Ah me! Had I and my old shellbacks had the slightest idea or hint of all that happened in that cavern, methinks there would have been a mighty rumpus between shellbackism and the Mohammedanistic propaganda one dark night. Several pious Indians would have been seen floating seaward on the next tide, with their skulls cracked.
Such an Island Night Entertainment was not to be found in the length and breadth of the North and South Pacific as that one in the underworld. Had Robert Louis Stevenson known of such a cavern, what a book we should have had to-day.
The scene that met Waylao’s eyes as she emerged from that tunnel-way was like some wildly exaggerated orgy of the heathen days.
I who stood in that hellish hole of past iniquity when the great crash came which overthrew that inferno can well explain the scene that met her eyes.
It was a large cavern, the rugged walls glittering with stalactites, a roof adorned with scintillating festoons mirrored in the silent pool waters that divided that subterranean temple’s floor.
The pool was left by each tide’s rise, forming a kind of underworld blue lagoon of exquisite beauty. At the glassy bottom waved fern-like seaweeds, clinging to beautiful twisting arms of vermilion-hued and alabaster coral. The water was as clear as the purest crystal. Just overhead, dangling from the roof, hung glimmering oil lamps that threw flickering shadows into the far corners of the subterranean chamber. The mirrored flames in those waters touched the red corals and gave a blood-red hue which added to the mystery of that wide, rocky hollow. It seemed that the waters blushed at the scenes they reflected in their translucent depths, the dusky harem beauties who danced beneath those hanging lamps.
The turbaned plantation gentry who inhabited those headquarters had erected a pae-pae at the far end of the chamber, where rose the roof to the height of about eight feet. It was on this pae-pae (stage) that the newly converted native girls, or newly wedded brides, sang their farewells to Christianity and went through those rhythmical swervings and indescribable postures that so delighted the eyes of their swarthy Eastern masters.
It was one of these sights that met Waylao’s eyes as she entered that harem temple. A wedding dance was in full swing. The blue lagoon was shining like a vast mirror beneath the hanging lamps and faithfully reflected the shadows of festival dancers. At the far end, by the rocky walls, where the roof sloped down to barely a man’s height, were several rough wooden tables. Round these tables sat Indian and Chinese settlers playing a kind of fan-tan, smoking and drinking with joss-house liberality.
It will not be libellous to state that several of them were escapees from Fijian law. On mats close by squatted several Marquesan chiefs who had entered that holy order. They were a wild crew, and much that happened in their midst can be better imagined than described. Several Marquesan maids, dressed in Oriental robes of gauzy design, were on the platform dancing some kind of can-can. The winds of heaven creeping in from the moonlit sea outside quite innocently abetted that lascivious scene; their unseen, shifting fingers touched the swaying girls, threw the unloosed robes right out from their feet, and then once again let them cling to the dancing, voluptuous figures.
The handsome faces of the dancers were aglow with pride as their excited masters shouted: “Kattar rheyrak!”