Gabrielle of the Lagoon: A Romance of the South Seas

by W. H. Myddleton

CHAPTER XII—IN NEW GUINEA

It was close on midnight when the Bird of Paradise dropped anchor off the coastal township of Tumba-Tumba. It was the Papuan kidnapper’s native home on the coast of New Guinea, north-west of Astrolabe mountains.

“Keep near me, dear Tombo,” whispered Gabrielle, as the little cabin-boy ran into the cuddy full of excitement at hearing the anchor go. Before the little fellow could make any response to Gabrielle the Rajah lifted his foot and with a straight kick impelled the boy forcibly out on deck again. Then he went away forward to give orders to the bustling crew. Two or three Herculean Dyaks stood with revolvers in their hands by the main hatchway. They had apparently thrown over all the dead bodies of the victims who had died in the hold. Gabrielle looked through the port-hole and saw half-a-dozen terror-stricken brown faces peep over the rim of the hatchway. She saw the clutching brown fingers of old men, girls and youths curled on the hatchway rim as the slaves struggled to get a purchase and stare up at the blue, star-lit sky before the hatch was slammed down again.

She ran out on deck and stared shoreward in her despair. They were anchored about a quarter of a mile from the line of coral reefs that loomed afar, looking like grim, gnarled monsters of the sea, where the ridges lifted their wave-washed backs for miles and miles. There, before Gabrielle’s eyes, were the wild coastal forests and mountains of a strange land. Away to sea on the starboard side she saw strange figures with mop-haired heads; some had curly, dishevelled hair, and their heads sticking out of the moon-lit water made them look like dusky mermaids, distinctly visible, as they crawled about searching for pearls on the reefs. They were not mermaids. They were simply Papuan women and girls and men searching for bêche-de-mer in the shallow waters.

“Solo bungo mass!” (“My flower of life!”) whispered the Papuan skipper into her ear. He had approached her silently. She looked up into his face. The pallor of her own face, the despair in her blue eyes as they shone with intense beauty of sorrow, had no effect on the man before her. Indeed, her despair only increased his desire to get her completely in his power.

“Cannot I stay here? Must I go?” she said in a voice the appeal of which cannot be described. The swarthy man was staring shoreward at his native land, a half-wild look in his fiery eyes as he thought of the helplessness of the trembling victim who stood beside him. He only shook his head in reply, then gazed into her eyes in a way that struck terror to her soul. She knew that she must obey. She had no belongings to pack, and so in a few moments she was ready, standing like some helpless condamné awaiting the fall of the guillotine.

It was almost a relief to the girl’s mind to hear the sudden clamouring just over the vessel’s side. And as she looked over she saw dozens of strangely ornamented canoes and outriggers crammed with mop-headed, tattooed savages.

“Sowan! Tiki, soo, Rajah!” shouted the barbarian horde, as the Rajah looked down upon them, bowing grandiloquently in response to their savage salutations. For the Rajah was the one “quite civilised” man of their primitive heathen coastal township, and so looked upon with almighty respect by his fellows. It was a momentous event in the life of the population of the coastal village when the Bird of Paradise came in. The Rajah usually dropped anchor leagues away to the north, near the Bismarck Archipelago. It was there that he usually got the biggest prices for his freightage of trembling captives, destined for the slave markets of German and Dutch New Guinea. But the Rajah on the present occasion was in a mighty hurry to get ashore, so he had decided to take Gabrielle with him and leave his mulatto mate to sail the Bird of Paradise to the next port and dispose of his terrified human cargo.

When Gabrielle arrived under the cover of night on the shores of that barbarian hut city, and saw the savage-looking women and men staring at her, as tattooed ridi-clad chiefs shouted, “Cowan! to mita putih purumpuan! (‘Welcome to the white girl!’) she trembled in her terror, and even felt glad of the Rajah’s presence as they mobbed her and pinched her white flesh deliciously. The population rushed out of their huts by hundreds. Hideous old tattooed chiefs (bare as eggs down to the loins, bone ornaments in their ears) moaned and blew with their blubbery lips as they spotted her whiteness. The deep-bosomed tawny women who stood beneath the sheltering ivory-nut palms by their huts stopped their unintelligible hubbub as the Rajah hurried her past.

