Gabrielle of the Lagoon: A Romance of the South Seas

by W. H. Myddleton

CHAPTER IX—THE HOMERIC SPIRIT

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“For I went down south for to see my Sal,

Singing Polly-wolly-doodle all the day.

For I’m off to Lousianna for to see my Susiannah,

Singing Polly-wolly-doodle all the way!”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“That’s so,” ejaculated the apprentice.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Samuel Bilbao met the apprentice in his usual volcanic style.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Blow! blow! and damn yer eyes!

Haul the old gal by the leg!

And that’s the way the money flies

When we’re out with Joan and Meg!”

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

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

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