bow fell coquettishly down at his left hip. He even
cleaned his teeth with cigar ash and manipulated an
artistic curl at the ends of his dark moustache. Then
he proceeded to haunt Gabrielle again. He read the
Bible aloud; he put such well-simulated sincerity into
his melodious voice that Gabrielle rubbed her eyes
and half wondered if she had dreamed that terrible
sight of the night before. As she sat at the low cuddy
table and the dark man sat right opposite her with the
knees of his long, thin legs bunched beneath the table,
she listened to his splendid lies. He went so far as
to tell her how he had a great reputation for good
works, of how he roamed the seas searching to redress
the wrongs done to helpless girls, men and native
women! He swore that his ship roamed the South
Seas expressly to attempt to put down slave traffic!
He knew! he knew! that the girl had some inkling
of the kind of vessel she was on.

“Gabrielle,” said he, “you knower not my troubles,
and how when I do capture slave-ship I have to rescue
the victims and put them down in the hold of this
vessel till sucher time as I can take them to some isle
where they can be safe till they are returned to their
own people!”

“Could it be true?” was Gabrielle’s inward thought,
as she watched the man’s face and saw nothing but
the light of a proud achievement in his eyes. And it
must be admitted that there was some truth in all
that he told the girl about his reputation. For was it
not well known from Apia to Dutch New Guinea that
Rajah Koo Macka was a great Christian Rajah?
And was it not true that he had been in receipt of
thousands of pounds that had been collected through
the kind medium of Christian societies who were interested
in the noble endeavour to put down slave
traffic in the South Seas? And who can deny the fact
that thousands of men and women in England had
unconsciously contributed towards the expenses incurred
by the Rajah in fitting out his ship, the *Bird
of Paradise*, for the sole purpose of abducting natives
and for following his monstrous inclinations.

And there he sat in his cosy cuddy, a splendid example
of the civilised, converted Papuan invested with
a hideous power by weak-minded charity-givers who
saw no just cause for their charity in their own country.

The Rajah was a living libel on true missionary work
and on the reputation of the missionaries themselves.
With others of his profession, he had often let his
helpless merchandise out on hire into the hands of
wealthy half-caste and sensual white men. And when
native girls gave birth to half-caste children soon after
their arrival on the sugar plantations as far away as
Brisbane, the innocent missionaries got the blame for
what had happened to the girls who had been contaminated
after leaving their native isles. But all this is
only a detail in the Rajah’s life. He was a genius in
his way. No man living would have had the patience
to talk and talk, and sing and chant as he did to his
beautiful, helpless prisoner. God only knows how he
got Gabrielle to believe in him again. Perhaps it
wasn’t so strange when one thinks of her tender years
and the mighty pretence of the astute Rajah. Night
after night he came to her and went on his bended
knees. Sometimes he held the Bible in his hand,
babbled over its pages and said: “O Gabri-ar-le, give
thy purest love unto me and I swear on this divine book
that I will take thee back unto thy father.”

On hearing this Gabrielle’s heart leapt with hope.
“Perhaps he isn’t all bad and has relented,” she
thought. Then she glanced steadily into the Papuan’s
eyes and said: “I swear that I will bear no ill-feeling
towards you if you will only take me home again.”
Then with that wonderful instinct that women reveal
when in such a grievous pass, she added: “I can easily
say that I was washed out to sea in a canoe that night
and that your ship picked me up, and then no blame
will be attached to you; you may even be rewarded.
Will you take me back to Bougainville?” Saying
this, she looked earnestly into the heathen’s eyes and
continued: “Father was very drunk that night, you
know; he heard or guessed nothing of all that happened;
he wouldn’t dream of the truth.”

The man sat there silent, chin on hand, as he gazed
steadily upon the girl. It was evident by the look in
his eyes that he admired the clever way she had put
the whole matter before him. Gabrielle mistook that
look. Her heart fluttered. She felt like screaming
in the ecstasy of hope that thrilled her in the thought
that she might yet get back to Bougainville and see
the young apprentice again. The man sat opposite
her for a long while in thought, then he shook his head
as though in response to his own reflections. He gave
a cruel smile as he noticed the expression of delight
in the girl’s eyes at the thought of getting out of his
clutches. He rose to his feet and, giving her one of his
lascivious looks, walked slowly out of the cuddy.

Gabrielle’s hopes faded. The reaction set in. Her
despair was terrible as loneliness came to her heart.
She went into her dismal berth. She was now left
quite alone, for little sympathetic Tombo had ceased
to come near her. She well knew that it wasn’t the
little cabin-boy’s fault; he was ordered to keep out
of the way.

“He’s a murderer, a cruel villain, a heathen—and
once I thought he was a god among men, an apostle
of beauty and truth.” So ran Gabrielle’s reflections as
she sat alone and thought critically about the Rajah.
She looked out of the port-hole. It was a brilliant
moon-lit night. She saw the dark crew climbing aloft
to reef the sails. She knew that the vessel had altered
its course. The sight of everything depressed her
terribly. There was something weird in the sight of
those dark men toiling aloft as they sang their strange
Malayan chanteys. She saw the shining clasp-knives
between their teeth as their shadows dropped softly
down onto the deck. Once more she heard the whistle
blown to call the next watch. Then complete silence
reigned. She had nearly gone off to sleep when once
more she heard the wails and muffled screams. Though
terrified at those sounds, she again peeped through the
port-hole and watched. Again she heard the heart-rending
moans. Again the awful dragging silence
came as the hatchway was lifted. “Plomp! plomp!
plomp! plomp!” She knew then that four more victims
had been cast into the deep. She strained her
neck and put her head right out of the port-hole. She
saw the dusk of the burning tropic seas and the stars
as the vessel kept steadily on its course, leaving the
floating bodies in its wake.

The next day the Rajah came into the dismal cuddy
several times and spoke to her, but she shrank instinctively
from his presence. He noticed her manner
and wondered. The girl’s uncongenial attitude did not
rhyme in with the plans he had so nicely mapped out.
But determination was his great virtue. He made
many attempts to ingratiate himself. “Why you no
liker me now?” he said, as he looked at her. She
made no reply. In his excitement he mixed his
language up so much that Gabrielle could hardly understand
what he said. His mixture of pidgin-English
and broken Biblical phrases made a kind of musical
potpourri of exotic sensuousness that haunted the girl’s
ears, reviving vivid memories of her own people and
at the same time reminding her how far away she was
from their protection.

“Gabri-ar-le, allow me,” he murmured in his soft,
insinuating voice, as he leaned forward and stuck a
small red frangipani blossom in the folds of her hair.
It was a bloom from the pots of flowers that swung to
and fro from the cuddy ceiling.

Gabrielle looked steadily at the man. A strange
gleam was in his eyes. It was just after sunset. Already
the eight members of the crew, who were devout
sun-worshippers, had lain prone on the forecastle
deck and murmured their dolorous chants to the last
gold and purple glow of the departed day.

The stars were shining over the sea. It was almost
calm. Every now and again came the muffled drum-like
sounds of the heavy canvas sails that bellied out
to the breath of the sleepy night wind, flopped, and
fell loosely as the halyards rattled and the ship rolled
to the glassy swell.

The Rajah had sat down at the low table, right
opposite Gabrielle. His turban was tilted rakishly on
one side. As he looked sideways, glancing poetically
towards the deck roof, his firm, handsome, curved
throat was certainly shown to advantage. He looked
like some Byronic corsair. There was no denying that
he was a handsome man of his type. He leaned gently
towards Gabrielle, one hand on chin, continuing to gaze
as though in sorrowful reflection over his shortcomings
and the white girl’s sorrow resulting therefrom.

“Gabri-ar-le, I lover thee. You know not the ocean
of my soul, how dark it is since your eyes should be
the stars to shine over its darkness. Wilt love me a
little, O white maiden?”

He still had his eyes fixed upon her in rapt admiration,
eyes that moved up and down her form.

She looked beautiful indeed as she suddenly rose,
stood there in the dim light, attired in her sarong-like
bluish robe, the divided sleeves of which revealed her
rounded arms. The broad scarlet sash, tied bow-wise
at the left hip, fell negligently almost down to her
ankle. A hot breath of sleepy wind crept through
the cabin doorway, wafting the rich odours of exotic
flowers that hung all along by the cuddy port-holes on
the starboard side. The ship’s black cat suddenly
whipped across the saloon, looked up into its master’s
face with its yellow, burning orbs and then disappeared
like a shadow.

Gabrielle trembled as she sought to answer the
Rajah’s questions. She could faintly hear the tinkle
of the weird *zeirung* as some dark man forward in
the forecastle accompanied the mellow voice of someone
who was singing a Malayan chantey.

“I felt that I liked you once, but I hate you now!”
said Gabrielle impulsively. Then she added: “How
could you expect me to like such as you, after all
you’ve done?”

The Rajah gave a grin.

“I want you to take me back to my people,” the
girl almost sobbed. Then she rose and began stealthily
to move away from his presence; she had noticed the
flushed, half-wild expression on his handsome face.
She saw the fixed look of resolve in his eyes.

He swiftly put forth his hand and, catching hold of
her fingers firmly, softly forced her to sit down once
more in front of him.

For a moment he looked at her as though he was
about to clasp her in his arms. Gabrielle’s heart
thumped. She noticed that he sat on the side near the
open door and so barred her progress should she attempt
to make a bolt. She heard the voice of the man
at the wheel humming words of an unknown tongue
just over her head out on the poop. She knew that
the Rajah’s mate was laid up with fever in the deckhouse
amidships, and so she was quite alone with the
Rajah.

“I know that I am only Pa-ooan. You no’ like
me ’cause I dark man, eh? Wilt lover me, canst thou
deny me, O maid of mine heart?”

Gabrielle knew by his lapse into Biblical pidgin-English
that he was in an excited, treacherous state of
mind; she also realised that it was wiser for her to
attempt to mollify him.

“I don’t dislike the people of your race at all; it’s
the wicked way that you kidnapped me that makes
me hate you. Won’t you take me back to my people?”

Though she spoke with apparent calmness, her heart
was thumping so violently that she half fancied he
heard it beat. She instinctively knew why the man
stared at her so. She noticed that he had not lit the
hanging lamp in the usual way, either. Only the faint,
flickering glimmers from the lantern that swung by
the saloon door and the deck sent its gleams towards
them. She could just discern the shadowy-like face
of the Rajah sitting opposite her. His voice had become
strangely soft and seductive, almost musical:
“Do you lover me, one little much, pretty whiter
girl?”

“I don’t know,” she whispered hastily in a hushed,
frightened voice, hardly knowing what she *did* say, as
she swiftly glanced around and realised her terrible
helplessness in that cabin far away on the coral seas.
No escape there for her! The glimmer of the seas
outside the port-holes only gave her a deeper sense
of loneliness, if that were possible. She heard the
tramp! tramp! of the watch walking the poop just
over their heads as they sat there.

