I lead a Gaff-house Orchestra—News of Waylao—The Matafas—Tamafanga’s Love Songs—My Sacred Gift to my Host and Hostess—I sail with Tamafanga for Nuka Hiva—The Storm—The End of Tamafanga’s Quest—Celestial Protection for Bugs
AFTER the Knut and his camera left me I became slightly depressed.
I see by the entry in my diary of that date that I had just got five shillings in my exchequer when I decided to leave Suva.
Other entries show that I made several efforts to trace Waylao, also that it was necessary to fall back on my musical accomplishments in order to exist on something more appetising than coco-nuts. There’s nothing like an empty stomach to make a man play the violin in public. The romance and glory of Southern Seas are apt to fade away before the grey dawn of cold hunger. I vividly recall the engagements that I secured, and the white barbarian ladies as they lifted their delicate mumus. It is true enough that those ridis reached to their ankles; but I soon sickened of the amorous flutterings of those diaphanous, gaudy robes as the figures they swathed whirled and swished beneath the lamplit halls of that Suva gaff-house.
I half made up my mind to go back to England and settle down.
Why roam the world? Why seek further for my missing comrade? What could I do if I discovered her? I could not alter things or change her evil destiny. Such were my reflections as I stuck to my job, and led the scratch orchestra in that gaff-house after roaming the world in search of fame and fortune.
I thought of the sunless, songless skies of England. I pictured my home-coming and the sight on the faces of my family on the wharf, when I, the prodigal son, returned from wanderings in distant lands to retrieve the family’s fortunes. I had many misgivings as to the reception of myself and my worldly goods, which make the show in rhyme as follows:—
Oh! hear of my dreams of long ago, when I seized the splendid chance,
When I sailed across the homeless seas for the isles of dim romance!
Away to the lands of far-away, to the dim great Make-believe: