“We’re in for it now,” said I.
O’Hara shook his fist and picked up a large stone. A glorious feeling of exultation thrilled me at the thought of the coming race for life. It was just in my line, whereas creeping on my hands and knees down a corridor was dead against the grain.
Fae Fae gave a faint cry. It roused us. Simultaneously we dashed away into the depths of the breadfruits and coco-palms. What a sight!—Fae Fae, bare-footed, encumbered only by her pretty native mumu (chemise) of scanty width, raced ahead, as O’Hara and I, our arms held high in racing attitude, puffed on behind!
“Follow her, pal; she knows the way,” murmured O’Hara, as Fae Fae’s dusky flying heels glittered in the moonlight about twelve yards ahead of us! Though I admired that impulsive Irish comrade of mine, I inwardly thought what an ass he was; for, though our pursuers were hard on our heels, I distinctly heard him chuckling to himself, making ecstatic remarks about Fae Fae’s swaying figure as she fled down the forest track! I turned my head to see how it went with the enemy. I was extremely disconcerted at observing them coming up over the ridge of the rising ground, quite distinct in the brilliant moonlight. A giant of a fellow was gaining ground, was far ahead of the other pursuers.
“Wait!” I shouted in O’Hara’s ear. “We must frighten them somehow.” I knew, well enough, that we were in the wrong, that we could be legally charged with a serious, very serious offence. I felt some sad, prophetic pain of a club falling on my romantic skull and my head tumbling into the official guillotine basket. This sudden visualizing freak of my imagination was made the more vivid through my seeing Fae Fae racing along the track like some frightened child (she was little more than a child in mind), as I lumbered on behind her, clutching her delicate trousseau under my arm. Indeed I felt the guiltiest of the three. Fae Fae was a child of the forest; O’Hara was another child, since he was madly in love; while I?—well, instead of giving wise counsel, I was there, an accessory before and after the fact, and with the maid’s scanty wardrobe under my arm! Preposterous!
“Go on; never mind me,” said I, when O’Hara suddenly stopped dead short. There, on the track, I held up my revolver and fired over the head of the mop-headed savage who was a hundred yards ahead of the others. They slowed down. I saw the leader wave his hand, and heard him yell out some words in his native lingo, something that ended with the words “Fae Fae!”
On hearing that name, O’Hara gasped out:
“Why, it’s him, that damned Tautoa, who wants to marry my Faey!”
It was with immense relief that I noticed that the pursuers had slowed down and were apparently frightened at discovering that I was armed. We couldn’t outrun Fae Fae. O’Hara and I had all we could do to catch up to her as she still raced on, speeding round the curves of the forest track. Indeed at times we could not see her at all, knowing that she preceded us only because of the tiny, smoke-like clouds of dust that we raced through, the diamond-like powder that her bare, flying feet stirred and left behind as she raced along the track. Sometimes the path wound into the full light of the moon; it was then that we sighted Fae Fae’s flying figure and floating hair as we thundered along behind her. I am sure the scene must have looked like some burlesque or the rehearsal for a cinematograph picture. As we passed the deep lagoons by the shore, weird shadows whipped across the imaged, broken moons that were shining in the still, glassy depths! For, as the fireflies danced in the leafy bamboo glooms, I saw Fae Fae’s image, with flying hair, race across the lagoon’s surface to the right of us, though she, herself, had passed round the bend and was quite out of sight! To the southward stretched, for miles and miles, the palm-clad slopes. It seemed as if we were racing across a vast landscape oilpainting! To the north-west rose the pinnacled range of La Diadème. We had reached the Broome Road. As we raced across it we just missed a crowd of hurrying Chinamen who worked in the cool of night in the plantations of vanilla, coffee, sugar-cane, and orange groves.
“Hon kong ching chi chow kow!” yelled a straggler, as his pig-tail tossed up, and he fell sprawling in the dust.