“I never had a wink of sleep that night. This morning I could not look Waylao in the eyes. When no one was looking, she took my hand and smiled in such a way that I knew that she understood my feelings. Ah me! I shall never make a good missionary. Waylao’s look and her manner convinces me that she is better than I am. Confession is good for the soul. I ought to be better than I was last night, for I have confessed the truth—had sinful thoughts, and the half-caste girl has made me a better youth. Wish I wasn’t so passionate a fellow.
“Sunday, September.—Sang hymns to-day in the cuddy. Skipper’s very religious on Sunday. I told Waylao all about England to-day, and became quite sentimental. I told her of the splendour of the woods—how May came and quickened the fields to green sprouting grass; how the wild hedgerows budded forth their beauty—like some poetic sorrow of the old sunsets—bleeding forth pale, anæmic blossoms, flowers that scented the airs with old memories. I told her of the blackbird singing its overture to the sunrise. I said: ‘Ah, Waylao, I long to hear the blackbird again, telling me that God, its Creator, too, has some divine memory of the voice of a goddess who sang to Him ere His first heaven was shattered into the chaos of all the stars.’
“While I spoke to Waylao night fell. I could only hear the throb of the engines as we slid across the sea. As the girl stared up at me in the dusk, I fancied that we two sailed across strange seas, quite alone, and there was no one else in the world. A shooting star slid across the sky, arched and faded like some signal thrown out of a door in heaven. Waylao trembled like a leaf as she saw that light in the sky; she said that it was a terrible sign. I tried to cheer her up, saying that she must not believe the old legends that her mother told her, that a shooting star did not mean anything awful, that no one was to die through its fall, that most probably it was a signal to the infinite that some mortal had just spoken the truth.
“That star, nevertheless, made me wonder as I looked up at the heavens. I couldn’t help thinking of God. The vastness of creation, the wonder of the stars seemed so terrific that a thrill went down my backbone. How vast God must be. He who can hold creation with its myriads of worlds in the hollow of His hand. Where did God come from? This shows that we lack several senses. I suppose that the tropic bird that sailed through the dusk over the ship, and looked at us with its beautiful wild eyes, wondered where our ship came from. Even if that bird had intellect, would it ever dream of the primeval forest, the giant pines, how they fell before the axe; and were shaped into masts; of the shipbuilders; of mighty furnaces smelting the ores from the old hills; of the toil of men, and the strikes for higher wages; the happy homes in the villages kept up by the money that the shipbuilding brought to them; of the village theatre and the happy sprees as the wives took the children out full of laughter, to come home again and romp in their cots about it all; of the brass plate on the coffin telling the man’s name who fell down the hold of the ship and was killed the day it was launched, and of the wonders of the voyages? Stop! Good heavens! I could go on like this for ever. Why, the history of a box of matches would fill all the paper on earth with all-absorbing wonders. It only shows that the mystery of God is only wonderful to us because we lack the sense to fathom the mystery. Anyway, I’ll believe in God till I die. I used to believe in a creed, but I think it best to believe in God.
“I suppose I’m talking like this because I’ve been thinking of Pauline. Waylao has been telling me to-day how she and Pauline sat in the forest by moonlight and sang old heathen songs together, songs that were supposed to make the man who would love them poke his head out of the waters of the lagoon that they watched. Waylao hummed the songs to me. I don’t know why, but the look in her fine eyes made me feel intensely unhappy. I’m a most passionate fellow at times. I have strange moods, moods that make me feel very tender towards women and men. I suppose it’s a kind of insanity. I’ve taken a liking to the funniest old men and women imaginable. Once my fancy was for an old ex-convict: he was about eighty years of age, swore fearfully, cursed God, never washed himself, woke up in the middle of the night and roared forth atheistical songs, opened his mouth wide and hissed ‘He! He! He!’ like a fiend, as he mentioned the Deity—and yet when I was down with fever he waited on me as though I were his child. Not even my dear mother could have outvied the tenderness of that villainous scoundrel. I recall to mind how I met a little native girl in Samoa. She was only six years of age, curly-haired, and had brown, beautiful baby eyes. I never saw such a pretty rosebud mouth, or retroussé nose. I played the violin, and she sang like a bird. We even went off busking together. When I went away she threw her arms about me and looked into my face like a woman of twenty. That little girl’s face haunted me for days; I even counted up how old I’d be when she was twenty, thinking that I could come back to the South Seas and marry her.
“I tell these things to show one that I am no ordinary being. I hope some day to be able to publish this complete diary of my travels. Who knows, men may read it and try to diagnose my temperament.”
(Page missing here in my diary.) I must reproduce the next entry:
“Sunday Night.—Waylao not well; gone to bed early. Played the violin for two hours; skipper does not like my practice. I must admit it’s not pleasant, for I’m practising difficult technical studies. I’ve got hopes of becoming a great violinist; I feel ambitious, and hope to be a kind of Paganini some day. I often feel that I’m something special in the way of Man, and dream of my coming greatness. This egotism of mine makes me supremely happy. Sometimes I see, in my imagination, the great hoarding bills throughout the cities of the world announcing that ‘I AM COMING!’ I’ve gone so far as to imagine that the Queen commanded my presence at Buckingham Palace. I’ve been knighted—in dreams. I’ve heard the royal voice exclaim ‘Arise, Sir—(incognito)—Sir Shadow.’[[5]] I nearly revealed my name, my identity then. Phew! Supposing I had done so, what would haughty old Uncle Jack and prim, aristocratic old Aunt Mally say to hear that I had published a diary telling of such things—the whole truth out at last—deliberately published a public record telling how So-and-so’s youngest son had sailed the Southern Seas with a beautiful half-caste girl—and a girl LIKE THAT, too? They’d raise their hands with horror, shocked, disgraced, broken with the thought of ‘What will They say?’ Who the devil cares for They?”
[5]. The author had intended to publish this book anonymously and has left the manuscript as originally written.
I see by the next entry in my diary that I gave the skipper several violin lessons. Here are the entries: