Imaginary Millionaires—Pearls and Diamonds—The Fate of the
Sacrilegious—Waylao’s Song—The Great Forest Festival—Grimes and I
fall—So does the Idol—A Free Fight—Waylao’s Discovery
GRIMES and I returned once more to the grog shanty, penniless. We had
been away on a short cruise with a South Sea crank. This particular
crank—the South Seas abound with them—was after pearls. He swore that he
knew for a positive fact that pearls lay in heaps at the bottom of the
shore lagoons, and we believed him.
Our fortunes were made. We almost went balmy with delight as we nudged
each other in the ribs and speculated with our riches in the wildest
way, and, it may be guessed, we were feeling pretty down in the mouth at
the failure of our hopes.
In imagination Grimes had pensioned off several old uncles, and had
commemorated the goodness of his grandmother by placing a marble
monument over her grave in Kensal Green. I, too, had been pretty
generous, and made the eyes shine of old folks at home, also of friends
who really did not deserve such good luck, for they had done little for
me when I had arrived back in the old country from the great Australian
gold-fields, arrayed in a ragged, brass-bound midshipman’s suit. Well,
there we sat, worse off than any of them, for not only had our friends
afar lost the gifts of generosity, but we had spent our savings, the
hard-earned savings from our last voyage before the mast to San
Francisco via Honolulu.
I had persuaded Grimes to come with me on that pearling trip. It was all
my fault. “Grimes,” I said, “I feel awfully sorry that I persuaded you
to believe in old beery-whiskers” (as we called him), “but I’ll make it
all right as soon as I get a good job on one of the boats. I’ll pay you
back all _you’ve_ lost. You _did_ say he was a lunatic. I wish I’d
believed you.”
“That’s all roight, mate,” said Grimes. He pressed my hand. Mrs Ranjo
looked a bit fierce and then ticked off the next drink that Grimes
ordered for himself. We were both penniless.
It did seem a shame, for Grimes had suffered much through my sanguine
temperament. Nine months before we had shipped on a schooner for the
Malay Archipelago, calling in at Guadalcanar, Solomon Isles.
It was at the latter place that I had sworn that the idols’ eyes of
those parts were real diamonds, for so I had been told, and he believed
me. When we crept away through the forest, thinking we had safely got
the idols’ eyes, for we had sneaked into the heathen temple, under the
very noses of the sleeping savages, Grimes fell crash down a hole! In a
second the whole tribe of Kai-kai savages were after us! I shall never
forget the yells and Grimes’s unconventional exclamations as he puffed
along at my side. When we reached the shore we jumped into the canoe,
crash! and pushed off, just in time. But the leading savage chief,
racing like some monstrous, burly ghost in the moonlight, gripped Grimes
by the tail of his reefer jacket as the canoe swung round. The jacket
was old and flimsy and, thank God! it gave way. The impetus of the
sudden jerk shot our canoe right out into the bay. We were saved!
We almost cried when we got back to our old windjammer that lay out in
the stream, by the promontory. The idols’ eyes turned out to be bits of
broken glass, glass which had evidently been chipped by stealth from
ships’ port-holes.
No wonder on this present occasion Grimes and I were feeling wretched,
when Waylao suddenly entered the grog shanty. I don’t know how it came
about, but Ranjo, with the aid of some of the shellbacks, got her to
sing.
Grimes and I sat staring, as it were, at some beautiful apparition in
that cloud of bluish tobacco smoke, swaying to and fro as she sang.
Grimes gave it up, and laid his banjo down: he could not follow that
wild, beautiful melody. But I seemed to become inspired as I lifted the
violin to my chin and extemporised an _obligato_. The old beachcombers
swore they never heard so sweet a melody, and the girl looked like some
beautiful goddess, with a far-away look in her star-like eyes. I half
wondered at my talent; it was as though I played on my own
heart-strings. Perhaps the memory of Waylao’s pilgrimage to Rimbo, that
forest cathedral in Nature’s stronghold, had awakened some barbaric
strain of musical genius in my soul.
Grimes said he believed implicitly in God, the Holy Ghost, the
hereafter, and all kinds of peculiar, uncockneyfied things that night.