“Let me go to my berth, I’m tired, I want to sleep,”
she said softly, as she hastily rose to her feet. The
state of her feelings was obvious. The Rajah could
almost hear the fluttering of the girl’s heart in that
soft, tremulous voice. Standing there with flushed
face and her eyes staring with fright, she looked very
beautiful. He put his hand out gently and leaned
across the table towards her. In her fright she gripped
his extended hand. Her hair had fallen down to her
neck and shoulders, tumbling in a golden mass, as she
lifted her hand and glanced wildly about her. It had
been loosened from its neat coil by the flowers that
the Rajah had stuck in the glossy folds. The heathen
corsair’s vanity was so profound that he imagined the
girl had deliberately made her tresses tumble in luring
deshabille for *his* eyes.

A great fire leapt like a blown flame into the man’s
eyes. And Gabrielle noticed it. She began to move
backwards, very slowly, step by step, in the direction
of her cabin door. One of her hands clutched her robe
tightly against her trembling figure, as though she
would not have him see the way her stealthy feet were
moving from his presence. He too had swiftly risen
from the cuddy table and was moving with a stealthy,
cat-like step towards her. It was like some tragic scene
in a drama as she moved backward, her eyes fixed on
him, and he followed step by step over the cuddy floor.
The girl’s pale face and frightened, alert eyes were
reflected in the large saloon mirror as she crept round
the table. His taller form sent a monstrous silhouette
over the panelled walls, his turbaned head going right
across the ceiling. And still she moved on.

Gabrielle had sought to mislead him as to her exact
intentions. She made a rush, whipped into her cabin
and slammed the door. Not till then did the Rajah
realise his mistake in thinking that her tresses had
fallen for his benefit.

A look of rage swept across his swarthy face at the
way Gabrielle had baffled him. But he knew the way
to play the game. In a second he had placed his
mouth to the small grating circle that was in the top
of her cabin door. “Gabri-ar-le, beloved mine, I do
swear not to hurt you; let me comer in,” he whispered.
“Why you rush away from me like that?”
he added in an injured tone. He did not wish to raise
his voice. He knew there was a possibility of the girl
screaming when she realised the full import of his
wishes. He had no desire that the crew should know
that he was a rank outsider so far as the white girl’s
affections were concerned. He had loved to walk the
schooner’s deck, his chest swelling with that pride that
dark men feel when a white woman is theirs; he also
knew that his Kanaka crew envied him his saloon
quarters, where they knew the lovely white girl dwelt.

“Don’t try to come in! You dare not! Leave me
alone. I want to sleep,” replied Gabrielle, as he continued
softly and persistently to knock at the cabin
door.

He heard the trembling note of appeal in her voice.
“I swear by the gods of my land and the stars of your
own that should you open the door and let me kiss your
hand no harm shall come to you.”

He heard Gabrielle smash something heavy against
the door. It was the reply to his appeal. His voice
took on a rougher tone, he was evidently getting impatient.
“If you don’t let me in I’ll smash the door
down; it’s my ship!” he said in a threatening undertone,
then swiftly added: “But, sweeter girl, if you
let me in I swear to keep my promise.”

Gabrielle glanced round her berth. Not a weapon
was handy. She was trembling. “Perhaps he speaks
the truth,” she thought.

“Won’t you go? We’ll speak to-morrow!” she
said softly, as though she would appeal to his heart.
Again he swore that he would not harm her.

Gabrielle looked in despair through the port-hole.
For a moment she was half inclined to put her head
out and scream. Then she thought of the hideous
mulatto mate and the fierce Kanaka crew. She shuddered.
What hope had she? Even as she realised the
hopelessness of her position the Rajah’s booted foot
crashed at the door.

Gabrielle hardly knew what she was doing as she
flung the door open. “I believe you,” she said, as she
stood there, just inside her cabin and gazed courageously
into the man’s eyes. For a moment he was taken
aback, but in another moment he had responded by
hastily stepping forward.

Gabrielle was quite unprepared for his sudden outburst,
notwithstanding all that had happened. He
took her hand in his own. He pressed warm kisses on
the soft white fingers. He became almost incoherent
as he talked and told her how he had dreamed of her
and seen her image in the great magical lagoons in his
native land.

“The gods said that such as you would be mine.
Yes, Gabri-ar-le, long years ago before you were born.”

He had seized her in a passionate clasp. The terrible
magic of his vile personality began to work on the
girl’s overwrought mind. “Go away! Go away!” she
pleaded. But still he wailed on about his old gods,
their magic and the wonders of his country. For a
moment he leaned against the frame of the cabin door
as though he were about to depart, but he did not go.
He leaned forward and began to murmur a weird
Papuan chant. His voice was peculiarly mellow and
sweet. There was something melodiously caressing
in the strain. Just for a moment his eyes softened,
as though his heart was influenced by the music of his
lips. It was only for a second, though, ere the tiger
beast of his nature returned and once more he gazed
unabashed at the girl, as only the low order of the dark
races can gaze. He touched her fingers. His dark
hands had begun to creep in a caressing way up her
arms. His burning eyes still stared relentlessly into
the terrified eyes of the girl. He would not vary that
glance, no, not for one second, as he stared on triumphant,
magnetising her soul by the eerie fire of his own.

“My beloved, putih bunga!” he murmured, as he
noticed the look of terror fading away from the eyes
that had looked up so appealingly into his.

Gabrielle’s face, ghastly pale but a moment before,
now appeared strangely flushed, almost swarthy-looking.
But even the Rajah looked startled as he
saw the change in her expression, as she stood there
dimly revealed by the light of the stars that gleamed
through the little cabin’s port-hole. Standing there
framed between her bunk and the slanting beam of the
bulwark, her tumbled hair about her neck, she looked
like some wonderful emblematic figure of spiritual
beauty struggling against the temptation of passion.
But still his hands stole stealthily up her arms and
about her: now he softly touched the silky material
of her blouse, his face within three inches of her
own. His arms curved snake-wise over her shoulders.
“Marlino sa wean, placer your lips to mine—quick,
quick!” he whispered. His voice was hoarse with
passion as he drew her near to him. “Putih bunga,
mine! Ola savoo, beautiful!” he babbled. He felt
the sighing heave and fall of her bosom. Gently but
firmly he pressed her head slowly backwards, so that
her face should be uplifted to his own. Even in the
gloom he noticed that her eyes stared up at him as
though in sleep. He leaned half fearfully forward
and let his mouth touch her lips.

“Go! Go!” she wailed, as she tried to overcome the
darkness that was sweeping her very life away. She
fancied that a shadow had slipped out of the night to
torture her soul. Again in some terrible rivalship of
dark and mystery it sought to strangle her. She
fancied she saw strange, wild eyes appealing to her,
peering over the Rajah’s shoulder; but it was only the
Rajah’s eyes she really saw.

He saw her eyelids quiver. He felt the wild throb
of her bosom still; but he noticed that the limbs had
ceased to tremble.

“She hath given herself unto me!” so ran a thought
through his mind. He lost control of his acquired
civilised astuteness and began to press impassioned
kisses on her upturned mouth. He felt her arms clasp
him in a responsive embrace.

“Putih! Mine!” he whispered, his voice hoarse
with passion. Her scented tresses fell about his face.
He fiercely pulled the fringe of her bodice open at the
neck and pressed burning kisses on the whiteness of
her throat.

“Don’t! Don’t!” she cried softly. But he held
her the tighter; it was a merciless grip. She had
begun to struggle. He was surprised at her strength
as she suddenly put forth her arms, clutched him by
the throat with one hand and with the other caught
him by the shoulder and pushed. For a moment
he made little effort to ward her off. Slowly, to her
delight, she felt him going back, backwards towards
her cabin door as she pushed in her frenzy. And still
she struggled and still she felt his big form receding
till his turbaned head was half-an-inch out of the door.
She gave a smothered cry of delight; she was winning
in that terrible encounter that was a struggle of life
and death to her. Alas! she had not reckoned with
the cunning of that Papuan kidnapper. He almost
smiled as he allowed her to force him back yet a little
more. Even she half wondered why she was winning
so easily. Then out shot his hand; at last she had
enabled him to reach and grip hold of the handle of
the cabin-door that opened *outwards* into the saloon;
in a moment he had pulled it to; crash! it went as
he slammed it and pushed the bolt!

She and he were alone, shut in the cabin. They
stood facing one another in the dusk, like two half-baffled
figures. Only the stars faintly visible through
the port-hole told of the ocean world outside as Gabrielle
looked first at the dark form before her and then
out into the night. She could not scream as he seized
her in a tight clasp. Only a moment and she had
ceased to struggle, was crying softly to herself as
he pressed burning kisses on her face and drew her
towards him.

He continued his love-making ill far into the night.
Although the girl was completely in the Rajah’s power,
he still showed an unaccustomed restraint. Heathen
though he was, he could, when occasion demanded,
hold his passions in reserve. They would be gratified
later, he told himself, as he gloated over the defenceless
girl. She would be even more at his mercy in his
native coastal village, in his own private dwelling.

And still the stars shone over the wide ocean-way
of night. Only the sounds of the swelling sails and
their muffled flop! flop! broke the silence, as the vessel
rose to the swell and rolled like a helpless derelict
on the silent tropic seas. Tramp! tramp! went the
watch over head. Then someone in the forecastle began
to sing; it came faint but distinct, some old
Malayan chantey drifting aft as the wide wings of the
wind moved across that great world of waters.

.. vspace:: 2

It was night-time, and three days after the Rajah’s
cowardly attack, when Gabrielle heard the Malayan
sailors singing one of their weird chanteys in a cheerful
voice. She at once looked through the port-hole of
her berth, wherein she had made herself a willing
prisoner, only allowing the Malayan cabin-boy Tombo
to enter with her meals. She stared aloft. The vessel
at that very moment was altering its course. She
distinctly noticed the apparent movement of the stars
as the dark canvas sails veered. Again she heard the
gabble and hustle as the helm was put hard over. It
looked just as though the moon had given a frightened
skid across the sky. They had just let the hatchway
down with a bang, had finished pitching the dead
victims of the hold overboard. But still the Rajah
shouted his orders. He was calling in a strange
language. She tried to understand, but not a word
was familiar to her. “What’s it all mean? Are we
there?” she wondered, as she looked round her in
despair. She gazed to the southward. Her heart gave
a tremendous thump as she sighted, a long, low line
of dark coast to the starboard. Then she knew that
at last the *Bird of Paradise* lay off the dreaded coast of
wild New Guinea.

