They told me how they had rushed about like two demented people, searching far and wide for the girl.
“Tell me more,” said I, as the old chiefess wiped her eyes and wailed.
“Ah! white mans, she always crying and saying that she want to go back across the seas to her peoples. We both much kind to her and say: ‘You stop here and belonger to the great Matafas. We love you because you like our beautiful daughter who die long ago. Perhaps you her, come back?’”
So mournfully rambled on the native woman as she told me over and over again all they had said to Waylao in their pleadings that she might stop with them and become as a daughter.
While all this gabbling was in progress, Tamafanga lifted his eyes to the roof of the hut and sighed. I gazed at him. He was a handsome youth, and by all his actions and impulsive remarks it was easy to see how his heart was where Waylao was concerned.
I see by my diary that I stopped at the Matafas’ for nearly three months before I got a ship again. In that period I learnt almost everything that was to be known about the missing castaway.
It appeared that in the short time that Waylao had lived with the Matafas she had become known to all their friends and many of the village folk near by. By degrees I learnt that Waylao had been looked upon by the native girls and youths as some beautiful spirit girl from the Langi of Polotu (Samoan Elysium). For though the young natives were all Christianised, they still had great faith in their beautiful poetic mythology, and were extremely superstitious. Nor is it to be wondered at, when people of the civilised cities believe in fortune-telling, spiritualistic séances and Old Moore’s Almanack!
Tamafanga and I became great friends. By night, when the old Matafas were snoring in the next compartment, we would sit together smoking. It was then that I discovered that Tamafanga was never tired of talking of the beautiful stranger—Waylao.
He told me how she would sit by the Matafas’ hut door and sing her native songs as she watched the sunset far away at sea. While Waylao sang and the old Matafas listened with joy, native girls and handsome youths would creep out from the shadow of the forest bamboos and coco-palms to gaze on the lovely stranger.
“See how beautiful she is! It is only a goddess that could have so beautiful a skin—that is neither white nor brown as our own. Besides, who but a daughter of the great god Tangaloa could sing so beautifully?”