For the time being I will leave Marquesan affairs and follow the deluded Waylao, who was off that night to meet the Indian ex-convict—her beautiful romance.
Near the spot where Waylao stood watching the native festival was the small pagan village. As she stared across the space the children peeping from the hut doors shouted, “Aloah! Mai le tupa!” for they knew Waylao well.
The half-caste girl took no heed of the cheerful salutations, for she had suddenly spotted the turbaned cranium of her lover, Abduh Allah, beneath the buttressed banyans some distance away. I believe he held the Koran in his hand, anyway he looked a holy beggar. Beside him stood a veiled figure. Waylao stared. What did it all mean—her noble cut-throat looking down into the eyes of some feminine being? It was terrible. Her brain seemed as though it would burst with the flood of jealousy that swamped her senses. The noise of the distant festival chanting was unheard. One question only interested her—who was that who stood by the side of her noble, Islamic hubby? Suddenly the slim form by Abduh’s side flung aside her Oriental silk hooded wrap. Was it a ghost by his side—some phantom girl of the forest staring up into her lover’s face with pleading eyes? No. Notwithstanding all the mythological goddesses, all the shadows of Pulutu and legendary wonders that haunted that enchanted heathen-land, the Indian settler’s companion was none other than the faery being from the little grey hamlet by the mountains—the white girl Pauline.
Waylao rubbed her eyes. Was she dreaming? What hint of her unwanted presence had reached Abduh’s soul, making that wraith of the forest vanish so hurriedly?
In the flood of passionate pain that overwhelmed the senses of the half-caste girl was a terrible feeling as of something lost, leaving her a degraded creature, dominated by one passion—jealousy. This she told me long after and under the strangest of circumstances.
CHAPTER XIII
Wherein I describe the Harem Cave—Oriental Picturesqueness and Mohammedan Faith in its Bald State
IN this chapter I will take the reader to one of the many beautiful caverns of natural subterranean architecture that are to be found in the Marquesan Group, both in the mountain districts and by the shore.
In one of these caverns a certain group of Malay Indians had their stronghold, where they lured the semi-civilised native girls.