The terribly potent vitriol smoked on his face!
A cry of horror went up from Ulysses’ lips and from all the watching crew. The natives yelled out in anguish. Even the mangy Papuan tribal dog, sitting close to the idol’s wooden feet, lifted its nose to the crescent moon and howled. The sight of the Rajah’s eyes had gone! Standing there, blind, his face seared with fire, the fumes from the goblet issuing from the top of his tilted turban and rising in a shivering vapour to the palms above his head, he made a terrible picture! He violently clapped his hands to his face. He began to dance in a wild frenzy. His mind was shattered with pain. He jumped and jumped, stamping on the ground as though he would crush his very soul out with his feet.
Notwithstanding all that the man had done to Hillary the young apprentice felt some sympathy for the afflicted Rajah. It was so unexpected. Ulysses, who had sworn to do so much when he had Macka in his grasp, re-echoed the horror, the murmur that went up from the huddled, onlooking crew. And no wonder, for as they watched a woman’s scream of anguish echoed to the mountains. In a moment they all moved back as the Rajah, hearing that scream, put his hand forth in mute appeal. He heard the sympathetic wail in that blood-curdling cry. The final act of the terrible drama, enacted before Ulysses and his crew, was strangely in harmony with its wild setting. None expected that final act, the thrilling exit from the stage when Maroshe the Koiari woman forgave and became united to the Rajah! Mango Pango jumped with fright and clutched Bilbao’s arm. “Saver me, poor Mango,” she wailed. Bilbao dispelled the tense silence by yelling out: “By thunder!”
The hollow-eyed mate stood like a spectre of misery who saw retribution ahead as he lifted his shrunken hands and stared upward at the stars.
The hubbub of the cowardly natives had suddenly ceased as they too watched Macka’s exit from his old life. Gabrielle clutched Hillary in fear; indeed, every onlooker drew in a mighty breath as they saw them go—Macka, a blind, groping figure, looking like some demon of the night flying onward, and shouting in his Malayan tongue, one hand waving in the air, Maroshe clinging to his other arm. They were reunited at last, and she was leading him away to watch over him in his eternal darkness.
For quite twenty seconds Ulysses and all the crew stared after them.
By now the cowardly natives, who had sought to give no help to one of their own kind, had begun their infernal hubbub and were clamouring round Ulysses, begging for the several bribes he had promised should they lead him to the place where the Rajah had taken the white girl.
Bilbao, who had lived with the natives from Dampier Strait to Sarawak, Borneo, knew they were a treacherous lot and liable to turn on him and his scanty crew at any moment, so he was anxious to get back to the Sea Foam. He wiped the perspiration from his brow. His voice was almost gentle as he turned to Hillary and Gabrielle and said, with evidently simulated calm: “I say, we’d better clear out of this at once.” Then he turned to the crew: “Hurry up, boys; let’s get back to the boats.” The sallow mate, who had fallen down in a kind of fit, rose to his feet, and stood swaying like a branch in a wind as he brushed the dust from his brass-bound, peaked cap.
In a moment Hillary, Gabrielle, Mango Pango and the crew had started off, hurrying down the track as Ulysses led the way; the natives came clamouring behind them, whirling and humming in guttural appeals like bunches of monstrous two-legged stalk-flies.
It all seemed like a wonderful dream to Hillary as Gabrielle once more walked by his side, her hair blowing against his face. Even dusky Mango Pango had a shadowy look as she clung to Gabrielle’s arm, her broad showy yellow sash blowing out behind her as the two girls kept close to the heels of the hurrying crew.