As for me, I confess I also felt inspired. We reddened to our ears when
Waylao stepped forward and thanked me for the way I had played. She
thanked Grimes too. I felt his hand trembling as he handed me my
lemonade. I could not stand strong liquor like Grimes and those seasoned
shellbacks. Though I have often been praised for this solitary virtue of
mine, those who praised me little dreamed how my heart mourned within me
at the thought that I could not take strong liquor. They knew not how
often I cursed the Fates, how I gazed with envy on those fearless men
who drank at the bar and clutched heaven in one hand while I am denied
through a weak stomach! So do I jog along through life, not only a
member of the vast army of sad teetotallers, but one who grieves in
sympathy with them.
After that song Waylao hurried away. She was off to the native festival.
There was something special on that night. As we sat in the grog shanty
we could hear the drums beating the stars in with unusual vigour. A
great heathen carnival was in progress, some mystical rite that
commemorated the wonders of the heathen deity Pulutu.
I believe that dance was the last great primeval orgy indulged in by the
Marquesan race, for gradually the officials condemned the old rites,
till hardly one was left on the Government programme of the great
“Permissible.”
[Illustration: FOREST SCENE, MARQUESAS GROUP]
Pious whites said it was disgraceful that people should be heard
laughing and dancing in the moonlight, and so the Marquesan race died
out, sat silent round their camp-fires, and one by one crept into the
grave—out of deep gloom into deeper silence.
Some of those heathen dances were a bit grotesque, I must admit. They
reminded one vividly of a London or Paris music hall performance, with
vast mirrors on the roof and stage walls, the ballet girls, terra-cotta
coloured, whirling against a background of moonlit coco-palms and
distant starlit mountains.
But to return to the dance in question. Grimes and I determined to
attend that festival, in fact had been invited by the old high chief
from Anahao. As we left the grog shanty, Grimes was still ruminating
over Waylao’s beauty, and the charm of her voice. We did not know it
then, but she too must have been tramping on through the forest, ahead
of us, making her way to the festival. I suppose she was really off to
meet her Indian lover, Abduh, whose wretched skull, well polished, with
the brains scooped out, would have made a fitting spittoon for the grog
shanty by Tai-o-hae.
As we passed over the westward slopes, Father O’Leary was tugging at his
bell-rope, calling his children to prayer.
The night sky was crowded with stars. The very winds were scented with
the odours of romance as whiffs crept from the orange groves and the
over-ripe _fies_ (bananas). It was a beautiful spot we had to cross ere
we reached the native festival. As we passed along the mossy tracks we
heard the island nightingales singing. High over the giant bread-fruit
trees we could hear the whir of migrating, long-necked cranes, looking
like whitened skeletons of dead men rushing beneath the moon. We heard
the rattlings of the bones, then came their leader’s wild, crazy cry as
they faded seaward. Sometimes, like a flock of frightened gnomes or
dusky fairies, a group of surprised native children bobbed their shaggy
heads out of the ferns of the forest floor, and vanished in the shadows,
for we were approaching the natural stockade of a half-pagan, tiny city.
Shadows in a hurry seemed dodging about. We heard the faint booming of
drums and the weird wails of barbarian flutes and screaming bamboo
fifes.
Emerging from the forest bread-fruits, we sighted the native village.
All was a-bustle in that now dead Babylon of the South Seas. By the
little groups of small bird-cage huts, made in picturesque style of
yellow bamboo and twining sinnet, sat the wild denizens of the forest.
It seemed as if we had suddenly passed through some little forest door
that led from reality into faeryland. The coco-nut-oil lamps burning
with a pale light by the hut doors gave a magical effect to the scene as
they flickered in the brilliant moonlight. By some of the
bee-hive-shaped dens sat handsome, savage, semi-nude old men and women,
the genuine tattooed chiefs and their wives—the faded, dusky, harem
beauties of a past which teemed with awful cannibalistic orgies. As
those grim old warriors, dressed in the picturesque, barbaric Marquesan
garb, sat there, they looked like idols or images, or tree trunks carved
to resemble man. Only the blinking of the bright, dark eyes and drifts
of tobacco smoke coming from their lips revealed the fact that they
breathed. Some had their hair well oiled, done up mopwise, bunched high
on top of the head; it almost looked as if some humorist had stuck huge
coco-nuts on broad, living, headless shoulders, and painted hideous
faces on them. Those grotesque physiognomies considerably enhanced the
fine appearance of the really handsome Marquesan chiefs, who, squatting
opposite their less fortunate companions, smoked vigorously and
repeatedly expectorated on the naked feet of the chiefs who sat before
them. (I believe this odious anointment was a sacrificial act of extreme
politeness, a survival of some old rite that expressed brotherhood.)
Just on the outskirts of those picturesque village huts was a cleared
forest patch, where was erected a kind of _pae-pae_, fashioned something
after the style of the old heathen altars. Decorated with gorgeous
hibiscus blossoms and forest festoons, which glimmered amongst the
hanging lanterns, it inspired one with a vivid idea of what the old
primeval fêtes must have been. The chief attraction of this _pae-pae_
was the monstrous wooden idol that adorned it. The carven face was the
acme of ugliness, and had been painted up for the occasion. The goggling
glass eyes seemed to express the glorious humour of the situation. The
big, slit mouth revealed one huge tooth, and its fixed grin expressed
wonder, as though it showed its delight at being brought out of its
hiding-place once more to be reinstated as supreme deity of
heathen-land. Just below the _pae-pae_, directly opposite the huge
wooden feet of the _tiki_ (idol), squatted a bevy of pretty Marquesan
girls. They looked like a group of dusky nymphs as they swayed their
nut-brown arms and the moonlit wind uplifted their masses of dark hair.
Some had golden tresses (dyed with coral lime).
“Did you ever!” said Grimes, as we both watched, fascinated.
“No, I never,” was all I could utter in reply.
I seemed to be gazing on some magical reproduction of primeval life in a
world that had long since passed away. They were clapping their hands,
swaying their flower-swathed bodies and singing some Marquesan madrigal,
a tender, far-off-sounding melody, that might have been the death-song
of their fast-vanishing race.
Snug among the leafy pillars of that primitive lyceum of the forest
squatted the royal orchestra. One tremendous drum sought to outrival the
various melodious but weird effects of the chief soloists. Those players
had been hired from far and near, and were the finest performers extant.
The ease with which they produced their effects on such simple
instruments was astounding. Some blew, by means of the nostrils, through
tiny flutes, others puffed with their lips at screaming bamboo fifes,
and some twanged on stringed gourds. One tawny old chief, who had both
his ears missing, scraped violently on an old German fiddle. It only
possessed two strings, but he played it fairly well. Probably he had got
it from some sailor who had given him a few lessons with the bargain. He
screwed his face up as he played, and when he repeatedly put his tongue
out and rolled his eyes, the little children shrieked with delight.
Notwithstanding the pandemonium of sound, the fierce rivalry between
each performer as they puffed their lips, crashed drum-sticks, howled
and twanged, it seemed as though the soul of some barbarian Wagner had
burst, had exploded from a wonderful bomb of pent-up inspiration, and
the _maestro_, in that forest, was chasing the flying echoes in anguish,
ere they were lost for ever! I do not exaggerate in this description,
and Grimes tugging away at the banjo and I playing the violin felt like
two happy barbarians as that forest carnival reached the zenith in a
marvellous cataract of sound. Just by my conducting desk—an old
egg-box—sat the dethroned king from the Paumotus Group. He had been
favourably received in Marquesan society, and seemed to swell with
renewed majesty, his very nostrils dilating with the excitement as the
maids commenced to dance—and what dances!
Grimes and I forgot to play our parts as the dancers became inspired on
that primeval stage before the footlights of the stars! Their feet
seemed literally to point and hover skywards, as they performed the
equivalent of a Marquesan can-can.
We stood up, gazing breathlessly with astonishment, our hands raised. We
must have looked like two gasping idiots—Grimes with scrubby face and
mouth wide open, and I attired in my old, tattered, brass-bound
midshipman’s suit, and on my head a dilapidated white helmet-hat.
Sometimes the moon, in the domed vault of that palladium, became dimmed,
as small woolly clouds drifted across the sky. Directly the travelling
mist had passed beneath the eye of night, up went the shadowy curtain
from that forest drama. And once more the dancing legs, the flying,
gauzy veils of figures flitting in rhythmical swerves, and the rows of
delighted, excited eyes came into full view. The scenic effect was that
of some enchanted forest, where magical waterfalls of moonlight poured
down through dark-branched palms from the sky, while dusky, faery-like
creatures danced through those magical waterfalls, their eyes bright
with wondering delight as one by one their soft feet landed on the
forest _pae-pae_.
Suddenly the leading drum went bang!—the echo travelling like a jumping
football of ghostly sound across the hills. That drum-head was made from
the tightened, tawny skin of some dead chief! The rim was ornamented
with the scalp and beard! As that echo faded seaward, an uncanny thought
struck my emotional senses. It seemed that the dead chief’s spirit had
haunted that drum, had been imprisoned inside, and now, at that
tremendous crash had escaped—in frightened tumult across the hills! That
smash was the sign for the orchestra to cease, but still the dancers
danced on. A puff of scented, cool sea wind crept through the forest
bread-fruits, and touched those performing, dusky figures, sweeping the
gauzy robes all one way.
The scenic effect changed, and that moonlit stage looked like some
wonderful scene of happy faery creatures dancing in silence, faintly
perceived in a vast mirror that reflected the skies, a mirror that some
grim humorist in heaven had suddenly turned upside down—so grotesque yet
faery-like were the rhythmical contortions of those flower-bedecked,
dancing maids.
The high chief from Anaho swayed his war-club with delight. Tattooed
warriors, wearing the royal insignia of knighthood (exquisitely tattooed
armorial bearings on the shoulders and breast), stood by, drinking toddy
from the festival calabash.
Suddenly the prime donna stepped forth to entertain, and to reveal the
beauty of her race. The handsome youths and men arose _en masse_ as she
emerged from the bamboos that towered just behind the huge wooden idol’s
back.
“Aloha! Aloha! Awai! Awai!” they cried in musical speech, as she made
obeisance to the audience in bewitching Marquesan style. She commenced
to dance, flitting across the stage in the radiance of the moonlight,
which appeared the more magical as the small, blue-burning flames of the
little coco-nut-oil lamps flickered in the breeze. The audience stared,
breathless with anticipation.
She seemed to be some embodiment of Marquesan grace and poetic
mythology. Her figure swayed to the tender _adagio_ strain, as I caught
the spirit of the weird chant and her movements and played on my violin.
In some mysterious way she seemed tied to the _tempo_, to the throbbing
wails of those waves of sound, so perfect, so exquisite was her every
movement to each suggestion of the melody. Her tappa robe, of the most
delicate material, lifted to the forest winds, the diaphanous folds
clinging to her figure ere they loosened, and flying out from her heels
as she flitted across the bamboo stage of that arena. At this sight the
enamoured youths, standing in rows by the palms and mangoes, yelled with
delight: “Aloha! Yoranna, Atua! Mon dieu!” The last two words being a
French Marquesan’s most fervent expression.
But it was the intense expression of vanity gratified on her face that
spoilt the imaginary effect and destroyed the illusion that some wraith
of the forest, some heathen goddess, danced and sang before me.
Nor was her flush of pride to be blamed, for those Marquesan youths were
indeed handsome. There they stood, knee-deep in the ferns, their dark
faces aglow with impassioned thought, their eyes shining like glowing,
sinful stars. About their perfectly shaped loins they had swathed the
latest fashion festival sash, its scanty width adorned with tassels, and
tied, bow-wise, coquettishly at the left knee. I will not dwell on that
prime donna’s solo, for it would be impossible to give the faintest
impression in words of the magical sounds of such weird, extempore
melody.
As all the maids who were squatting beneath the palms and bread-fruit
trees joined in the refrain the effect was most fascinating. Nor was the
fascination spoilt by those dusky youths who made strange sounds, in
perfect _tempo_, as the song proceeded, by clicking their tongues!
Though I am unable adequately to describe a Marquesan dance of the old
days, I can give an idea of the music, or at least of the impression
that is left on my memory, in the following specimen of a Marquesan
dance:—
[Music: ENTR’ACTE BARBARE.
(_Extract._)
A. SAFRONI
(A. S. M.)
Moonlight Drums in the forest
_pp_
_Prestissimo_
_Deciso f_
RECIT. _p_ _a tempo_ _morendo_
[segno]_Molto moderato, à orientale_
Native maids beating limbs with hands and chanting Throw leg up
_Repeat 8va_
_p_
_mf_ dim. etc.
D.C. to [segno]
Reproduced by kind permission of Messrs. BOOSEY & CO., London, W.
]
It was in the finale, the mighty _tutti_, that the swelling _crescendo_
and the passion of the barbarian, orchestral music rose and fell and
faded into silence after the drums had ceased their primeval grandeur.
“Ter fink Oi’ve lived to see this ’ere day,” said Grimes hoarsely.
“To think I’ve lived to hear it,” I responded, as we dodged our heads in
the nick of time, as thirteen happy savages whirled past, swaying
war-clubs!