Words cannot describe the misery of Gabrielle’s
heart as she saw the coast-line of that strange, rugged
land and realised that when once she was ashore there
she would be completely in the Rajah’s power. It
seemed to her that a great shadow from that mountainous
world swept across the sea and struck her soul
with despair as a solitary cloud, like a castaway’s
raft, crept under the moon. Her hair fluttered to the
cool night breeze, her fingers clutched the rim of the
port-hole as she still stared towards that desolate,
terrible coast-line. But had Gabrielle Everard been
able to look astern and see across half-a-thousand miles
what a sight would have cheered her despairing heart.
She would have seen the *Sea Foam* dipping gracefully,
bounding onward, travelling south-south-west across
the coral sea beneath the tropic moon with all sail set,
and Mango Pango dancing on deck, while the great
Ulysses, with hand placed sentimentally on his heart,
thundered out:

   | “Oh, I went down South for to see my Sal,
   | Singing Polly-wolly-doodle all the way!”

and Hillary, still full of romance and hope, playing the
violin like some pagan god, accompanying each song
the big man sang.

CHAPTER XII—IN NEW GUINEA
=========================

It was close on midnight when the *Bird of Paradise*
dropped anchor off the coastal township of
Tumba-Tumba. It was the Papuan kidnapper’s
native home on the coast of New Guinea, north-west of
Astrolabe mountains.

“Keep near me, dear Tombo,” whispered Gabrielle,
as the little cabin-boy ran into the cuddy full of excitement
at hearing the anchor go. Before the little
fellow could make any response to Gabrielle the Rajah
lifted his foot and with a straight kick impelled the
boy forcibly out on deck again. Then he went away
forward to give orders to the bustling crew. Two or
three Herculean Dyaks stood with revolvers in their
hands by the main hatchway. They had apparently
thrown over all the dead bodies of the victims who
had died in the hold. Gabrielle looked through the
port-hole and saw half-a-dozen terror-stricken brown
faces peep over the rim of the hatchway. She saw the
clutching brown fingers of old men, girls and youths
curled on the hatchway rim as the slaves struggled to
get a purchase and stare up at the blue, star-lit sky
before the hatch was slammed down again.

She ran out on deck and stared shoreward in her
despair. They were anchored about a quarter of a
mile from the line of coral reefs that loomed afar,
looking like grim, gnarled monsters of the sea, where
the ridges lifted their wave-washed backs for miles
and miles. There, before Gabrielle’s eyes, were the
wild coastal forests and mountains of a strange land.
Away to sea on the starboard side she saw strange
figures with mop-haired heads; some had curly, dishevelled
hair, and their heads sticking out of the
moon-lit water made them look like dusky mermaids,
distinctly visible, as they crawled about searching for
pearls on the reefs. They were not mermaids. They
were simply Papuan women and girls and men searching
for bêche-de-mer in the shallow waters.

“Solo bungo mass!” (“My flower of life!”) whispered
the Papuan skipper into her ear. He had approached
her silently. She looked up into his face.
The pallor of her own face, the despair in her blue
eyes as they shone with intense beauty of sorrow, had
no effect on the man before her. Indeed, her despair
only increased his desire to get her completely in
his power.

“Cannot I stay here? Must I go?” she said in a
voice the appeal of which cannot be described. The
swarthy man was staring shoreward at his native land,
a half-wild look in his fiery eyes as he thought of the
helplessness of the trembling victim who stood beside
him. He only shook his head in reply, then gazed into
her eyes in a way that struck terror to her soul. She
knew that she must obey. She had no belongings to
pack, and so in a few moments she was ready, standing
like some helpless *condamné* awaiting the fall of the
guillotine.

It was almost a relief to the girl’s mind to hear the
sudden clamouring just over the vessel’s side. And
as she looked over she saw dozens of strangely ornamented
canoes and outriggers crammed with mop-headed,
tattooed savages.

“Sowan! Tiki, soo, Rajah!” shouted the barbarian
horde, as the Rajah looked down upon them, bowing
grandiloquently in response to their savage salutations.
For the Rajah was the one “quite civilised” man of
their primitive heathen coastal township, and so looked
upon with almighty respect by his fellows. It was a
momentous event in the life of the population of the
coastal village when the *Bird of Paradise* came in.
The Rajah usually dropped anchor leagues away to the
north, near the Bismarck Archipelago. It was there
that he usually got the biggest prices for his freightage
of trembling captives, destined for the slave markets
of German and Dutch New Guinea. But the Rajah
on the present occasion was in a mighty hurry to get
ashore, so he had decided to take Gabrielle with him
and leave his mulatto mate to sail the *Bird of Paradise*
to the next port and dispose of his terrified human
cargo.

When Gabrielle arrived under the cover of night on
the shores of that barbarian hut city, and saw the
savage-looking women and men staring at her, as
tattooed *ridi*-clad chiefs shouted, “Cowan! to mita
putih purumpuan! (‘Welcome to the white girl!’)
she trembled in her terror, and even felt glad of the
Rajah’s presence as they mobbed her and pinched her
white flesh deliciously. The population rushed out of
their huts by hundreds. Hideous old tattooed chiefs
(bare as eggs down to the loins, bone ornaments in
their ears) moaned and blew with their blubbery lips
as they spotted her whiteness. The deep-bosomed
tawny women who stood beneath the sheltering ivory-nut
palms by their huts stopped their unintelligible
hubbub as the Rajah hurried her past.

“Cowan! The Rajah! The Soo Rajaaah!” they
shouted, as they recognised that cultured heathen in
civilised attire, the great squire, the lord of the manor
in Tumba-Tumba. The news spread like wildfire.
“Cowan!” (“Friend!”) gabbled the girls, women and
youths, as they rushed out of their small thatched
homesteads to see the great Rajah and the beautiful
*putih purumpuan*. The thick-haired half-caste
Malayan girls, dancing beneath the festival palms,
jingling their leglets and shell-threaded armlets,
stopped chanting to see so unusual a sight. They laid
their hands in a romantic way on their hearts and
sighed out, “O wean soo loo,” as a white girl with
wondrous golden hair tossing to the breezes was hurried
along a prisoner in the Rajah’s loving grip.

On, on he hurried. The tropic moon cast a weird
light over the barbarian world that was framed by
distant mountains. Nothing but mighty brooding
forest haunted with mystery and uncouth sounds came
into view for miles and miles as Gabrielle was hustled
along. And still she heard the low chanting salutations
of “Cowan le soo!” floating to her ears. Then came
the weird sounds of the tribal bone flutes and beating
drums, and the sudden hush as she passed beneath the
rows of hanging coco-nut-oil lamps of some festival
ceremony. Those wild people had often seen the Rajah
arrive from his blackbirding schooner with many a
trembling victim looking up into his eyes for mercy,
but never had they seen such a one as they saw that
night. They marvelled at the glory of her eyes, the
cataract of dishevelled hair, like the sunset on their
mountains off Tumba-Tumba (so they said). Besides,
all the previous victims were tawny-hued like themselves
and had dark eyes, eyes that shone, delightedly
sometimes, to hear the acclamations of admiring chiefs
in the slave markets. But the girl before them looked
wildly beautiful with some fright that they knew
nothing of.

As Gabrielle Everard saw their repulsive, blubbery
lips, the yellowish, hot-looking eyes, the animalistic
bodies of the huge, pendulous-breasted, over-fed chiefesses,
she felt a tremendous pang strike her heart,
in the thought that somewhere back in the past she
had kinship with them. As she heard the distant
drums in the mountains a strange feeling came over
her. She even clutched the man’s hand beside her:
she half fancied that those beating drums were the
drums that she had heard in the bungalow away in
Bougainville when the shadow crept into her bedroom.

As they passed under the banyan groves they came
to a large group of huts of various shapes and sizes.
It was the Rajah’s native village.

“Helaka!” murmured the *taubadus* (chiefs), and
when they saw Gabrielle they looked with surprise
and said: “Dimdim Wovou!” (“White foreigner!”).

Gabrielle’s bare feet were bleeding through contact
with the sharp shingle by the shore reefs. But that
didn’t worry the Rajah, his only response to her appeal
that he would go slower was to hurry faster than ever.
He crossed the cleared village space and took the girl
straight to his domestic tambu temple. “Tepiake!”
grunted the *taubadas* as he passed through the thickly
overgrown bamboo stockade. He had now arrived at
his parental residence, a kind of palatial heathen hall,
where his own people resided and held semi-Malayan
fetishes and all that would remind them of their past
in the Malay Archipelago. As Gabrielle stood before
that big wooden building her heart sank. She was too
weary to say much to the man beside her. She hardly
noticed the fiendish-looking children about her and
the ape-like being who ran out from the palms and
danced with glee before her. She trembled as she
looked at the Rajah’s flushed face and noticed the
change in his manner. She saw a look of command
in his eyes, that she had only vaguely felt was there
before. His walk had become majestic. The pleading
obeisance she had received from him aboard the vessel
had disappeared. He behaved like one who had complete
authority over all around him and over her also.
Her feminine instincts awoke, came to her assistance
immediately. She felt that she was utterly alone in
that awful haunt of barbarism.

“I’ll die first!” was the secret resolution of her
heart. She half hated herself to think she had once had
her arms about him and had returned his embrace.
He had looked so handsome, so god-like, as he swore
by the Christian apostles and Jesus Christ. The tears
started to her eyes as she looked at that sinister heathen
homestead as it loomed before her by the light of a
hundred tiny hanging coco-nut lamps. She thought
of her father, the old bungalow in Bougainville and
of Hillary.

The sounds of the barbarian drums seemed to make
her realise with terrible vividness the almighty simplicity
of the apprentice’s love for her. She instinctively
felt that, though the stranded apprentice had
never mentioned the apostles or Christ’s name, or even
God, that he did not do so because God and Christ
spoke for him in the great silence of his own actions.
And as she remembered these things she stood still, her
thoughts far away across the seas. She forgot the
presence of the wild, staring people around her. Her
spirit leapt into Hillary’s arms, she looked into his
eyes and asked him to die with her. The hordes of
savages, the pagan huts, the feathery palms and distant
moon-lit mountains slowly dissolved, vanishing like
the fabric of a dream. She did not hear the voice of
the heathen missionary beside her as he spoke in his
own tongue to the clamouring hordes, so intense were
her thoughts as she dreamed of Hillary and all that
she had lost.

Her despair was so bitter that she hardly cared what
might happen as, like one awakening from a dream into
the light of miserable reality, she mechanically turned
her head as Koo Macka spoke to her.

“Solan putih bunga, my Gabri-ar-le,” he muttered.
Then he gripped her by the arm and led her under the
thatched verandah and into his wooden ancestral halls.