“Cowan! The Rajah! The Soo Rajaaah!” they shouted, as they recognised that cultured heathen in civilised attire, the great squire, the lord of the manor in Tumba-Tumba. The news spread like wildfire. “Cowan!” (“Friend!”) gabbled the girls, women and youths, as they rushed out of their small thatched homesteads to see the great Rajah and the beautiful putih purumpuan. The thick-haired half-caste Malayan girls, dancing beneath the festival palms, jingling their leglets and shell-threaded armlets, stopped chanting to see so unusual a sight. They laid their hands in a romantic way on their hearts and sighed out, “O wean soo loo,” as a white girl with wondrous golden hair tossing to the breezes was hurried along a prisoner in the Rajah’s loving grip.

On, on he hurried. The tropic moon cast a weird light over the barbarian world that was framed by distant mountains. Nothing but mighty brooding forest haunted with mystery and uncouth sounds came into view for miles and miles as Gabrielle was hustled along. And still she heard the low chanting salutations of “Cowan le soo!” floating to her ears. Then came the weird sounds of the tribal bone flutes and beating drums, and the sudden hush as she passed beneath the rows of hanging coco-nut-oil lamps of some festival ceremony. Those wild people had often seen the Rajah arrive from his blackbirding schooner with many a trembling victim looking up into his eyes for mercy, but never had they seen such a one as they saw that night. They marvelled at the glory of her eyes, the cataract of dishevelled hair, like the sunset on their mountains off Tumba-Tumba (so they said). Besides, all the previous victims were tawny-hued like themselves and had dark eyes, eyes that shone, delightedly sometimes, to hear the acclamations of admiring chiefs in the slave markets. But the girl before them looked wildly beautiful with some fright that they knew nothing of.

As Gabrielle Everard saw their repulsive, blubbery lips, the yellowish, hot-looking eyes, the animalistic bodies of the huge, pendulous-breasted, over-fed chiefesses, she felt a tremendous pang strike her heart, in the thought that somewhere back in the past she had kinship with them. As she heard the distant drums in the mountains a strange feeling came over her. She even clutched the man’s hand beside her: she half fancied that those beating drums were the drums that she had heard in the bungalow away in Bougainville when the shadow crept into her bedroom.

As they passed under the banyan groves they came to a large group of huts of various shapes and sizes. It was the Rajah’s native village.

“Helaka!” murmured the taubadus (chiefs), and when they saw Gabrielle they looked with surprise and said: “Dimdim Wovou!” (“White foreigner!”).

Gabrielle’s bare feet were bleeding through contact with the sharp shingle by the shore reefs. But that didn’t worry the Rajah, his only response to her appeal that he would go slower was to hurry faster than ever. He crossed the cleared village space and took the girl straight to his domestic tambu temple. “Tepiake!” grunted the taubadas as he passed through the thickly overgrown bamboo stockade. He had now arrived at his parental residence, a kind of palatial heathen hall, where his own people resided and held semi-Malayan fetishes and all that would remind them of their past in the Malay Archipelago. As Gabrielle stood before that big wooden building her heart sank. She was too weary to say much to the man beside her. She hardly noticed the fiendish-looking children about her and the ape-like being who ran out from the palms and danced with glee before her. She trembled as she looked at the Rajah’s flushed face and noticed the change in his manner. She saw a look of command in his eyes, that she had only vaguely felt was there before. His walk had become majestic. The pleading obeisance she had received from him aboard the vessel had disappeared. He behaved like one who had complete authority over all around him and over her also. Her feminine instincts awoke, came to her assistance immediately. She felt that she was utterly alone in that awful haunt of barbarism.

“I’ll die first!” was the secret resolution of her heart. She half hated herself to think she had once had her arms about him and had returned his embrace. He had looked so handsome, so god-like, as he swore by the Christian apostles and Jesus Christ. The tears started to her eyes as she looked at that sinister heathen homestead as it loomed before her by the light of a hundred tiny hanging coco-nut lamps. She thought of her father, the old bungalow in Bougainville and of Hillary.