Aged, tattooed chiefs, chiefesses and plebeian, savage old women joined
in that dance. Off they went, their stiff limbs scorning old age, as
memories of youth and pagan days returned. The little children gazed
from the hut doors with awestruck eyes, screamed with delight, clapped
their tawny hands with childish ecstasy to see the antics, the high
kicks of their erstwhile sedate old grandparents. I can still see those
astonished little brown beggars as they stand there; even the glass eyes
of their old rag dolls, that they held in their arms, looked surprised.
Those contortions seemed impossible. Grimes and I held our hands up,
breathless, spellbound with expectancy—but not a leg quivered, not a
hip, not a limb or muscle was dislocated.
I felt like some happy barbarian. My nationality faded. The cares of the
world fell from me, and I felt a strange affection for that old,
stalwart humorist, the idol, standing before me, and I could have
worshipped that grotesque wooden god of the _pae-pae_!
I looked at Grimes; the wonder of it all shone in his merry eyes. I
thought of far-off old England, of grim conventionality. What a shock
for my country to hear a wooden drum bang and up go rows of dusky legs!
I thought of the funny old men who yearned to reconstruct modern
civilisation—Members of Parliament; men who would reverse things, put
the roof on the floor and the floor on the roof, reconstruct our
entrails, our hopes, fears and feelings. What would they think, I
wondered, if suddenly confronted with such a sight—a sunburnt British
youth playing a violin to that heathen festival dance? But I am
incorrigible, and as I sat there, imagining the horror on those British
physiognomies to see me taking part in that terrible pandemonium, I
snatched my red handkerchief from my pocket and tried to smother the
laughter that convulsed my being.
The festival dancers whirled; crash! went that awful drum and still I
reflected. I knew that those happy barbarians were the descendants of
ferocious cannibals; indeed some of them had practised heathen rites but
a few years ago. I wondered which was the most terrible: to eat your
dead pal on toast, or to be a Christian, build cathedrals with spires
pointing to the skies in the name of immortal salvation, while tender
little kiddies, sad old men and women starve in the streets.
I laughed again. Grimes thought I had gone mad. I was as bad then as I
am now, only I laughed more and was imaginative.
The dethroned king from the Paumotus Isles gazed frowningly upon my
merriment. He was suspicious; thought I was making light of that royal
display, little dreaming the truth!
Grimes and I ducked our heads as the covey of handsome native girls,
arms akimbo, swept in whirling circles by us. We heard the swish of the
gauzy, flower-bedecked robes. We ducked our heads just in the nick of
time as they swung their perfect limbs skyward. The prima donna’s pearly
toe-nails caught in Grimes’s curly hair. He yelled. Oh, the glorious
memory of it all! The drums were beating a hundred strong, the weird
barbarian fifes screamed. Something happened, my senses swam in some
delicious indecision. I tried to look shocked—a beautiful, savage girl
had embraced me!
“Aloah!” she murmured deliciously in my ear. I gazed interrogatively at
my comrade. “Shall it be?”
“Whose ter know?” whispered Grimes enviously.
Then——! How can I boldly confess the truth?
What will you think of me, O my civilised brothers, sweet-scented,
hair-combed men? Just think of it—I fell! I laid my violin down in the
forest ferns; I gazed about stealthily. Once more she whispered: “Aloah!
O beautiful papalagi!” Then I and Grimes whirled away into the wild
dance, joined that barbarian mêlée!
It’s a sad confession, I know. But why should America rejoice in the
proud memory of a Washington, and England lag behind?
Think of the many men of distinction who have roamed and written of
those Southern hemispheres. Captain Cook, the first pioneer, the cruise
of the _Casco_ with R.L.S., the Snark, Becks and Melvilles, and no such
confession right up to date! I hope posterity, when I am gone, will
remember with pride that it was I, a Britisher, who first told the truth
about Southern Seas.
* * * * *
However, I must return to my description of the spectacle.
Evidently this was a special gathering of various types of dusky men and
women of all the islands, tiers on tiers of handsome and ugly faces.
