Hillary felt truly sorry to say farewell to that strange man of the seas. Samuel Bilbao still held the girl’s hand. His voice had gone as tender as the girl’s. And Mango Pango’s eyes looked very fierce as Ulysses, stooping forward, bent one knee with a massive gallantry that belonged to another age:
“Farewell, Miss Gabrielle; farewell!”
Even the huddled crew seemed to come under the spell of Bilbao’s personality as the first pallid hint of dawn swept across the seas. A hot wind from the inland forests on the starboard side stirred Ulysses’ magnificent moustache as he slowly rose to his feet, and with his hand arched over his clear blue eyes stared seaward. Then he lifted his dilapidated helmet-hat. The soft sea winds fluttered the bronze-hued curls that hung like an insignia of chivalry over his lofty brow. With a magnificent gesture he gently pulled the disheveled golden head towards his big bosom, then softly kissed Gabrielle’s upturned face as though he had loved her a thousand years ago, and now, once again, they must part, each going their separate ways.
Gabrielle couldn’t help coming under the influence of that extraordinary man: she too felt a definite sorrow over the parting. And as she looked up into the flushed, honest countenance, half in wonder at her own thoughts, and caught one glimpse from those fine eyes, she saw the real Ulysses—all that he might have been.
“Captain, it’s a-getting loight, dye’s a-coming!” came like a rasp from the Cockney seaman. But even that voice could hardly break the romance of the farewell scene.
Then a mist seemed to come over the silent world as Ulysses, standing like a giant on deck amidst his wondering crew, dissolved into the shadows.
“Dip, dip,” went the splashing oars as Gabrielle and Hillary looked into each other’s eyes. They were in the ship’s boat being rowed hurriedly ashore at Aufurao.
Half-an-hour after they both stood on the beach of a strange, desolate land. Sunrise had just begun to throw ineffable hues over the mountain peaks just behind them. Once more they stared seaward and saw the Sea Foam fading away on the wine-dark seas, the sails fast disappearing like a grey bird, taking Ulysses, his remorseful mate and crew, and laughing Mango Pango, beyond the horizon, out of sight, far from their aching, watching eyes.
It was a wild god-forsaken spot where Hillary and Gabrielle found themselves stranded. They were miles away from A——, where a scanty population of white men, half-a-dozen in all, owned copra, coffee and sugar plantations. But though it was the wildest spot in the whole of New Guinea, the young apprentice preferred it to any other. Even the great loneliness, that seemed to come out of the wide, endless seas into which the Sea Foam had faded, was more welcome than his own thoughts.
“Come on, Gabrielle,” he said, as he sighed, and looked seaward. He thought how he was seeing the great world with a vengeance, reaping life’s full meed of romance and sorrow. He realised how one by one his old ideals had disappeared, receding into the past like frightened birds. But who can tell what thoughts haunted the young apprentice as the tropic sun blazed over the wild coast of New Guinea and as Gabrielle, exhausted, slept beneath the mountain trees.