It wanted deeper duplicity, a greater actor than I, to disguise my interest in that unknown stowaway girl, as I drew out all I could from that unsophisticated sailorman.
Suddenly he looked at me steadily; then, giving me a confidential, half-serious wink, he said:
“Trust me for keeping mum—you knows more about that gal than I do! Eh, mate?”
“Well, you’re right there, but it’s not exactly as you may think. I, like you, met her at sea as a stowaway.”
Saying this, I at once proceeded to tell him how we had discovered Waylao on the Sea Swallow.
He looked almost incredulously at me as I told him as much as I wished to tell; but my manner eventually quite convinced him.
It was then I heard that when Waylao had arrived at Samoa the boatswain had slipped her ashore and left her in the care of two natives that he knew well. Samoans they were, Mr and Mrs Matafa.
One can hunt the world over and not find better-hearted men than real sailormen. I learnt that the boatswain had made a collection amongst the crew for the benefit of the homeless castaway. Indeed they had done all in their power to cheer her up and alleviate her distress and stop the tears that came when she discovered that the schooner was not going on to the Marquesas. They had assured Waylao that many boats left Apia Harbour bound for Hivaoa and Nuka Hiva.
The old Samoan couple, the Matafas, had welcomed Waylao with open arms. It so happened that they had lost a daughter who, had she lived, would have been about Waylao’s age. The old boatswain told me that the superstitious natives looked at the girl with astonishment in their eyes, and wailed: “Ah, ’tis her, our lost child, our beautiful daughter; the great gods have sent this wonderfully beautiful girl across the seas to us.” Then they had both fallen on their knees and thanked the great god Pulutu. Ah! Matafas, you dear old blessed heathens of the South, I thank the great God of this Infinite Universe of Inscrutable Wonder that you did not turn out like the sweet, Christian Pinks—the pious old humbugs of Suva township.
I called on the Matafas long after my first visit, just as I had called on the old hag Pink. But I did not hurt the old heathen chief’s heart, or his dear wife’s. What did I do? Ah, well I remember the look on their faces as I said that the great heathen gods watched over them; and she, the strange girl who had crept out of the seas to their arms, awaited their coming to the halls of shadow-land. It was then that they wailed like two children, laid their sinful heathen heads on the bench of their little parlour and wept. But I must not go ahead of all that I have set out to tell.