The sounds of the barbarian drums seemed to make her realise with terrible vividness the almighty simplicity of the apprentice’s love for her. She instinctively felt that, though the stranded apprentice had never mentioned the apostles or Christ’s name, or even God, that he did not do so because God and Christ spoke for him in the great silence of his own actions. And as she remembered these things she stood still, her thoughts far away across the seas. She forgot the presence of the wild, staring people around her. Her spirit leapt into Hillary’s arms, she looked into his eyes and asked him to die with her. The hordes of savages, the pagan huts, the feathery palms and distant moon-lit mountains slowly dissolved, vanishing like the fabric of a dream. She did not hear the voice of the heathen missionary beside her as he spoke in his own tongue to the clamouring hordes, so intense were her thoughts as she dreamed of Hillary and all that she had lost.

Her despair was so bitter that she hardly cared what might happen as, like one awakening from a dream into the light of miserable reality, she mechanically turned her head as Koo Macka spoke to her.

“Solan putih bunga, my Gabri-ar-le,” he muttered. Then he gripped her by the arm and led her under the thatched verandah and into his wooden ancestral halls.

A hideous, baboon-like woman fell on her knees before the Rajah and moaned out: “Solan, soo wa eala!” Then she gazed upon the girl and lifted her claw-like hands as though in approval. It was Macka’s old mother. Then a ferocious-looking half-caste (Malayo Papuan) mop-headed old man rose from his stinking squatting-mat, hobbled forward and stared keenly at the girl as she stood beneath the tiny hanging lamps. He made hideous grimaces as he inspected her, touched her smooth arms, smelt her golden hair, put his dirty fingers between the folds of her torn blue blouse and stared at the whiteness revealed to his eyes through the divided material. And all the time that he gazed his mouth emitted betel-nut juice that dropped down on to his tattooed, hairy breast.

“Le putih purumpuan bunga!” (“O flower of beautiful whiteness!”) he groaned out in his Malayan lingo. Then he too turned to Macka, and by his gesticulations revealed the enormous pride he felt that the Rajah should return to the palatial homestead with so wonderful a prize. The old Malayan chieftain was the Rajah’s esteemed bapa (father). Though he was old and wrinkled, it was evident that he too had been handsome in his day. From that old bapa Macka had inherited the indescribable sensualism that had placed Gabrielle in her awful position.

“Cowan, wanoo, wanoo wooloo!” he seemed to shout, as he gazed with pride on his hopeful son. Even the Rajah recognised the results of his own virtues and swelled his chest, put his arms half up and gaped to hide the embarrassment of an invisible blush. And why shouldn’t old bapa be proud of his son? Had he not listened to the pleadings of the German missionary at Astrolabe, who had come over from the isles of the Bismarck Archipelago?

“O great bapa,” said the missionary, “take thee this little Macka, this small son of thine, teach unto him the Word of God, rear him up in the path of righteousness, so that he may follow the divine calling and teach thy people the beauty of the Western creed!”

And old bapa, listening to that good German missionary’s advice, took his hand and said: “O white papalagi from over the moan ali (seas) I have listened. And I say unto thee, that it shall be as thy godly words have said.” Then immediately he called his son, little Macka, from his idol worship in the tambu temple, and, laying his tawny hand on the boy’s head, said: “O my son, the Fates have willed on thy behalf that thou shalt go hence across the big waters to Honolulu and be educated like unto a noble white man. For, I say, it beseemeth good that thou shalt grow up and be one good missionary, so that thou mayst guide thy people in the path of the new righteousness.”

So spake proud old bapa, who truly had his son’s interest deep in his heart. The result was that soon after the German tramp steamer Lubeck sailed from Aru, up the coast, taking the boy Macka across the seas to Honolulu. And as the boy’s years increased the missionaries marvelled that so bright a youth had come amongst them, for he was clever and became as one of them in learning. Soon Macka became head of one of the biggest missionary classes at K—— O——. But alas! with the development of manhood the old instincts, the passions developed in his race through centuries of tropical desire, burst into flame. They were not to be overthrown by the sad aspirations of a few old missionaries at Honolulu. Those kind, well-meaning men had endeavoured to change the spots on the leopard’s back—in vain! For what was the inevitable result of their life-long pilgrimage away from their native lands? This—there stood Macka once more, after all those years, back in his native village, the personification of the full-blooded heathen attired in Western garb, with a white girl trembling beside him, looking first into the eyes of the son, then into the eyes of the father. And still the drums beat on. And still far away over the seas old Pa Everard wailed through his delirium, “My Gabby! My Gabby!” till the asylum-keepers at Ysabel soothed his rum-stricken nerves.

