By the hollows where grew enormous banyans was a little deserted hut, and there I led her.
“Waylao,” I said, “you cannot roam about like this; and if you are determined not to return to your people, you had better stop here where I can find you.”
Though I was about Waylao’s age, I felt considerably older. Indeed my experience of the world made me look upon her as a child.
“Waylao,” I said, “I wish to be your friend. Will you let me help you?”
The girl only looked at me earnestly and burst into tears.
The night was perfectly still. The moon was shining brilliantly over the mountains, revealing the distant shore and ocean for miles and miles. Like some half-wild creature, the stricken girl crouched beside me. But after a while she calmed down and even promised to try and listen to my advice the next day, for I had arranged to come to that hut, to bring food and blankets.
It was more like some Byronic romance than reality as I thought of our strange position and looked at the girl beside me. She was robed in a picturesque multi-coloured kimono, that she had hastily snatched up, I suppose, in her flight. A few flowers were in her hair, that crown of rich, glossy splendour, and made her appear wildly beautiful as the dishevelled tresses fell about her throat, gleaming white in the moonlight. I tried to cheer her up. Taking the violin out of the case, I was lifting the bow to play a song that I had heard her sing in the shanty when we heard a voice. For a moment I wondered what on earth it could mean, for I distinctly heard the strains of sweet singing coming nearer and nearer.
Waylao clung to me with fright. I immediately reassured her, for, looking out through the thickets of wild feis, I saw a faery-like being in the distance. I stared in astonishment at that sight. I rubbed my eyes to convince myself that I did not dream it all; for there, coming down the forest track on weary feet, outlined in the moonlight, came the figure of a girl. Even Waylao half forgot her own sorrows as she too peeped out of the thickets, watched and listened to that wraith of the forest singing the saddest, sweetest strain I ever heard. It is some phantom girl of the mountains, thought I, for in those days I was mad enough to believe anything.
“What can it be, Waylao?” I whispered as we both watched and the melody grew clearer, for the figure was coming towards us. As the form approached, it seemed to be swaying to the tremulous song that the lips were singing in a strange language. It were impossible to describe the pathos of it all. It seemed that the poor, weary feet of that castaway, that the dilapidated shoes that she wore, were shuffling out some terribly sad accompaniment to that French song—for that wandering girl of the night was an escapee, a convict girl from New Caledonia, a poor fugitive who had stowed away on some schooner at the convict settlements, risking the horrors of a homeless life in those wild South Seas rather than live on linked with criminals. She was still clad in her ragged convict clothes, the misery of God knows what thoughts shining in her eyes, as she tramped the night track by Tai-o-hae.
Ere I could recover from the wonder that thrilled me the convict girl was right opposite our hiding-place. I distinctly saw the beautiful outline of her face as the moonlight streamed through the branches of the bread-fruits that sheltered the track.