In imagination Grimes had pensioned off several old uncles, and had commemorated the goodness of his grandmother by placing a marble monument over her grave in Kensal Green. I, too, had been pretty generous, and made the eyes shine of old folks at home, also of friends who really did not deserve such good luck, for they had done little for me when I had arrived back in the old country from the great Australian gold-fields, arrayed in a ragged, brass-bound midshipman’s suit. Well, there we sat, worse off than any of them, for not only had our friends afar lost the gifts of generosity, but we had spent our savings, the hard-earned savings from our last voyage before the mast to San Francisco via Honolulu.
I had persuaded Grimes to come with me on that pearling trip. It was all my fault. “Grimes,” I said, “I feel awfully sorry that I persuaded you to believe in old beery-whiskers” (as we called him), “but I’ll make it all right as soon as I get a good job on one of the boats. I’ll pay you back all you’ve lost. You did say he was a lunatic. I wish I’d believed you.”
“That’s all roight, mate,” said Grimes. He pressed my hand. Mrs Ranjo looked a bit fierce and then ticked off the next drink that Grimes ordered for himself. We were both penniless.
It did seem a shame, for Grimes had suffered much through my sanguine temperament. Nine months before we had shipped on a schooner for the Malay Archipelago, calling in at Guadalcanar, Solomon Isles.
It was at the latter place that I had sworn that the idols’ eyes of those parts were real diamonds, for so I had been told, and he believed me. When we crept away through the forest, thinking we had safely got the idols’ eyes, for we had sneaked into the heathen temple, under the very noses of the sleeping savages, Grimes fell crash down a hole! In a second the whole tribe of Kai-kai savages were after us! I shall never forget the yells and Grimes’s unconventional exclamations as he puffed along at my side. When we reached the shore we jumped into the canoe, crash! and pushed off, just in time. But the leading savage chief, racing like some monstrous, burly ghost in the moonlight, gripped Grimes by the tail of his reefer jacket as the canoe swung round. The jacket was old and flimsy and, thank God! it gave way. The impetus of the sudden jerk shot our canoe right out into the bay. We were saved!
We almost cried when we got back to our old windjammer that lay out in the stream, by the promontory. The idols’ eyes turned out to be bits of broken glass, glass which had evidently been chipped by stealth from ships’ port-holes.
No wonder on this present occasion Grimes and I were feeling wretched, when Waylao suddenly entered the grog shanty. I don’t know how it came about, but Ranjo, with the aid of some of the shellbacks, got her to sing.
Grimes and I sat staring, as it were, at some beautiful apparition in that cloud of bluish tobacco smoke, swaying to and fro as she sang. Grimes gave it up, and laid his banjo down: he could not follow that wild, beautiful melody. But I seemed to become inspired as I lifted the violin to my chin and extemporised an obligato. The old beachcombers swore they never heard so sweet a melody, and the girl looked like some beautiful goddess, with a far-away look in her star-like eyes. I half wondered at my talent; it was as though I played on my own heart-strings. Perhaps the memory of Waylao’s pilgrimage to Rimbo, that forest cathedral in Nature’s stronghold, had awakened some barbaric strain of musical genius in my soul.
Grimes said he believed implicitly in God, the Holy Ghost, the hereafter, and all kinds of peculiar, uncockneyfied things that night. As for me, I confess I also felt inspired. We reddened to our ears when Waylao stepped forward and thanked me for the way I had played. She thanked Grimes too. I felt his hand trembling as he handed me my lemonade. I could not stand strong liquor like Grimes and those seasoned shellbacks. Though I have often been praised for this solitary virtue of mine, those who praised me little dreamed how my heart mourned within me at the thought that I could not take strong liquor. They knew not how often I cursed the Fates, how I gazed with envy on those fearless men who drank at the bar and clutched heaven in one hand while I am denied through a weak stomach! So do I jog along through life, not only a member of the vast army of sad teetotallers, but one who grieves in sympathy with them.
After that song Waylao hurried away. She was off to the native festival. There was something special on that night. As we sat in the grog shanty we could hear the drums beating the stars in with unusual vigour. A great heathen carnival was in progress, some mystical rite that commemorated the wonders of the heathen deity Pulutu.