“Ah! ah! koola, Cowan! my faithful son! Thou art indeed the joy of old bapa’s soul!” And as the old father’s eyes filled with tears of pride, and the hideous, bloated mother waved her skinny arms with joy, the Rajah bowed. For the Rajah was a good and faithful son, and had repaid his parents well from the proceeds of his exertions in the dangerous slave traffic.

The civilised blackbirding skipper well knew that the girl was now utterly in his power. He was in no hurry to further his wishes. Indeed he was the first to suggest to his old bapa that Gabrielle should stay with them till the final arrangements could be made that would chime in with his secret desires.

So Gabrielle Everard actually found herself living in the squalor of a Malayo-Papuan homestead on the coast of New Guinea. She was down with fever for the first three days. Then the Rajah came into her thickly matted chamber (mats denoted that the visitor was an honoured guest) and wailed forth his hypocritical vows.

He sobbed to see her lying ill. He said that if anything should happen to her he would fade to a shadow and die. Then he rubbed his eyes with his big coat-sleeve, and opened a little bottle of medicine. The foolish girl, sick and weak, felt that perhaps the man had a heart after all—she drank! Then he whispered soft words into her ears, but she did not listen.

“Come on, putih bunga!” said he. She rose like one in a dream, and he led her away to the great tambu temple that stood right opposite Macka’s ancestral halls. It was a wooden building, sheltered by enormous mahogany-trees.

Only the devil himself could adequately describe the deeper meanings of the ritual of the tambu houses in New Guinea.

The tambu house in which Gabrielle found herself was a low-roofed apartment about forty feet long and thirty wide, not more than twelve feet in height. Its rows of windows consisted of small circles cut in the wooden walls, something after the style of port-holes in a ship. It was lit by the artificial glimmer of coconut-oil hanging lamps, which seemed only to add to its shadowy mystery. These innumerable oil lamps, hanging from beams over the wide pae pae (stage platform), were for the prime purpose of revealing the attractions of the half-caste girls who regularly performed at the tambu fetishes. These girls were mostly Polynesians, Arafuras, Bugis, Dyaks and a bastard type of Chinese and Melanesian, mostly girls who had been brought to the coast of New Guinea by the blackbirding ships when they had been children. Such was the mixed group of feminine frailty that was performing and dancing when Gabrielle entered the tambu temple. The stage walls were richly decorated with scarlet and white hibiscus blossom that hung on woven threads. The floors were thickly covered with ornamental matting. On the walls hung the revered fetish ceremonial implements and sacred taboo remnants, such as—skulls, old men’s beards, dead maidens’ hair, threaded human teeth and all that was weirdly suggestive of death and orgyism. The front of the wide stage was adorned by the hideous fetish idols. The middle figure was about eight feet high, had four arms, and seemed to be carved out of one solid lump of wood. It had one mighty yellow tooth issuing from the carven mouth, which leered in an everlasting grin that did not seem out of place when the grotesque dances were in full swing. A serpent-like thing was twined about its wooden arms and again round the waists of the two somewhat smaller images that stood one on each side of it. A look of agony was wonderfully expressed by the swollen veins on the chest, arms and forehead, as the fanged mouth of the strong embracing reptile gripped the right ear of that symbolical piece of New Guinea sculptural art. It represented some tragic legendary Malayan episode; indeed it was a kind of Laocoon of heathen-land; but instead of being clothed with those symbols of beauty that exalt a lump of carven insensate wood to a higher state, it was clothed with symbols of ugliness and lust. And the barbarian sculptor who had achieved this revolting but still artistic result had fashioned the idol on the left-hand side with feminine attributes that were physically expressed from the full wooden lips down to the twisted ivory-nailed toes of the delicate feet. Notwithstanding the allegorical hint of sexuality in the huge middle figure (its hideous character was intensified by Nature’s artless handiwork, for fat-bodied green palm worms crawled in and out of its stretched wooden lips), it was a truly wonderful bit of work; it stood there telling with an indisputable voice how strong a force man’s passions often are.

