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 beche-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
_condamne_ 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.
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.
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.