Others cried: “Shame! Shame! Oh, the sinful wretch to do so! Kill her! Kill her!”
Old Ranjo tucked his shirt-sleeves up and struck fearsome imaginary blows into the air of his saloon bar, blows that his heart yearned to inflict on the girl’s betrayer. Uncle Sam got fearfully drunk.
The Irishman and Scotsman went into wordy rivalry over similar sorrows in their boyhood’s memory. The reformed harlot from Sydney swooned with sheer disgust to think sensuality had existed so near her virtuous homestead.
The day after Waylao’s flight the scandal was raging like a violent epidemic among the native and white settlers, for Waylao’s beauty and sweet disposition had won for her the love of all the genuine men and women of those parts.
So much was whispered and exaggerated over the reputation of the missing girl that the little native children sat by the camp-fires huddled in fright; they would look awestruck around and behind them, gazing into the forest gloom, expecting to see the awful Waylao leap from the shadows like a spirit-woman. Old chiefs lifted their hands as they discussed, in hushed voices, with their Christianised wives the fall of the beautiful half-white woman, and the subsequent shock to the morals of the semi-heathen villages.
The great Christianised chiefess, Manaraoa, wailed out, “O Mita Savoo! The devil allee samee good, ee always get ’is own,” then she too lifted the bottle of gin to her lips and drank, to drown her grief, her disgust, that a girl should fall so low.
Grimes and I had only just returned from Honolulu when we heard of Waylao’s flight. We were sitting in the old grog shanty counting out our hard-earned money. “We shall never make our fortunes at this rate, Grimes,” said I, as I counted out the dollars.
“Never mind, pal,” said Grimes. “We’ll be wealthy by and by.”
“Yes,” said I, “when it’s too late to enjoy life, when we only want to sit over the smouldering bonfire of our shattered dreams and warm our hearts by the pale hearth-fire of the distant stars.”
“Blow the stars and yer shattered dreams! You’re allus finking everfing is too late. We can be gay old men, can’t we?” responded my sensible pal. Then he continued: “Look at the tharsands of giddy old men in London, a-making up for all that didn’t ’appen in their ’appy youth.” Considerably cheered by Grimes’s philosophy, we leaned back on to the old settee and prepared for an afternoon’s siesta.