Even the Rajah had the grace to stand between Gabrielle and that monstrous wooden trio as they passed them by. The Rajah was getting wary. A look in Gabrielle’s eyes at times had told him that a fire smouldered in her soul. And once while on board his schooner she had lifted his set of crockery presented to him by the Astrolabe German Missionary Society (together with an illuminated address) and smashed them to atoms at his feet, calling him such names as he deserved. As for the tambu dancers who stood by the idols in a semi-nude state, armlets and leglets and threaded shells jingling on their moving limbs, they were as wonderful in their way as the South Sea Laocoon. For in some unexplainable way they did the very things that the idol so hideously expressed; yet they did not inspire an observer with that artistic admiration and feeling of terror which the idol inspired. Had it not been for the love of life that burns so fiercely in youth and her newly awakened love for Hillary—for Gabrielle still believed that he would cross her path again—she would have snatched up one of the barbarian scimitars that lay by the floor-mats of that hellish abode and dramatically ended her existence.

Koo Macka had fiercely gripped her by the arm as he led her along the centre transept. The rich scents that came from the abundant wreaths of exotic flowers on the walls and in calabashes on the floor made Gabrielle feel sick. A large, black-winged cockatoo, with its right foot chained to a small pedestal on which it stood, looked sideways at Gabrielle and started to yell its discordant language in a most vicious way as it snapped its big curved beak. It was evidently some sacred tambu bird, for the high priest gazed in horror as the bird flapped its wings, and glanced up and down at Gabrielle’s white face and golden-bronze tresses that tumbled over her shoulders.

“Shut up!” yelled the Rajah. In a moment the bird closed its wings and seemed subdued. This obedience of the bird to the will of the Rajah made a great impression among the superstitious throng. The chanting maids and tambu chiefesses lifted their thick-lipped faces and shouted: “Cowan! Lao Rajahah! a loca Laki, putih bunga bini!” (“The Rajah has brought unto his people a beautiful flower-like wife!”)

Hideous stout old cannibals lifted coco-nut goblets to their blubbery lips and forcibly expressed by hideous winks and squints their inward thoughts about the white girl’s beauty.

It must indeed have been a novel sight to see that bronze-golden-haired girl led towards the festival altars by their mighty Rajah Koo Macka. As to what the girl herself was thinking, she was utterly ignorant of the cause of the hubbub and the barbarian cheering around her. The liquor that had been forced between her lips had quite dazed her brain. As Macka’s old bapa came forward from the front row of the squatting audience and led the tambu dancers up to the stage, Gabrielle only stared as one stares on a strange scene in a dream. She didn’t move a muscle as rows of mop-headed Papuan, Malayan and half-caste girls stood in a row and then threw their limbs about till the treduca shells made music that harmonised with the lewdness displayed before her happily unconscious eyes.

It was only when the Rajah stepped forward, attired in full civilised costume that proclaimed him a member of New Guinea Rajahship, that the girl began to tremble. The large scarlet waist-sash, the magnificent, coiled-up turban and the robe that fell to his feet only made him appear the more terrifying to her eyes.

In a moment he had seized her by the wrist. And in her helpless terror she did all that he demanded of her—lifted her arms to the roof, chanted and sang a song with strange words in a strange tongue. Just by her side sat a raving old tiki-priest; he was the finest bit of hideousness extant; even the big wooden idol before which he repeatedly prostrated himself had pleasant features compared to that living representative of the tambu temple creed.

