CHAPTER X
The Half-caste Girl visits Rimbo the Priest—Idols of the Forest—Waylao’s Flight—Grimes and I catch Rimbo—Rimbo’s Hut and Stores—Rimbo’s Hoarded Bribes—Legendary Belief—Remarks
IT so happened that the following day Grimes and I went off fishing in the lagoons round the coast. I knew it not at the time, but as we fished we were in close proximity to Rimbo’s hut. In this hut the heathen priest lived all alone, dreaming and cursing the memory of the white men who had blasted his lucrative profession and smashed up his best tikis (idols).
As I was sitting on the reefs, smoking and fishing, my comrade suddenly looked up and said: “Why, pal, there’s Wayler!”
In a moment we were all attention, for the girl was coming down into the hollows that intervened between the shore and the vast forest of bread-fruits. She was on her way to visit the fortune-teller Rimbo’s hut.
As we watched, she stealthily glanced around ere she went along the track that led to the hidden den where so many native girls entered to know if their Don Juans were faithful to them.
For a while I will take the reader along with Waylao.
In a few moments she had passed into the thick glooms of the tropical forest. It was a strangely impressive sight to see the half-caste girl creeping through those wooded depths. She seemed some faery creature as she dodged between the big tree trunks, her blue kimono robe and sash fluttering as warm winds swept in from the sea. Nor was the enchantment of the scene lessened when she arrived outside the half-hidden hut home of the heathen wizard. She peered about her as though with fright, then gave a “Tap! Tap!” on the closed door.
A windy voice broke the silence: “Tarona Awaie?” (“Well, little one?”)
It was the voice of Rimbo. Then the door opened a little wider and the old heathen’s head protruded. It were impossible to imagine such a weird physiognomy as he possessed. I recall nothing in the world’s museums, anthropological collections of mummified priests, saints, devils or dead kings to be compared with my vivid memory of that heathen man. He really looked that which he professed to be—the personification of mythology, its bigotry, mystery and sins. He had been handsome once, in the cannibalistic days—so much could be seen at a glance—but it was a faint, far-off tale.