A hideous, baboon-like woman fell on her knees before
the Rajah and moaned out: “Solan, soo wa eala!”
Then she gazed upon the girl and lifted her claw-like
hands as though in approval. It was Macka’s
old mother. Then a ferocious-looking half-caste
(Malayo Papuan) mop-headed old man rose from his
stinking squatting-mat, hobbled forward and stared
keenly at the girl as she stood beneath the tiny hanging
lamps. He made hideous grimaces as he inspected her,
touched her smooth arms, smelt her golden hair, put
his dirty fingers between the folds of her torn blue
blouse and stared at the whiteness revealed to his
eyes through the divided material. And all the time
that he gazed his mouth emitted betel-nut juice that
dropped down on to his tattooed, hairy breast.

“Le putih purumpuan bunga!” (“O flower of beautiful
whiteness!”) he groaned out in his Malayan
lingo. Then he too turned to Macka, and by his gesticulations
revealed the enormous pride he felt that the
Rajah should return to the palatial homestead with so
wonderful a prize. The old Malayan chieftain was the
Rajah’s esteemed *bapa* (father). Though he was old
and wrinkled, it was evident that he too had been
handsome in his day. From that old *bapa* Macka had
inherited the indescribable sensualism that had placed
Gabrielle in her awful position.

“Cowan, wanoo, wanoo wooloo!” he seemed to
shout, as he gazed with pride on his hopeful son. Even
the Rajah recognised the results of his own virtues and
swelled his chest, put his arms half up and gaped to
hide the embarrassment of an invisible blush. And
why shouldn’t old *bapa* be proud of his son? Had he
not listened to the pleadings of the German missionary
at Astrolabe, who had come over from the isles of the
Bismarck Archipelago?

“O great *bapa*,” said the missionary, “take thee
this little Macka, this small son of thine, teach unto
him the Word of God, rear him up in the path of righteousness,
so that he may follow the divine calling and
teach thy people the beauty of the Western creed!”

And old *bapa*, listening to that good German missionary’s
advice, took his hand and said: “O white
papalagi from over the *moan ali* (seas) I have listened.
And I say unto thee, that it shall be as thy godly
words have said.” Then immediately he called his
son, little Macka, from his idol worship in the tambu
temple, and, laying his tawny hand on the boy’s head,
said: “O my son, the Fates have willed on thy behalf
that thou shalt go hence across the big waters to
Honolulu and be educated like unto a noble white man.
For, I say, it beseemeth good that thou shalt grow up
and be one good missionary, so that thou mayst guide
thy people in the path of the new righteousness.”

So spake proud old *bapa*, who truly had his son’s
interest deep in his heart. The result was that soon
after the German tramp steamer *Lubeck* sailed from
Aru, up the coast, taking the boy Macka across the
seas to Honolulu. And as the boy’s years increased
the missionaries marvelled that so bright a youth had
come amongst them, for he was clever and became as
one of them in learning. Soon Macka became head of
one of the biggest missionary classes at K—— O——.
But alas! with the development of manhood the old
instincts, the passions developed in his race through
centuries of tropical desire, burst into flame. They
were not to be overthrown by the sad aspirations of a
few old missionaries at Honolulu. Those kind, well-meaning
men had endeavoured to change the spots
on the leopard’s back—in vain! For what was the
inevitable result of their life-long pilgrimage away
from their native lands? This—there stood Macka
once more, after all those years, back in his native
village, the personification of the full-blooded heathen
attired in Western garb, with a white girl trembling
beside him, looking first into the eyes of the son, then
into the eyes of the father. And still the drums beat
on. And still far away over the seas old Pa Everard
wailed through his delirium, “My Gabby! My
Gabby!” till the asylum-keepers at Ysabel soothed
his rum-stricken nerves.

“Ah! ah! koola, Cowan! my faithful son! Thou
art indeed the joy of old *bapa’s* soul!” And as the
old father’s eyes filled with tears of pride, and the
hideous, bloated mother waved her skinny arms with
joy, the Rajah bowed. For the Rajah was a good and
faithful son, and had repaid his parents well from the
proceeds of his exertions in the dangerous slave traffic.

The civilised blackbirding skipper well knew that
the girl was now utterly in his power. He was in no
hurry to further his wishes. Indeed he was the first
to suggest to his old *bapa* that Gabrielle should stay
with them till the final arrangements could be made
that would chime in with his secret desires.

So Gabrielle Everard actually found herself living
in the squalor of a Malayo-Papuan homestead on the
coast of New Guinea. She was down with fever for
the first three days. Then the Rajah came into her
thickly matted chamber (mats denoted that the visitor
was an honoured guest) and wailed forth his hypocritical
vows.

He sobbed to see her lying ill. He said that if
anything should happen to her he would fade to a
shadow and die. Then he rubbed his eyes with his
big coat-sleeve, and opened a little bottle of medicine.
The foolish girl, sick and weak, felt that perhaps the
man had a heart after all—she drank! Then he whispered
soft words into her ears, but she did not listen.

“Come on, putih bunga!” said he. She rose like
one in a dream, and he led her away to the great tambu
temple that stood right opposite Macka’s ancestral
halls. It was a wooden building, sheltered by enormous
mahogany-trees.

Only the devil himself could adequately describe the
deeper meanings of the ritual of the tambu houses in
New Guinea.

The tambu house in which Gabrielle found herself
was a low-roofed apartment about forty feet long and
thirty wide, not more than twelve feet in height. Its
rows of windows consisted of small circles cut in the
wooden walls, something after the style of port-holes
in a ship. It was lit by the artificial glimmer of coconut-oil
hanging lamps, which seemed only to add to its
shadowy mystery. These innumerable oil lamps, hanging
from beams over the wide *pae pae* (stage platform),
were for the prime purpose of revealing the
attractions of the half-caste girls who regularly performed
at the tambu fetishes. These girls were mostly
Polynesians, Arafuras, Bugis, Dyaks and a bastard
type of Chinese and Melanesian, mostly girls who had
been brought to the coast of New Guinea by the blackbirding
ships when they had been children. Such was
the mixed group of feminine frailty that was performing
and dancing when Gabrielle entered the tambu
temple. The stage walls were richly decorated with
scarlet and white hibiscus blossom that hung on woven
threads. The floors were thickly covered with ornamental
matting. On the walls hung the revered fetish
ceremonial implements and sacred taboo remnants,
such as—skulls, old men’s beards, dead maidens’ hair,
threaded human teeth and all that was weirdly suggestive
of death and orgyism. The front of the wide
stage was adorned by the hideous fetish idols. The
middle figure was about eight feet high, had four arms,
and seemed to be carved out of one solid lump of wood.
It had one mighty yellow tooth issuing from the carven
mouth, which leered in an everlasting grin that did not
seem out of place when the grotesque dances were in
full swing. A serpent-like thing was twined about
its wooden arms and again round the waists of the two
somewhat smaller images that stood one on each side
of it. A look of agony was wonderfully expressed by
the swollen veins on the chest, arms and forehead, as
the fanged mouth of the strong embracing reptile
gripped the right ear of that symbolical piece of New
Guinea sculptural art. It represented some tragic
legendary Malayan episode; indeed it was a kind of
Laocoon of heathen-land; but instead of being clothed
with those symbols of beauty that exalt a lump of
carven insensate wood to a higher state, it was clothed
with symbols of ugliness and lust. And the barbarian
sculptor who had achieved this revolting but still
artistic result had fashioned the idol on the left-hand
side with feminine attributes that were physically expressed
from the full wooden lips down to the twisted
ivory-nailed toes of the delicate feet. Notwithstanding
the allegorical hint of sexuality in the huge middle
figure (its hideous character was intensified by Nature’s
artless handiwork, for fat-bodied green palm
worms crawled in and out of its stretched wooden lips),
it was a truly wonderful bit of work; it stood there
telling with an indisputable voice how strong a force
man’s passions often are.

Even the Rajah had the grace to stand between
Gabrielle and that monstrous wooden trio as they
passed them by. The Rajah was getting wary. A
look in Gabrielle’s eyes at times had told him that a
fire smouldered in her soul. And once while on board
his schooner she had lifted his set of crockery presented
to him by the Astrolabe German Missionary Society
(together with an illuminated address) and smashed
them to atoms at his feet, calling him such names as
he deserved. As for the tambu dancers who stood by
the idols in a semi-nude state, armlets and leglets
and threaded shells jingling on their moving limbs,
they were as wonderful in their way as the South Sea
Laocoon. For in some unexplainable way they did
the very things that the idol so hideously expressed;
yet they did not inspire an observer with that artistic
admiration and feeling of terror which the idol inspired.
Had it not been for the love of life that burns
so fiercely in youth and her newly awakened love for
Hillary—for Gabrielle still believed that he would
cross her path again—she would have snatched up one
of the barbarian scimitars that lay by the floor-mats
of that hellish abode and dramatically ended her
existence.

Koo Macka had fiercely gripped her by the arm as
he led her along the centre transept. The rich scents
that came from the abundant wreaths of exotic
flowers on the walls and in calabashes on the floor
made Gabrielle feel sick. A large, black-winged cockatoo,
with its right foot chained to a small pedestal
on which it stood, looked sideways at Gabrielle and
started to yell its discordant language in a most vicious
way as it snapped its big curved beak. It was evidently
some sacred tambu bird, for the high priest
gazed in horror as the bird flapped its wings, and
glanced up and down at Gabrielle’s white face and
golden-bronze tresses that tumbled over her shoulders.

“Shut up!” yelled the Rajah. In a moment the
bird closed its wings and seemed subdued. This
obedience of the bird to the will of the Rajah made a
great impression among the superstitious throng. The
chanting maids and tambu chiefesses lifted their thick-lipped
faces and shouted: “Cowan! Lao Rajahah!
a loca Laki, putih bunga bini!” (“The Rajah has
brought unto his people a beautiful flower-like wife!”)

Hideous stout old cannibals lifted coco-nut goblets
to their blubbery lips and forcibly expressed by hideous
winks and squints their inward thoughts about the
white girl’s beauty.

It must indeed have been a novel sight to see that
bronze-golden-haired girl led towards the festival
altars by their mighty Rajah Koo Macka. As to what
the girl herself was thinking, she was utterly ignorant
of the cause of the hubbub and the barbarian cheering
around her. The liquor that had been forced between
her lips had quite dazed her brain. As Macka’s old
*bapa* came forward from the front row of the squatting
audience and led the tambu dancers up to the stage,
Gabrielle only stared as one stares on a strange scene
in a dream. She didn’t move a muscle as rows of
mop-headed Papuan, Malayan and half-caste girls
stood in a row and then threw their limbs about till
the treduca shells made music that harmonised with
the lewdness displayed before her happily unconscious
eyes.

It was only when the Rajah stepped forward, attired
in full civilised costume that proclaimed him a member
of New Guinea Rajahship, that the girl began to
tremble. The large scarlet waist-sash, the magnificent,
coiled-up turban and the robe that fell to his feet only
made him appear the more terrifying to her eyes.