Directly he had finished his weird incantations and hollow-voiced acclamations he made the tribal sign to the handsome Rajah, who thereupon immediately stooped and kissed Gabrielle, first on the mouth, then on her feet, as he fell prone before her. Then he rose, looked into her eyes and began to chant. To his astonishment the girl looked up at him, a half smile on her sad face as she swayed her flower-bedecked form and began to swerve with inimitable grace to the tum-tum of the barbarian orchestra. She lifted her hands to the wooden ceiling, softly chanting an old Malayan melody that neither they nor she had ever heard before. The music of her voice seemed to hold the wild audience spellbound. And when the girl put forth her hands and responded in a wonderful way to the mystical passes of the Rajah’s small, womanish hands, the whole motley crew waved their dusky arms in delight. The dancing maidens threw their limbs in envious rapture, and tried in vain to imitate the rhythmical grace of Gabrielle’s trance-like movements. For all their wild acts, and the jingle of their brass and bone leglets and armlets as they made their wretched limb-tossings, their performance was as nothing compared to the white girl’s wondrous grace.

As Gabrielle stopped and stared at the dusky horde of raised faces and tossing limbs beneath rows of hanging lamps, she seemed to awaken from her trance-like state. She raised her hands and gave a cry. The whole audience, who thought that cry was an exclamation expressing some ecstasy of the moment, renewed their volleys of applause. Only the Rajah knew the truth, the meaning of that cry. He hurried forward, gripped the girl’s hand, breathed hotly in her face and murmured, “Come, Bini, mine! Wife!” Then the Rajah gave a start. Above the guttural cries of the tambu marriage assembly one voice had begun to ring out shrill and clear. It was the voice of Maroshe, the Rajah’s long-cast-off tribal wife. She had been a beautiful Koiari maid when the Rajah, who was ten years her senior, had first wooed her. But her feminine attractions had been cruelly brief. The girls of the Papuan races leap into full-blown womanhood at fourteen, and at twenty-five, sometimes earlier, have apparently reached old age, their brows and cheeks being seared with wrinkles. But Maroshe still had a remnant of the old fire gleaming in her fine eyes. But it was a fire that boded no good for the amorous Macka as she stood amidst the motley audience and yelled: “Tao se cowana tumbi!” (May the gods send thee twins!)

Macka heard that voice. It was the one voice on earth that could echo into the depths of his soul and awaken a tinge of remorse in him. Indeed, as he gripped Gabrielle’s wrist he looked against his will across the tiers of uplifted dusky faces till his eyes met the magnetic glance of the scorned Maroshe. Again she held her hand mockingly aloft, and once more yelled: “Tao se cowana tumbi!” The tambu maidens ceased dancing, and stood with fingers to lips beneath the rows of hanging lamps. They knew Maroshe, and also knew that something in her voice revealed the fact that, after all, she still retained her old love for the Rajah. The huge wooden idol, its big eyes agog, was the only face that did not express the horror that seemed to transfix every heathen countenance.

Suddenly Maroshe waved her skinny hand thrice. Then at the sight of her late husband standing there with a new bride, and a white girl to boot, she lowered her wrinkled but still half-beautiful face and disappeared. Macka gave a sigh of relief to see her go.

Suddenly the audience seemed to be awakened from their horrified stupor. “Bang! To woomb!” It was the sound of a monstrous heathen drum banged twice only, somewhere in a mountain village.

Once more the Rajah gripped Gabrielle by the wrist. “Come, my pretty putih bunga!”

According to the ceremonial rites of the creeds of Tumba-Tumba, Gabrielle Everard was now Macka’s wife. That orgy of lust, toddy and heathen seraglio chanting and dances was a genuine old-time New Guinea marriage ceremony.

Gabrielle hardly realised all that it meant for her. She placed her hand to her brow and stared as though she gazed on some strange sight afar off. The village priests and darah tiki-tiki enchanters and enchantresses beat their skinny breasts to show their appreciation of the bride’s beauty. Such an honour had never been theirs before; for had they not been the means of binding a beautiful white maid in marriage bonds to one of their own race.

Directly the Rajah got Gabrielle outside the tambu house he pressed hot kisses on her face. She struggled in that embrace. Her cries brought hordes of dusky, imp-like girls and mop-headed youths on to the scene. He desisted in his matrimonial advances. In a moment he had decided to take her to his old bapa.

