The day passed with renewed tropical vigour. The sun seemed to hiss as its molten mass of splendour dropped splash into the sea.
The sea-birds muttered. The migrating cockatoos sat on the topmost branches of the four solitary bread-fruit trees. They looked like big yellow and crimson blossoms that had whistling, chuckling beaks as they all started off on their flight across the trackless seas. Waylao saw them fade like a group of distant caravans on the silent desert blue of the sky-line—leaving her alone in the vast Pacific.
Night came with its terror of darkness and the immutable stars. The girl’s mind, like that of a child, flew back to the nearest bonds of her existence.
“Mother! Mother! Father!” she wailed, staring first at the stars across the sea, then behind her, with fright.
Strange pangs commenced to convulse her being. The critical moment of her sorrow had arrived. The pangs of our first mother, Eve. But she was alone—not even the devil to comfort her.
In the first instincts of approaching motherhood she looked behind her; the terror of the gloom had vanished. She turned and crept into the harbouring thicket of bamboos and tall ferns beneath the plumed palms.
In that silent, loneliest spot on earth she huddled, couched and trembling. She forgot her desolation. The torturing memory of the past vanished. A feeling of fierce joy thrilled her. She began to feel the helpless, tender companionship of the unborn.
Wild delirium, intense longing, half anguish, half joy came to her memory as she remembered the man who had brought the pangs of hell upon her.
A gleam of cruel reality crept into her brain: she remembered the truth.
Struggling to her feet, she screamed: “Abduh! Abduh! I curse you! I curse you and your Mohammed! I curse him!”