WAYLO returned home after her experience in that harem mosque with several of her illusions slightly damaged. But though the materialisation of her dreams did not correspond with the romance of her old South Sea novels, she was too infatuated with Abduh to break away from him.
All that I know about the matter, or knew then, is, that old Lydia sold me one dozen new-laid eggs next morning.
“Where’s Waylao?” said I.
“She poor sick girls this longer time; she lie bed late in morning. Nice sun over mountain, allee samee she no wake.”
The native woman then told me that Benbow was due home from sea in a week or so, and, in native fashion, did a little dance to express her delight.
The same day Grimes and I sailed from Tai-o-hae on a short trip. We had secured a berth on a small trading schooner bound for Tahiti. I remember that we called in at Papeete, stopping one day and night. The old capital by moonlight looked like some mighty enchanted castle in ruins, the starlit vault, for roof, spread like a mighty dome inland. Plumed palms and beautiful tropical groves grew along its wide floors, which climbed to the rugged mountain terraces rising to the blue midnight heavens. Its dimly lit streets appeared like faeryland. Dusky figures, robed in many-coloured, semi-barbaric materials, flitted beneath the moonlit palms, singing songs in a strange tongue. As curiosity drew one’s steps nearer, it was evident that they were handsome feminine figures with luminous eyes, running down palm-sheltered streets on soft feet. In the adjoining spaces, backed by the first little houses of the native hamlet, danced French sailors, embracing voluptuous girls. They looked like puppets as they shuffled their feet and were held in the arms of those splendid, semi-savage women. The dusky Eves wore flowers in their hair, and as each couple whirled gracefully, the French sailor’s peaked cap on the side of his head, a pungent smell of cognac drifted on the zephyrs to our nostrils.
We heard soft whisperings: “Yoranna, monsoo-aire! [monsieur] Awai! Awai!”
Then came the tinkle of a zither and fiddle, accompanied by melodious laughter as the dance proceeded. “Sacré!” hissed some jealous Frenchman as Mira Moe, the belle of the ball, went with his pal into the Parisian café just by, under the South Sea palms.
In the morning all had vanished like a dream of faeryland. The Broom Road and the scattered white houses on the slopes, the busy, gesticulating gendarmes and stalwart, tawny hawkers made the scene appear quite a commercial centre.
We were obliged to leave that little Babylon of the South, for our boat stopped there only two days, returning straight to Nuka Hiva.