As Gabrielle once more prepared to enter the Rajah’s homestead, old bapa, and his hideous, baboon-like wife, rushed forth from the palms just behind, and threw wedding gifts of a suggestive nature upon the trembling girl. After they had been in the presence of old bapa for some little time, the Rajah altered his mind, and throwing his body on the sacred mats of his father’s home expressed a wish to leave the parental roof and take his bride up to his own private establishment in the mountains (two miles off), a place where he had taken so many victims who had fallen under the lure of his university education and the glory of the Christian apostles.

As the Rajah once more went forth, taking his pretty putih bini up the little village track that led under the feathery palms and ivory-nut trees, he gazed upon Gabrielle’s form as only Macka the ex-missionary could gaze. At last they arrived outside a large wooden building (made of thick, rough-hewn mahogany logs) situated on the lower slopes of the Tomba-Tomba Mountains.

The Rajah at once took Gabrielle within. Heaven only knows what the white girl went through before the Rajah realised that it was no brown woman he had in his vile power. There had been considerable trouble before he was finally vanquished and sent about his business; he had done his best before leaving to become friendly with the girl again. He knew by her desperate act in jumping overboard on the Bird of Paradise that she was quite likely to attempt to take her life again. The look in her eyes spoke volumes to him. He told off two of the old ki-ki chiefs, ordering them to keep strict watch over that wooden building where she was imprisoned. So the two barbarian sentinels grunted and smoked by the door and Gabrielle lay down on the thick sleeping mats and tried to rest.

On the second night the Rajah once more crept into her chamber. He fell on his knees. He swore she was his beloved spouse in the eyes of God and the heathen apostles of his own heathen land. He began chanting and making weird passes, swearing all the while that the idols of the tambu temple had been placed in the glow of the moonbeams and had spoken.

“They have teller me to come to thee. They say that you must giver yourself up to me and to my gods. You understand?”

Gabrielle looked in wonder at the man as he fell at her feet, groaning and wailing. He even wept. She saw the tears in his eyes.

“Gabri-e-arle. I lover th-ee. Thou art my own, my putih bunga,” he repeated over and over again. He pressed hot kisses on her face. But the girl struggled and overcame him. Then he diverted her attention and swiftly placed his old ki-ki drugs in her water goblet. Drugging was, and is, the highest art in New Guinea, and so he had little fear of the results not being according to his requirements. Then he went away. He had not been gone an hour before Gabrielle was startled by hearing the sound of jabbering outside the tambu door. She could distinctly hear a pleading voice, as though some native woman wailed and talked to the sentinels. Then the silence returned, but to her surprise the tappa curtains of her little chamber were suddenly thrown aside, and a strange-looking native woman stood before her. It was Maroshe, the late divorced! She held no stiletto in her hand. No malignant gleam of hatred shone in her eyes; only a weary look of sorrow as she stood before Gabrielle. The unexpected visitor fell on her knees and at once began to chant and mumble mysteriously, as though she thought Gabrielle understood all the magic of her land.

Gabrielle noticed the note of appeal in her voice. She at once took heart and bade her rise.

“What’s the matter? What you want?” said Gabrielle, as she tried to speak to the wailing woman in pidgin-English and made many gesticulations. At last the white girl seemed to understand.

It was wonderful how swiftly the souls of two women of different races fathomed each other’s secrets, peered into each other’s eyes and read all that they wanted to read.

Gabrielle’s sorrow had probably brought to the fore the old instincts with which Nature originally endowed the human races so that they might scent danger before it was actually upon them.

Maroshe it seemed could speak a little pidgin-English, and so the two women were able before long to understand the exact position of things. Then the native girl, for she was not much more than a girl, kissed Gabrielle’s hands, fell prone and touched her feet in grovelling subjection. Tears came into Gabrielle’s eyes as she realised the woman’s sorrow and observed the swift glance of delight in her eyes as she heard that she, the white girl, was a most unwilling prisoner in the tambu marriage chamber. “I comer gain. Me goer now, nicer, whi ladi. You no putih bunga. Ah!” she said.