In a moment he had seized her by the wrist. And
in her helpless terror she did all that he demanded of
her—lifted her arms to the roof, chanted and sang a
song with strange words in a strange tongue. Just
by her side sat a raving old *tiki*-priest; he was the
finest bit of hideousness extant; even the big wooden
idol before which he repeatedly prostrated himself had
pleasant features compared to that living representative
of the tambu temple creed.

Directly he had finished his weird incantations and
hollow-voiced acclamations he made the tribal sign
to the handsome Rajah, who thereupon immediately
stooped and kissed Gabrielle, first on the mouth, then
on her feet, as he fell prone before her. Then he rose,
looked into her eyes and began to chant. To his
astonishment the girl looked up at him, a half smile
on her sad face as she swayed her flower-bedecked form
and began to swerve with inimitable grace to the tum-tum
of the barbarian orchestra. She lifted her hands
to the wooden ceiling, softly chanting an old Malayan
melody that neither they nor she had ever heard before.
The music of her voice seemed to hold the wild audience
spellbound. And when the girl put forth her
hands and responded in a wonderful way to the mystical
passes of the Rajah’s small, womanish hands, the
whole motley crew waved their dusky arms in delight.
The dancing maidens threw their limbs in envious
rapture, and tried in vain to imitate the rhythmical
grace of Gabrielle’s trance-like movements. For all
their wild acts, and the jingle of their brass and bone
leglets and armlets as they made their wretched limb-tossings,
their performance was as nothing compared
to the white girl’s wondrous grace.

As Gabrielle stopped and stared at the dusky horde
of raised faces and tossing limbs beneath rows of hanging
lamps, she seemed to awaken from her trance-like
state. She raised her hands and gave a cry. The whole
audience, who thought that cry was an exclamation
expressing some ecstasy of the moment, renewed their
volleys of applause. Only the Rajah knew the truth,
the meaning of that cry. He hurried forward, gripped
the girl’s hand, breathed hotly in her face and murmured,
“Come, Bini, mine! Wife!” Then the Rajah
gave a start. Above the guttural cries of the tambu
marriage assembly one voice had begun to ring out
shrill and clear. It was the voice of Maroshe, the
Rajah’s long-cast-off tribal wife. She had been a beautiful
Koiari maid when the Rajah, who was ten years
her senior, had first wooed her. But her feminine
attractions had been cruelly brief. The girls of the
Papuan races leap into full-blown womanhood at fourteen,
and at twenty-five, sometimes earlier, have apparently
reached old age, their brows and cheeks being
seared with wrinkles. But Maroshe still had a remnant
of the old fire gleaming in her fine eyes. But it
was a fire that boded no good for the amorous Macka
as she stood amidst the motley audience and yelled:
“*Tao se cowana tumbi!*” (May the gods send thee
twins!)

Macka heard that voice. It was the one voice on
earth that could echo into the depths of his soul and
awaken a tinge of remorse in him. Indeed, as he
gripped Gabrielle’s wrist he looked against his will
across the tiers of uplifted dusky faces till his eyes
met the magnetic glance of the scorned Maroshe.
Again she held her hand mockingly aloft, and once
more yelled: “*Tao se cowana tumbi!*” The tambu
maidens ceased dancing, and stood with fingers to lips
beneath the rows of hanging lamps. They knew
Maroshe, and also knew that something in her voice
revealed the fact that, after all, she still retained her
old love for the Rajah. The huge wooden idol, its
big eyes agog, was the only face that did not express
the horror that seemed to transfix every heathen
countenance.

Suddenly Maroshe waved her skinny hand thrice.
Then at the sight of her late husband standing there
with a new bride, and a white girl to boot, she lowered
her wrinkled but still half-beautiful face and disappeared.
Macka gave a sigh of relief to see her go.

Suddenly the audience seemed to be awakened from
their horrified stupor. “Bang! To woomb!” It
was the sound of a monstrous heathen drum banged
twice only, somewhere in a mountain village.

Once more the Rajah gripped Gabrielle by the wrist.
“Come, my pretty putih bunga!”

According to the ceremonial rites of the creeds of
Tumba-Tumba, Gabrielle Everard was now Macka’s
wife. That orgy of lust, toddy and heathen seraglio
chanting and dances was a genuine old-time New
Guinea marriage ceremony.

Gabrielle hardly realised all that it meant for her.
She placed her hand to her brow and stared as though
she gazed on some strange sight afar off. The village
priests and *darah tiki-tiki* enchanters and enchantresses
beat their skinny breasts to show their appreciation
of the bride’s beauty. Such an honour had never
been theirs before; for had they not been the means
of binding a beautiful white maid in marriage bonds
to one of their own race.

Directly the Rajah got Gabrielle outside the tambu
house he pressed hot kisses on her face. She struggled
in that embrace. Her cries brought hordes of dusky,
imp-like girls and mop-headed youths on to the scene.
He desisted in his matrimonial advances. In a moment
he had decided to take her to his old *bapa*.

As Gabrielle once more prepared to enter the Rajah’s
homestead, old *bapa*, and his hideous, baboon-like wife,
rushed forth from the palms just behind, and threw
wedding gifts of a suggestive nature upon the trembling
girl. After they had been in the presence of
old *bapa* for some little time, the Rajah altered his
mind, and throwing his body on the sacred mats of
his father’s home expressed a wish to leave the parental
roof and take his bride up to his own private establishment
in the mountains (two miles off), a place where
he had taken so many victims who had fallen under the
lure of his university education and the glory of the
Christian apostles.

As the Rajah once more went forth, taking his
pretty *putih bini* up the little village track that led
under the feathery palms and ivory-nut trees, he gazed
upon Gabrielle’s form as only Macka the ex-missionary
could gaze. At last they arrived outside a large
wooden building (made of thick, rough-hewn mahogany
logs) situated on the lower slopes of the Tomba-Tomba
Mountains.

The Rajah at once took Gabrielle within. Heaven
only knows what the white girl went through before
the Rajah realised that it was no brown woman he
had in his vile power. There had been considerable
trouble before he was finally vanquished and sent about
his business; he had done his best before leaving to
become friendly with the girl again. He knew by her
desperate act in jumping overboard on the *Bird of
Paradise* that she was quite likely to attempt to take
her life again. The look in her eyes spoke volumes to
him. He told off two of the old ki-ki chiefs, ordering
them to keep strict watch over that wooden building
where she was imprisoned. So the two barbarian
sentinels grunted and smoked by the door and Gabrielle
lay down on the thick sleeping mats and tried
to rest.

On the second night the Rajah once more crept into
her chamber. He fell on his knees. He swore she
was his beloved spouse in the eyes of God and the
heathen apostles of his own heathen land. He began
chanting and making weird passes, swearing all the
while that the idols of the tambu temple had been
placed in the glow of the moonbeams and had spoken.

“They have teller me to come to thee. They say
that you must giver yourself up to me and to my gods.
You understand?”

Gabrielle looked in wonder at the man as he fell
at her feet, groaning and wailing. He even wept.
She saw the tears in his eyes.

“Gabri-e-arle. I lover th-ee. Thou art my own,
my putih bunga,” he repeated over and over again.
He pressed hot kisses on her face. But the girl struggled
and overcame him. Then he diverted her attention
and swiftly placed his old ki-ki drugs in her
water goblet. Drugging was, and is, the highest art
in New Guinea, and so he had little fear of the results
not being according to his requirements. Then he went
away. He had not been gone an hour before Gabrielle
was startled by hearing the sound of jabbering outside
the tambu door. She could distinctly hear a pleading
voice, as though some native woman wailed and talked
to the sentinels. Then the silence returned, but to her
surprise the tappa curtains of her little chamber were
suddenly thrown aside, and a strange-looking native
woman stood before her. It was Maroshe, the late
divorced! She held no stiletto in her hand. No malignant
gleam of hatred shone in her eyes; only a weary
look of sorrow as she stood before Gabrielle. The
unexpected visitor fell on her knees and at once began
to chant and mumble mysteriously, as though she
thought Gabrielle understood all the magic of her land.

Gabrielle noticed the note of appeal in her voice.
She at once took heart and bade her rise.

“What’s the matter? What you want?” said
Gabrielle, as she tried to speak to the wailing woman
in pidgin-English and made many gesticulations. At
last the white girl seemed to understand.

It was wonderful how swiftly the souls of two women
of different races fathomed each other’s secrets, peered
into each other’s eyes and read all that they wanted
to read.

Gabrielle’s sorrow had probably brought to the fore
the old instincts with which Nature originally endowed
the human races so that they might scent danger before
it was actually upon them.

Maroshe it seemed could speak a little pidgin-English,
and so the two women were able before long to
understand the exact position of things. Then the
native girl, for she was not much more than a girl,
kissed Gabrielle’s hands, fell prone and touched her
feet in grovelling subjection. Tears came into Gabrielle’s
eyes as she realised the woman’s sorrow and
observed the swift glance of delight in her eyes as she
heard that she, the white girl, was a most unwilling
prisoner in the tambu marriage chamber. “I comer
gain. Me goer now, nicer, whi ladi. You no putih
bunga. Ah!” she said.

Before Gabrielle had realised that the woman was
going, Maroshe had slipped out of the door. But she
came again, and under circumstances that Gabrielle
never cared to recall.

The next night the Rajah returned again to the
solitary building by the mountains of Tomba-Tomba.
He sent his chieftain sentinels away to their huts.
He stooped his turbaned head as he entered the low
doorway, and approached the girl with the old fascinating
look in his fiery eyes. With the almighty deceit
of his race he told her he had relented, and would take
her back to Bougainville. He made her heart leap with
hidden delight as he talked. His voice seemed tender
as a woman’s as he poured forth his semi-Mohammedanistic
*vers libre*. Again he knelt before her, as a
bigot heathen might kneel before an idol, and stared
into her blue, frightened eyes.

Gabrielle, as though in a trance, felt his caressing
hands; they seemed shadow hands as his burning
words crept into her ears. She heard the winds sigh
outside in the mountain palms. She and he were alone.