Some were splendid savage old men, some representing the types of races
that lived on isles a thousand leagues away, gathered together beneath
the terraced arches of that amphitheatre of pillared bread-fruits and
Nature’s colonnades of exquisitely twisted vine-work. Over this branched
roof shone the stars, inextinguishably beautiful lamps of heaven. There
were jovial faces; lean, avaricious faces, brooding, sardonic
physiognomies; poetic faces seared with wrinkles; philosophical
expressions; Voltaires, Spinozas, Darwins; sad old dethroned kings and
faded queens—all squatting in the shadows as the oil lamps twinkled on
the tasselled boughs above us. There were short, swarthy men, long men,
fat men, wide men, square men, sensuous-looking women, voluptuous
figures tattooed in conspicuous parts, scraggy women with faces like
wrinkled toads, whose savage tattoo of hieroglyphic beauty showed off to
advantage the handsome Marquesan physique. Honest old chiefs sat alone
in their poverty, attired in primitive loin-cloths of Poverty’s scanty
width. Budding poets gazed with thoughtful eyes on flippant old men and
pompous chiefesses. Vainglorious girls strutted before their less
fortunate sisters, wearing yellow stockings and little else. The
inevitable poor relations gazed with weary, envious eyes on the huge
calabash of sparkling toddy, moistening their parched lips as high
chiefs and chiefesses quaffed at its rim deliciously.
Grimes and I respected those clean-bodied, handsome savages—flealess,
immaculate in mind and attire, as they danced around us. And yet, alas!
the hand of civilisation had touched them, for as with a crash the
exiled king from the Solomon Isles fell from his bamboo erection, he
still clutched at the keg of the best rum from across the seas—exchanged
for copra to make scented oils to plaster down the hair of commercial
savages in civilised lands!
What with the wild laughter and beating drums, it seemed more like a
ghostly fête day than night, and so brilliant was the moon that one
could distinguish the various shades of the uplifted hair of the
Marquesan girls.
Grimes and I were not the only fascinated spectators of that barbarian
burlesque. Several white settlers, French gendarmes and officials,
Indians, Malay, Chinese, and one or two giant niggers stood in the shade
of the bread-fruits watching that scene. The Marquesan _élite_ sat in
the royal box—a kind of platform erected in the arbour of thick bamboo
clumps. These spectators belonged to the missions, and attended the
stone churches near Tai-o-hae. They were attired in European garb. Some
even gazed through spectacles on the scene, making critical comments on
the dress of their primitive brethren or the quality of the music of
that South Sea orchestra.
As the first cataclysm of sound faded away, and the chief drummer rested
his arm for the new _con furioso_ overture, Grimes and I, taking the
opportunity to look round, caught sight of Waylao standing amongst the
spectators by the bamboos.
Grimes was full of enthusiasm, and wanted to cross the space to speak to
her. But at that moment someone leaned against the great wooden idol, it
overbalanced, and fell with a crash.
This accident was a terrible omen, for the old wooden deity was tapu,
which meant that anyone who touched it was liable to be clubbed on the
quiet. The æsthetic-looking old chiefs and the superstitious chiefesses
positively groaned in their anguish as the fallen deity was slowly
lifted up from its degraded position. I don’t know what happened after
that. I believe there was a general fight, the Christianised, Catholic
natives of the French churches taking one side and the Protestants the
other.
For the time being I will leave Marquesan affairs and follow the deluded
Waylao, who was off that night to meet the Indian ex-convict—her
beautiful romance.
Near the spot where Waylao stood watching the native festival was the
small pagan village. As she stared across the space the children peeping
from the hut doors shouted, “Aloah! Mai le tupa!” for they knew Waylao
well.
The half-caste girl took no heed of the cheerful salutations, for she
had suddenly spotted the turbaned cranium of her lover, Abduh Allah,
beneath the buttressed banyans some distance away. I believe he held the
Koran in his hand, anyway he looked a holy beggar. Beside him stood a
veiled figure. Waylao stared. What did it all mean—her noble cut-throat
looking down into the eyes of some feminine being? It was terrible. Her
brain seemed as though it would burst with the flood of jealousy that
swamped her senses. The noise of the distant festival chanting was
unheard. One question only interested her—who was that who stood by the
side of her noble, Islamic hubby? Suddenly the slim form by Abduh’s side
flung aside her Oriental silk hooded wrap. Was it a ghost by his
side—some phantom girl of the forest staring up into her lover’s face
with pleading eyes? No. Notwithstanding all the mythological goddesses,
all the shadows of Pulutu and legendary wonders that haunted that
enchanted heathen-land, the Indian settler’s companion was none other
than the faery being from the little grey hamlet by the mountains—the
white girl Pauline.
Waylao rubbed her eyes. Was she dreaming? What hint of her unwanted
presence had reached Abduh’s soul, making that wraith of the forest
vanish so hurriedly?
In the flood of passionate pain that overwhelmed the senses of the
half-caste girl was a terrible feeling as of something lost, leaving her
a degraded creature, dominated by one passion—jealousy. This she told me
long after and under the strangest of circumstances.
------------------------------------------------------------------------