Before Gabrielle had realised that the woman was going, Maroshe had slipped out of the door. But she came again, and under circumstances that Gabrielle never cared to recall.

The next night the Rajah returned again to the solitary building by the mountains of Tomba-Tomba. He sent his chieftain sentinels away to their huts. He stooped his turbaned head as he entered the low doorway, and approached the girl with the old fascinating look in his fiery eyes. With the almighty deceit of his race he told her he had relented, and would take her back to Bougainville. He made her heart leap with hidden delight as he talked. His voice seemed tender as a woman’s as he poured forth his semi-Mohammedanistic vers libre. Again he knelt before her, as a bigot heathen might kneel before an idol, and stared into her blue, frightened eyes.

Gabrielle, as though in a trance, felt his caressing hands; they seemed shadow hands as his burning words crept into her ears. She heard the winds sigh outside in the mountain palms. She and he were alone.

“Gabri-ar-le! thou art more than life itself; the moon, the stars, thou art; and like unto the stars shall our children be!” he murmured in Biblical tones as he returned to the lingo of the old mission-room. Only the chantings of the cicalas in the ivory-nut palms disturbed the silence. Gabrielle felt the strength of those strong hands, the warm breath of those terrible lips. A mist came before her eyes; she heard the wild tribal drums beating across the centuries! The Papuan’s voice sounded far off; a shadowy figure had whipped across the rush-matted floor as the lamps burnt dimly with a magic light. And still the drums were beating as though in impatient haste across the centuries. And still her soul struggled as she fearfully watched for that which her eyes had surely seen; then, once again, the tappa curtains that separated her chamber from the door that led straight to the jungle outside seemed to divide softly. She could not scream as that terrible thing peeped between the divided curtains, its burning eyes staring upon her. Its beautiful woman’s head was faintly visible. The eyes gleamed with rapture as the enchantress from the past stared appealingly, beckoned to the white girl, nodded her dusky head and besought Gabrielle to do her bidding! Gabrielle stared wildly round. Only she and the terrible enchantress faced one another whichever way her eyes turned. She still peeped beneath the uplifted curtains—now she had begun to crawl on her belly like unto a serpent. Tears were in the shadow woman’s eyes! And still Gabrielle heard the drums beating across the mountains, coming across the silent hills of sleep. And still the struggle went on. The phantom woman crawled slowly beneath the tappa curtain as the white girl watched. She noticed the beauty of the smooth, oily, terra-cotta-hued limbs, the curved, sensuous thighs. At last the visitant lifted her beautiful shadowy head, and began slowly to rise to her feet as the tappa curtain fell softly. She had entered Gabrielle’s chamber! A shadow fell across the girl’s pallid, terror-stricken face, darkening her eyes. She groped in terrible blindness, just for a moment, then pushed it from her. She recognised the terrible presence and recalled in a flash how she had mastered it when it had come to her in the dead of night in her bedroom, at her old home in Bougainville. She fell on her knees and prayed. She wrestled with the evil presence in an indescribable agony of spirit. And then, quite suddenly, the enchantress who had crept out of the jungle of the past gave a wail—and vanished.

Gabrielle stared round her. The perspiration was dropping from her brow; she was trembling from head to foot. She was alone! The Rajah, too, had seen that look in her eyes and had disappeared. In a moment she had recovered her senses. She rushed into the little off-room where she slept, and in two seconds was hastily piling up the mahogany boxes and huge native clubs against the door, so that none could enter without her knowledge. Then she lay on her rush-matted bed and thanked God.

For now she realised instinctively, with a force amounting to certainty, that never again would she be haunted by this shadow woman—her dark ancestress from the past. Gabrielle knew that that struggle in the tambu house had meant for her a complete spiritual victory. The evil spirit had been exorcised.

Perhaps also it meant something more. Perhaps it symbolised a physical triumph over Rajah Macka and his heathen desires. Strange as it may seem, she no longer felt the same fear of him which had possessed her on board the ship. She was trying to persuade herself that, after all, he was only a grotesque heathen, eaten up with his own conceit. And these thoughts, or something like them, were stirring in her mind when she finally fell asleep.

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.

*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK GABRIELLE OF THE LAGOON ***