“Gabri-ar-le! thou art more than life itself; the
moon, the stars, thou art; and like unto the stars shall
our children be!” he murmured in Biblical tones as
he returned to the lingo of the old mission-room. Only
the chantings of the cicalas in the ivory-nut palms
disturbed the silence. Gabrielle felt the strength of
those strong hands, the warm breath of those terrible
lips. A mist came before her eyes; she heard the wild
tribal drums beating across the centuries! The
Papuan’s voice sounded far off; a shadowy figure had
whipped across the rush-matted floor as the lamps
burnt dimly with a magic light. And still the drums
were beating as though in impatient haste across the
centuries. And still her soul struggled as she fearfully
watched for that which her eyes had surely seen;
then, once again, the tappa curtains that separated her
chamber from the door that led straight to the jungle
outside seemed to divide softly. She could not scream
as that terrible thing peeped between the divided
curtains, its burning eyes staring upon her. Its beautiful
woman’s head was faintly visible. The eyes
gleamed with rapture as the enchantress from the past
stared appealingly, beckoned to the white girl, nodded
her dusky head and besought Gabrielle to do her bidding!
Gabrielle stared wildly round. Only she and
the terrible enchantress faced one another whichever
way her eyes turned. She still peeped beneath the
uplifted curtains—now she had begun to crawl on her
belly like unto a serpent. Tears were in the shadow
woman’s eyes! And still Gabrielle heard the drums
beating across the mountains, coming across the silent
hills of sleep. And still the struggle went on. The
phantom woman crawled slowly beneath the tappa curtain
as the white girl watched. She noticed the beauty
of the smooth, oily, terra-cotta-hued limbs, the curved,
sensuous thighs. At last the visitant lifted her beautiful
shadowy head, and began slowly to rise to her feet
as the tappa curtain fell softly. She had entered
Gabrielle’s chamber! A shadow fell across the girl’s
pallid, terror-stricken face, darkening her eyes. She
groped in terrible blindness, just for a moment, then
pushed it from her. She recognised the terrible presence
and recalled in a flash how she had mastered it
when it had come to her in the dead of night in her
bedroom, at her old home in Bougainville. She fell on
her knees and prayed. She wrestled with the evil presence
in an indescribable agony of spirit. And then,
quite suddenly, the enchantress who had crept out of
the jungle of the past gave a wail—and vanished.

Gabrielle stared round her. The perspiration was
dropping from her brow; she was trembling from head
to foot. She was alone! The Rajah, too, had seen
that look in her eyes and had disappeared. In a
moment she had recovered her senses. She rushed into
the little off-room where she slept, and in two seconds
was hastily piling up the mahogany boxes and huge
native clubs against the door, so that none could enter
without her knowledge. Then she lay on her rush-matted
bed and thanked God.

For now she realised instinctively, with a force
amounting to certainty, that never again would she be
haunted by this shadow woman—her dark ancestress
from the past. Gabrielle knew that that struggle in
the tambu house had meant for her a complete spiritual
victory. The evil spirit had been exorcised.

Perhaps also it meant something more. Perhaps it
symbolised a physical triumph over Rajah Macka and
his heathen desires. Strange as it may seem, she no
longer felt the same fear of him which had possessed
her on board the ship. She was trying to persuade
herself that, after all, he was only a grotesque heathen,
eaten up with his own conceit. And these thoughts,
or something like them, were stirring in her mind when
she finally fell asleep.

.. vspace:: 2

Gabrielle had been a close prisoner in the private
tambu house for just eight days before the Rajah came
to her again. The girl had almost recovered from the
shock of that terrible visitant from the past and the
Rajah’s advances. Indeed, she had bribed one of the
sentinel chiefs by giving him a tortoise-shell comb from
her hair, and so had received valuable information.
She had discovered that there were several white settlers
residing in the villages by Astrolabe Bay, some
twenty-five miles round the coast. And so she had resolved
to take flight at the first opportunity, and risk
death in the wild coastal forest in a last attempt to
secure the help of civilised men.

Sunset had sunk over the mountains as she sat hollow-eyed
and miserable in her prison chamber. Gabrielle
could hear the terrible tiki priests chanting and
beating drums to their great god Urio Moquru, whose
mortal power was represented in monstrous carven
wood somewhere near the sacred banyans at the foot
of the mountains.

Suddenly the Rajah entered her chamber. A fierce,
unearthly look gleamed in his eyes. He did not approach
her in his usual oblique fashion; he caught her
by the arm and began to whisper fierce words in
her ears:

“Bini mine! You are mine! I curse your race,
curse your apostles, your Christ and all that you
damnable Christians believe in!”

The girl stood trembling. What had happened, she
wondered. A new feeling of hope flashed through her
misery as the man continued to blaspheme and rave.

Gabrielle knew nothing about the schooner that had
anchored off the village of Tumba-Tumba that afternoon.
But the Rajah knew. He had watched the
obstinate tacking of the schooner for three hours that
afternoon as it persistently hugged the coast. And
his apprehensions had been increased when it had
finally anchored within a quarter of a mile from the
shore where his own vessel the *Bird of Paradise* lay.
For the blackbirding craft had returned the day before
from the Bismarck Archipelago, after disposing of its
remaining living freight in the various slave markets.
There was little doubt in Macka’s mind as to *why* that
craft was hugging the coast. He knew what white
men were like in their wrath, and what they were likely
to do when they discovered that a girl of their own
race had been kidnapped in the same manner that they
themselves had kidnapped thousands of natives.
He knew that old Everard, drunkard though he was,
would develop a mighty virtue when he discovered
that his own daughter had met a kidnapping fate!
He knew also that many of the Papuans and half-castes
of the Solomon Isles had sailed with him on his blackbirding
voyages, and so knew him for a blackbirder
by night and a noble missionary by day. And, realising
that those old shipmates of his would give him
away for a bribe, he had come to Gabrielle with the
intention of taking her farther along the coast. He
was determined not to give her up after all his trouble
and scheming.

“Gabri-ar-le, I comer you, for I wanter you to fly
away from here. I go forth before dawn, we go together
to Arfu where I have many friends and can
make you great princess,” said he, lapsing in his fright
into the old pidgin-English.

A look of horror leapt into the girl’s eyes.

“You promised—you know what you’ve promised
about my going home to my father again?” she
murmured.

The man turned his face away. Even he seemed
ashamed as he turned aside and looked through the
door out into the night. He put forth his hands in a
pleading way: “Gabri-ar-le, you must, must come,
I will——”

He said no more. He turned his head and then
rushed to the door. What was that gabbling? A mob
of curious natives, all excited and murmuring in a
hubbub of expectation, were evidently coming up the
track that led to the quiet tambu house.

“What’s that noise? Who are you fetching here?”
shouted Gabrielle, as she heard the sounds coming
nearer and nearer.

Then he heard it again—it was a sound that came to
Macka’s ears like the trump of doom!—and to the
girl’s ears like the voice of an angel. It was the sound
of a big voice shouting in her own tongue, the English
language:

“By the gods of this b—— cannibal isle, I’ll
pulverise him to dust! Macka! Macka! Where art thou,
old missionary of the South Seas? I’m yer man!”

The Rajah turned a ghastly yellowish hue. He
made a rush but he was too late—Gabrielle caught him
by the coat and tripped him up. He fell headlong
to the floor.

A mighty wind like the first breath of warning from
a tornado seemed to blow as a hoarse voice, vibrant
with pent-up emotion, said: “In there, say ye! You
god-damned heathen!”

Gabrielle stared, petrified with astonishment; there
before her stood the big rude man who had disturbed
Hillary and herself when she sat singing on the banyan
bough by the lagoon in Bougainville. If she was
surprised, it is certain that Rajah Koo Macka was.
He thought that the world had tumbled on his turbaned
head as he fell. He struggled to his feet, and
rushed outside the door of the tambu house.

“Stand up!” said Samuel Bilbao, confronting him
quite calmly as he began to tuck up his coat sleeves.
Hillary, who had made a rush for Macka, was stayed
by Gabrielle’s hand. She had rushed forward and
leapt into his arms. The attitude of the big Britisher
as he stood there, cool as a cucumber, as calm as
though he stood on a village green in England preparing
to exchange fisticuffs in a five minutes’ contest,
made every onlooker step back and form a half-circle
behind Ulysses’s back.

“Put your fists up, Macka mine! Old Macka the
missionary!” yelled Ulysses, as he struck the clasp-knife
from the man’s hand and threw it, plop! like a
tennis ball into the cook’s hand. The rest of the *Sea
Foam’s* crew stood just behind, fronting the huddled
natives in the shade of the stunted ivory-nut palms.
Some had revolvers in hand ready to obey Bilbao their
esteemed skipper’s wishes.

The Rajah made a desperate rush towards the white
man. He saw that his only chance was to escape
through the throng that had encircled him as he stood
there hesitating.

No mercy shone in the depths of those clear, grey,
English eyes; no sympathetic gleam for the swarthy
coward who defiled girls, kidnapped husbands, wives,
lovers and children, yet had not the courage to stand
up and protect himself from the fists of a white man.

Ulysses stood with shoulders thrown back, and as
the winds from the mountains blew his yellowish
moustache-ends backwards, till they almost touched his
shoulder curves, he looked a veritable Nemesis in
dungaree pants and dilapidated helmet-hat. But a
more relentless Nemesis lurked in the shadows of the
jungle, waiting to put the finishing touch to the
Papuan Rajah’s sinister career. It was Maroshe, his
long-ago, cast-off wife, the Koiari maid into whose ears
he had once breathed the sacred ritual vows, when he
was in love with her.

She had been the most eager to give Bilbao the information
he and Hillary sought on first coming ashore
in that village at sunset. She had quickly understood
why the white men were so anxious to get information
concerning the Rajah’s whereabouts. She knew that
they were seeking the white girl—her rival! The sudden
turn of affairs had made her chuckle with delight.
“The gods are kind to me,” she had said to herself.
She had intended that very night to creep into the
Rajah’s sleeping-chamber and deal with him according
to the old prescribed rites of her creed, which
had a special punishment for those who dare trample
on a maiden’s vows. She had followed Bilbao and the
crew stealthily up the track. She even heard Gabrielle’s
astonished cry before she rushed into her own hut
and made her secret preparations. And now she lay
close in the shade of the jungle, prone on her belly
like some half-reptilian, half-human creature, as she
watched her old lover tremble before the glance of
the stern papalagi. She held a goblet in her skinny
hand; it was half filled with a dark fluid. On she
crawled, hand over hand and knee over knee, nearer
and nearer to the spot where Macka and Ulysses faced
one another. She chuckled, half-woefully, at the
thought of this dramatic opportunity which would give
her her long-desired revenge. The Fates had willed it
so. She had once really loved that man, and it would
have been hard to have approached him whilst he slept
in his old *bapa’s* tambu house. And there he was,
standing in the presence of the white girl whose
beauty inspired her with courage to give him the
sacred draught.

“Calre!” (Splendid!) she murmured, as her stiff
limbs twinged and she began to hurry on, seeing the
beautiful white girl standing there, her pretty month
open, her blue eyes staring as the men of two races
faced each other. Once more her wrinkled body moved
on, softly brushing aside the scented frangipani blossoms
and cinnamon grass. She was now within twelve
yards of the trembling Macka. In a moment she had
leapt to her feet, and made a running jump across the
hollow village ditch that separated her from the
two men.

