The remorse and the tears and the sorrow which followed she confessed to Father O’Leary long after. But that is not to be written yet, and sometimes I wish that I may never tell it.
The memory of that girl’s story and her weeping voice now seems as far away as the stars which flashed in the vault over the windy tips of those bread-fruit trees by Tai-o-hae. I could almost tell Waylao’s thoughts as she crept by that man’s side, on to her fate. I will attempt to describe all that followed.
“Ta’ala [come], O Hassan Marah, ta’ala!” whispered that Calcutta cut-throat as he led the girl along the forest track. They had reached the sea. Between the tree trunks the waves were distinctly visible. It was a beautiful spot that surrounded that secret temple of Mohammed worshippers. As Waylao tripped beside the tempter her sandalled feet brushed the carpet of forest flowers. She was proud of those sandals. I must admit they looked well, fastened to her feet with red ribbon from the little Islamic carpet bag.
“Marah [wifey], I take thee to where thou shalt see many wonders; but remember that I love thee as man never loved maid before. Also, forget not that thou art now a child of Mohammed. Think not that whatever thou seest is anything else but what it is!” (I can imagine that he smiled grimly here at the thought of uttering so great a truth!)
Then he continued: “Remember, O child of beauty, that our humble mosque, which is but a symbol of the Almighty Prophet’s creed, is the Mecca of all our happiness; and all that happens therein is symbolical of all that happens.”
The foregoing is a fair example of Indian Mohammedan lore as dabbled in by its preachers in the islands.
They had now reached the shore. For miles along the coast by the serried lines of giant bread-fruits and palms shone the blue lagoons that reflected reefs of stars.
As though a ghost had crept from the forest to warn Waylao, her shadow crept in front of her. Abduh’s monstrous silhouette also dodged in front of him, so grotesque, so hideous that it might well have been the true index of his mind expressed in his shadow to warn the mad girl. Suddenly they arrived at the hollow in the volcanic rock. It was the entrance to the mosque. Once in ages past that great cavern by the sea had been moulded by Nature’s volcanic passion—and now the children of those wild lands were lured into those old bowels wherein glowed the passions of a greater hell. An old-time Chinese opium den, joss-house or fan-tan den in ’Frisco or George Street, Sydney, was a positive holy citadel compared with that cavernous hole of debauchery and Mohammedanistic religion.
Waylao trembled with fright. The Indian, taking no risks, still clutched her arm like some monstrous spider, as she looked behind her, stared over her shoulder in fear. Then they entered that hollow doorway and left the moonlit seas outside. The Indian, still clutching her arm, bent his turbaned head as he passed beneath the low roof of that subterranean passage, that harem cave of Mohammedanism in Southern Seas. Did her heart flutter and all hope die as she entered there? God only knows. Most likely she would have escaped if the man had not held her.
No sooner had they entered that tunnel-way than she heard the murmur of singing harem beauties and the mumblings of far-off encores. Sounds of ribald heathenish himees (Marquesan cannibal songs) came to her astonished ears, accompanied with faint whiffs of opium and scented gin.