As I strolled along the silent track by the shore, my steps instinctively strayed in the direction of the old hulk, and ere long I stood on that friendly derelict—alone. My heart was heavy with the silence that had greeted me wherever I sought the sweet music of the voices of comradeship. As I stood beneath the broken masts, and stared on the old scenes, the changelessness of Nature’s face oppressed me.
The same stars shone over the mountains, the old figurehead still stretched its hands to the dim western constellations and those far-off worlds seemed as remote as my own hopes. I felt the loneliness of heaven enter my heart. Inland, just over the rows of forest bread-fruit trees, I could see the ascending smoke from the native villages and, near the shore, the tiny light of the solitary window of Father O’Leary’s mission-room.
Gazing on the dim sky-line, the old figurehead and I became dear comrades who communed in the silence of some great twinship of sorrow. We were both alone. Hardly a sound came from the grog shanty. I saw its lights twinkling beneath the palms. No familiar sounds of rollicking songs disturbed the silence. I felt like one who stood on some old shore of far-away memories, the shores of some world that I had known ages ago. Below the decks silence reigned, dark and deep. The tinkling of the banjo and the wild encore yells were missing. Not one song or muffled oath greeted my ears. Grimes, Uncle Sam, Benbow and all the men I had known so well were far away at sea.
When Ranjo and his wife told me all, I had gone straight up to Father O’Leary. He, too, depressed me as he described what had happened since I left Tai-o-hae.
“Ah! my son,” he said, “I have known many troubles since I came across the seas to these isles, but few of them have been so bad as the sorrow that has come to me of late.”
“Did they not find out who was the cause of all this unhappiness, Father?”
The old priest shook his head for reply, then said:
“My son, what matters it all, the how and why, since the girl has gone? What use in trying to avert the evil when evil has done the worst that it could do?”
“That’s so,” I responded. Then I took the Father aside and told him all that I knew about Waylao since she left Tai-o-hae. The telling took a long time. As I sat by that grey-bearded old priest the tears came to his eyes.
“My lost sheep, my pretty Waylao, the best of all—and so, the easiest to fall, the swiftest to lose!” Saying this, he pressed my hands.