“Holy Moses!” yelled Ulysses, as an apparition
seemed to appear before him. He dodged, making sure
that Maroshe was going for him.

Gabrielle, recognising the strange native woman who
had come to her in the tambu house a few nights before,
gave a cry of astonishment.

Hillary, who still held his coat in his hand, itching
to get at Macka, and had just begged Gabrielle to
let him go, gasped in wonder. He made sure that the
figure that had leapt out of the jungle was the phantom
creature whom he had heard Gabrielle talk about.

All the huddled Papuan, Malayan and Hindu bastard
natives made a rush backwards into the thick
jungle groves, and then stuck their chins out between
the thick dark leaves, peering with awestruck eyes,
half in fright and half in curious anticipation. They
alone knew the true history of Macka’s connection
with the Koiari woman and of the awful potency of
the sacred goblet that she held in her outstretched
hand. As for Macka, he stood transfixed with terror.
His swarthy face had gone yellowish-brown! Indeed,
as his eyes met those of the brown woman, he gazed
with even greater despair into the savage, still half-beautiful
face than he felt when he gazed upon Ulysses.
Maroshe, standing there by the tall palm, her finger
pointing towards the crescent moon, that looked like
a gold feather over the mountains, her body clad in
the ornamental shelled, *rami*, looked the part she had
come to play in that night drama by the Tomba Tomba
ranges. Her eyes shone like living fire. She lifted
her dusky face till her chin stuck out. One hand held
the goblet slightly aloft, with the other hand she
pulled the wrinkled skin of her shrunken bosom and
let it go back, click! and looked sideways at Gabrielle’s
full white throat in a meaning way. The venom of
her hatred for the man before her made her appear
terribly old.

Ulysses stepped backwards. He instinctively knew
that that weird-looking woman had the prior right to
deal with the Rajah at that particular moment. Step
by step she approached, putting her knees far forward
in a peculiar way. Even the night winds seemed
hushed; not a leaf stirred on the tree-tops. She had
begun the old tambu death chant. “Le rami lakai
Putih se lao, darah! Cowan ma saloe!” she wailed,
as she chanted the words of an eerie Malayan fetish
melody.

The crew of the *Sea Foam*, the natives, children and
feather-head-dressed chiefs, all watched, spellbound;
yellowish faces, brown faces, white faces looking like
some dilapidated collection of men dumped down there
haphazard. The Rajah seemed the only living, movable
presence; his limbs shook violently as he stood in
the Fate-like presence of the faded, half-wild woman
who had come in so dramatically for the final act.

She was swaying her body, making mystical passes
with one hand; her voice trembled in an emotional
way as she chanted. The only audible sigh from all
that watching throng came from Gabrielle’s lips. The
shells of the Koiari woman’s *rami* made a faint tinkle-tinkle
as she moved another step forward.

Macka listened. He understood the meaning of that
mumbling song and heathenish incantation. He did
not appeal for mercy. Strange as it may seem, he
looked half sadly on the faded beauty of the Koiari
woman who had once lain in his arms, had felt the
passion of his caresses long ago. For a moment she
stood perfectly still before him, not in hesitation, but
with a look in her eyes as though she would recall some
old memory before she did that which the gods had
decreed.

It was only a moment’s respite. Up went her hand,
taking the goblet right up against the Rajah’s chin
quite gently, as though she would bid him drink once
again of some old love-token—before he died! She
tossed her hand up, very carefully, so that there
should be no mistake—she had thrown the contents of
the goblet!

The terribly potent vitriol smoked on his face!

A cry of horror went up from Ulysses’ lips and from
all the watching crew. The natives yelled out in
anguish. Even the mangy Papuan tribal dog, sitting
close to the idol’s wooden feet, lifted its nose to the
crescent moon and howled. The sight of the Rajah’s
eyes had gone! Standing there, blind, his face seared
with fire, the fumes from the goblet issuing from the
top of his tilted turban and rising in a shivering
vapour to the palms above his head, he made a terrible
picture! He violently clapped his hands to his face.
He began to dance in a wild frenzy. His mind was
shattered with pain. He jumped and jumped, stamping
on the ground as though he would crush his very
soul out with his feet.

Notwithstanding all that the man had done to Hillary
the young apprentice felt some sympathy for the
afflicted Rajah. It was so unexpected. Ulysses, who
had sworn to do so much when he had Macka in his
grasp, re-echoed the horror, the murmur that went up
from the huddled, onlooking crew. And no wonder,
for as they watched a woman’s scream of anguish
echoed to the mountains. In a moment they all moved
back as the Rajah, hearing that scream, put his hand
forth in mute appeal. *He* heard the sympathetic wail
in that blood-curdling cry. The final act of the terrible
drama, enacted before Ulysses and his crew, was
strangely in harmony with its wild setting. None
expected that final act, the thrilling exit from the stage
when Maroshe the Koiari woman forgave and became
united to the Rajah! Mango Pango jumped with
fright and clutched Bilbao’s arm. “Saver me, poor
Mango,” she wailed. Bilbao dispelled the tense silence
by yelling out: “By thunder!”

The hollow-eyed mate stood like a spectre of misery
who saw retribution ahead as he lifted his shrunken
hands and stared upward at the stars.

The hubbub of the cowardly natives had suddenly
ceased as they too watched Macka’s exit from his old
life. Gabrielle clutched Hillary in fear; indeed, every
onlooker drew in a mighty breath as they saw them go—Macka,
a blind, groping figure, looking like some
demon of the night flying onward, and shouting in
his Malayan tongue, one hand waving in the air,
Maroshe clinging to his other arm. They were reunited
at last, and she was leading him away to watch
over him in his eternal darkness.

For quite twenty seconds Ulysses and all the crew
stared after them.

By now the cowardly natives, who had sought to give
no help to one of their own kind, had begun their
infernal hubbub and were clamouring round Ulysses,
begging for the several bribes he had promised should
they lead him to the place where the Rajah had taken
the white girl.

Bilbao, who had lived with the natives from Dampier
Strait to Sarawak, Borneo, knew they were a treacherous
lot and liable to turn on him and his scanty crew
at any moment, so he was anxious to get back to the
*Sea Foam*. He wiped the perspiration from his brow.
His voice was almost gentle as he turned to Hillary
and Gabrielle and said, with evidently simulated calm:
“I say, we’d better clear out of this at once.” Then
he turned to the crew: “Hurry up, boys; let’s get back
to the boats.” The sallow mate, who had fallen down
in a kind of fit, rose to his feet, and stood swaying like
a branch in a wind as he brushed the dust from his
brass-bound, peaked cap.

In a moment Hillary, Gabrielle, Mango Pango and
the crew had started off, hurrying down the track as
Ulysses led the way; the natives came clamouring
behind them, whirling and humming in guttural appeals
like bunches of monstrous two-legged stalk-flies.

It all seemed like a wonderful dream to Hillary as
Gabrielle once more walked by his side, her hair blowing
against his face. Even dusky Mango Pango had a
shadowy look as she clung to Gabrielle’s arm, her broad
showy yellow sash blowing out behind her as the two
girls kept close to the heels of the hurrying crew.

“Don’t tremble, dear. I’ve come, you see. I
never thought to see you again,” said Hillary, as he
realised that he did not move through a shadow world
of phantoms and dreams.

“I knew you’d come,” said Gabrielle, as she looked
him in the eyes.

Hillary half noticed that strange look of her in the
hurry and bustle of the flight back to the boats—a
bustle and hurry that Gabrielle appreciated. At last
they arrived on the beach. In a moment the natives
who were waiting paddled their canoes to the shore.
A tremendous hubbub had begun just behind them.
What was it?

Gabrielle gasped as she heard that loud, terrible
voice yelling from far off: “Butih Bunga, my kali
bini!”

It was the enraged voice of old *bapa* (Macka’s
father) hurrying through the jungle. He wanted to
know where his son was, and so he called aloud for the
beautiful white wife (*putih bini*).

The natives whom Ulysses had bribed had rushed
straight away to Macka’s people and told them all
that had occurred.

“Hurry up, you damned niggers,” yelled Ulysses,
as he looked behind him. He was busy undoing the
knotted tackle that held the ship’s boat.

“Now we shan’t be long!” he said, as he gave a low
whistle. For he had spotted the huddled masses of
dusky figures who had just rushed out of the forest of
mahogany-trees, as old *bapa* drove them on, keeping
warily behind them! Old *bapa* could distinctly be
seen waving his arms as he came into sight just round
the edge of the belt of mangroves; he was following
closely behind the heathen horde who were rushing
down to the beach. From the loud shouts, and the
courage of the pursuers, it was every evident that old
*bapa* was yelling forth mighty promises of prizes for
those who could clutch hold of the Rajah’s *putih bini*.

“Jump into the boat, never mind me,” whispered
Hillary. In a moment Gabrielle was safely sitting
just behind Mango Pango in the ship’s one boat, as
the rest of the crew embarked in the unstable canoes
in which they had come ashore.

Hillary and Ulysses still stood on the shore. As the
apprentice turned his head he saw a dusky Papuan
crouch down by the reefs just up the shore. Swish!
A spear was thrown.

“Crack! crack!” Hillary had fired his revolver
to make sure. He was taking no risks. Old *bapa’s*
voice was still shouting lustily, till his words echoed
in the mountains: “Putih bini! The Rajah’s beautiful
bunga bini!” And though the top of the dusky
Papuan’s head had been blown off, and Ulysses had
given a muffled oath and told Hillary to jump into
the canoe and not stand there on the beach writing
poetry, those dreadful words echoed in the young apprentice’s
brain—for he knew the meaning of them.

Hillary, recovering his mental equilibrium, turned
to embark, and was helped by a shove from the irritated
Ulysses into the canoe.

In a moment the paddles were splashing. They were
off! The covey of canoes shot out into the silent
waters of the forest-locked bay! In a quarter of an
hour they had all safely reached the decks of the
hospitable *Sea Foam*.

“Clear off, you niggers,” said Ulysses, as the clamouring
natives received payment for the job in tins
of condensed milk, sugar, tea and tobacco plug. But
still they clamoured for more! In no time Ulysses
had picked up a deck broom and cleared them over
the side, back into their canoes. In less than an hour
the *Sea Foam* was stealing along the coast to the
north-west.

It appeared that Samuel Bilbao had got wind that
the North German steamer *Lubeck* was about due from
Apia, bound for the ports of German New Guinea
along the western coast. The *Sea Foam* was right dead
in the trading course. He was anxious to get Hillary
and Gabrielle off the *Sea Foam* in case of trouble.
Ulysses was no fool: he well knew that the original
skipper of the *Sea Foam* would not stagnate in Bougainville,
but would make a hue-and-cry and seek
Government help to trace the whereabouts of his vessel.
Bilbao loved liberty, and the idea of languishing for
five or ten years in some island *calaboose* (jail) or in
Darlinghurst, New South Wales, a punishment that
would not be out of place in the verdict of the kindest
judge and jury extant, made him anxious to seek the
outer seas. Consequently, before dawn the *Sea Foam*
once more dropped anchor, under the cover of dark,
some miles to the east of Astrolabe Bay.

“Come along, boy, now’s yer chance. Bring the
gal forward,” said Ulysses, as he put his hand to his
brow and scanned the sea horizon.

“What’s the matter?” whispered Gabrielle, as she
stepped forward, half recovering from the stupor that
had made her fall asleep as she had sobbed in Hillary’s
arms under the awning aft. Hillary, who had hardly
spoken a word to her during the three hours they had
been on board the *Sea Foam*, said: “We are going to
leave the *Sea Foam*. Our friend here has got to fly,
to go a voyage that we cannot take.” Hillary said no
more. He could not very well explain to the girl,
especially in her distressed condition, *how* Samuel
Bilbao had obtained possession of the *Sea Foam* and
that now that Gabrielle had been rescued from the
kidnapper, Macka, he must sail her to remote isles
where he could strand her, make a bolt, or do anything
he liked except go back to Bougainville. Indeed,
Ulysses, Hillary and the bilious, haunted mate had
planned the whole programme before they had first
dropped anchor off Tumba-Tumba. Ulysses knew that
Hillary could easily obtain a passage from Astrolabe
Bay for the Admiralty Isles, and then again ship for
Bougainville. And so it happened that at the first
flush of dawn, when all the stars were taking flight,
Samuel Bilbao put forth his big hand and gripped
Hillary affectionately by the wrist: “Farewell, pal;
good luck to ye.”

“Good-bye, Bilbao; and may good luck come to
you,” said Hillary, with deep meaning and sincerity
in his voice as he looked into the clear eyes of the
Homeric sailorman.

“Awaie! O le Sona Gaberlel,” wailed sad Mango
Pango, as she threw her arms affectionately round the
white girl’s neck. She had known Gabrielle as a child
in Bougainville. For a moment the two girls wept.
It was a strange sight to see Mango Pango’s brown
arms entwined with Gabrielle’s white arms as they
bade each other farewell and wept together. They
were only girls after all. Then the mate crept out of
the shadows of the awning aft; he had worried so much
over his share in stealing the *Sea Foam* and in helping
to install Ulysses as skipper, and he had so reduced his
frame, that he seemed to consist only of clothes and
bones, a veritable skeleton of sorrow with a cheese-cutter
on its skull. “Farewell, for ever, friends;
farewell!” he almost sobbed, as his bones creaked.
At hearing that melancholy voice, Samuel Bilbao, in
his thunderous, inconsequential style, gave a loud
guffaw and brought his fist down with wonderful artistic
gentleness on the mate’s bowed form. Had
Ulysses struck the mate with his usual forcible exuberance
he would have surely doubled up as though he
were no more than a bit of muslin wrapped round an
upright skeleton.

Then Ulysses gently took hold of Gabrielle’s hand
and said: “I knew yer brave old father years ago!”
Then he added: “Good-bye, girl; he’s a good boy,
he is.”

Hillary felt truly sorry to say farewell to that
strange man of the seas. Samuel Bilbao still held the
girl’s hand. His voice had gone as tender as the girl’s.
And Mango Pango’s eyes looked very fierce as Ulysses,
stooping forward, bent one knee with a massive gallantry
that belonged to another age:

“Farewell, Miss Gabrielle; farewell!”

Even the huddled crew seemed to come under the
spell of Bilbao’s personality as the first pallid hint of
dawn swept across the seas. A hot wind from the
inland forests on the starboard side stirred Ulysses’
magnificent moustache as he slowly rose to his feet,
and with his hand arched over his clear blue eyes stared
seaward. Then he lifted his dilapidated helmet-hat.
The soft sea winds fluttered the bronze-hued curls that
hung like an insignia of chivalry over his lofty brow.
With a magnificent gesture he gently pulled the disheveled
golden head towards his big bosom, then
softly kissed Gabrielle’s upturned face as though he
had loved her a thousand years ago, and now, once
again, they must part, each going their separate ways.

Gabrielle couldn’t help coming under the influence
of that extraordinary man: she too felt a definite sorrow
over the parting. And as she looked up into the
flushed, honest countenance, half in wonder at her own
thoughts, and caught one glimpse from those fine eyes,
she saw the *real* Ulysses—all that he might have been.

“Captain, it’s a-getting loight, dye’s a-coming!”
came like a rasp from the Cockney seaman. But even
that voice could hardly break the romance of the farewell
scene.

Then a mist seemed to come over the silent world
as Ulysses, standing like a giant on deck amidst his
wondering crew, dissolved into the shadows.

“Dip, dip,” went the splashing oars as Gabrielle
and Hillary looked into each other’s eyes. They were
in the ship’s boat being rowed hurriedly ashore at
Aufurao.

Half-an-hour after they both stood on the beach of
a strange, desolate land. Sunrise had just begun to
throw ineffable hues over the mountain peaks just
behind them. Once more they stared seaward and
saw the *Sea Foam* fading away on the wine-dark seas,
the sails fast disappearing like a grey bird, taking
Ulysses, his remorseful mate and crew, and laughing
Mango Pango, beyond the horizon, out of sight, far
from their aching, watching eyes.

.. vspace:: 2

It was a wild god-forsaken spot where Hillary and
Gabrielle found themselves stranded. They were miles
away from A——, where a scanty population of white
men, half-a-dozen in all, owned copra, coffee and sugar
plantations. But though it was the wildest spot in the
whole of New Guinea, the young apprentice preferred
it to any other. Even the great loneliness, that seemed
to come out of the wide, endless seas into which the
*Sea Foam* had faded, was more welcome than his
own thoughts.

“Come on, Gabrielle,” he said, as he sighed, and
looked seaward. He thought how he was seeing the
great world with a vengeance, reaping life’s full meed
of romance and sorrow. He realised how one by one
his old ideals had disappeared, receding into the past
like frightened birds. But who can tell what thoughts
haunted the young apprentice as the tropic sun blazed
over the wild coast of New Guinea and as Gabrielle,
exhausted, slept beneath the mountain trees.

As she lay there in the leafy glooms of the dwarf
ivory-nut palms, he looked down on her sleeping face
till the soft-lashed eyelids seemed to be two tiny
graves wherein lay buried all the purest passion of
his dreams.

Up in the tall, dark-green-fingered palms a strange
yellow iris bird was singing. And it seemed to him
that it had come to serenade him in his loneliness and
whistle some hope into his heart. Then it flew away,
and he, too, lay down and slept till once more the great
tropic night crept with stars over that wild, godforsaken
forest coast. He heard the call of the red-wings
in the jungle and the forest that ran sheer to the
rugged mountains that overlooked the shore. It
seemed that he and she dwelt alone in all that primitive
world of sombre forest lands and interminable gullies.

“Gabrielle, we must get away from here,” he said,
as she stood beside him trembling. She had just awakened
from a dream that had given her Hillary’s love
and the security of civilisation far from the unreal
world of jungle that met her eyes.

“Come on, Gabrielle.” The girl took his hand like
an obedient child, and then walked with him out on
to the reefs where the waves came hurrying in, tossing
their white, foamy hands by the caves and coral bars.
Neither spoke one word about the arranged trip up
the coast to the settlements, and of the *Lubeck*, N.G.L.
steamer, and all that Ulysses had so carefully planned,
so that they might not be stranded on that dreadful,
fever-stricken coast. It seemed that they had read
each other’s souls and by instinctive communion stood
there caring not where their steps might take them so
long as they were together.

As they stood there at the edge of the promontory,
beneath the bright stars, Hillary half imagined he
stood again on the old hulk off Bougainville; the two
dead screw-pines ahead of them looked just like the
rotting masts of an old wreck.

“Come nearer, dearest,” said the young apprentice,
just as he had done on the derelict hulk. Then he said:
“Gabrielle, don’t cry, dearest. I love you with all
my heart and soul. I realise now how you must have
felt that night on the old hulk off Bougainville, when
you wanted me to jump into the sea and die with you.”

He pulled her softly towards him, rained impassioned
kisses on her mouth and once more looked down
into the depths of her eyes. Their lips met again and
again. He placed his fingers in the folds of her glorious
hair and breathed the music of his soul into her ears.

Like some herald of a phantom day, a great radiance
flushed the horizon—it was the moon rising far out to
sea. It was then that Hillary looked into the girl’s
eyes and said tenderly: “Is this to be the end,
dearest?”

“I’ll go anywhere with you,” said Gabrielle.

A soft drift of wind came across the hot seas, ruffled
the glassy deep swell of the ocean, blowing Gabrielle’s
tresses out as she stood there. Nor did the torn blue
blouse, the dilapidated shoes and her jungle-scratched
face impair her beauty.

Gabrielle simply pressed her lips to his and repeated:
“I’ll go wherever you go.”

It was not till then that Hillary realised the soundness
of Ulysses’ advice. A moment before in his
dreamy, melancholy mood he had thought of putting
out to sea with Gabrielle in an old canoe which he had
found among the reefs. It would make so romantic
a climax to their adventure: he had thought of the
mysterious and wonderful shores on which they might
find themselves driven by the sea, without chart or
compass. Gabrielle said she would go wherever he
went. Well, after all, they would make their way to
the small white settlement, and see what turned up
then. Hillary would probably be able to find a ship to
take him and Gabrielle away. And then—and then.

He turned again to the girl who was still staring
out to sea.

“Are you ready?” he said, rousing himself. “For
it seems to me the first thing we’ve got to do is a good
long tramp. That’ll bring us to the settlement. Don’t
you want to see people who are more or less civilised
once again?”

“Of course I do. But when you said that about
going away with you wherever you went, I thought—I
thought you meant——” She hesitated.

“Oh! so you thought that,” said Hillary. “Well,
never mind. Come, we ought to make a move. And
as we go you can tell me of everything that’s happened.”
His face darkened. “Gabrielle,” he added
a moment later, “you know that I always believed
in you.”

“Yes,” she added simply. “And—and, Hillary,
thank God you *were* in time to rescue me from that
Rajah Macka. Oh, if you had been too late!”

Hillary for a moment turned away, his eyes wet
with emotion. He had feared such unutterable things.

“Yes,” he said, his voice hardly steady; “thank
God, we were in time. What an adventure it has been.
But now everything seems to have come right again.
And I’ve got you for always, haven’t I?” he added.
And the wind, singing in the palms, drifted a tress of
Gabrielle’s hair against his face as they stood there gazing
on the great moonlit ocean before them.

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