As she lay there in the leafy glooms of the dwarf ivory-nut palms, he looked down on her sleeping face till the soft-lashed eyelids seemed to be two tiny graves wherein lay buried all the purest passion of his dreams.
Up in the tall, dark-green-fingered palms a strange yellow iris bird was singing. And it seemed to him that it had come to serenade him in his loneliness and whistle some hope into his heart. Then it flew away, and he, too, lay down and slept till once more the great tropic night crept with stars over that wild, godforsaken forest coast. He heard the call of the red-wings in the jungle and the forest that ran sheer to the rugged mountains that overlooked the shore. It seemed that he and she dwelt alone in all that primitive world of sombre forest lands and interminable gullies.
“Gabrielle, we must get away from here,” he said, as she stood beside him trembling. She had just awakened from a dream that had given her Hillary’s love and the security of civilisation far from the unreal world of jungle that met her eyes.
“Come on, Gabrielle.” The girl took his hand like an obedient child, and then walked with him out on to the reefs where the waves came hurrying in, tossing their white, foamy hands by the caves and coral bars. Neither spoke one word about the arranged trip up the coast to the settlements, and of the Lubeck, N.G.L. steamer, and all that Ulysses had so carefully planned, so that they might not be stranded on that dreadful, fever-stricken coast. It seemed that they had read each other’s souls and by instinctive communion stood there caring not where their steps might take them so long as they were together.
As they stood there at the edge of the promontory, beneath the bright stars, Hillary half imagined he stood again on the old hulk off Bougainville; the two dead screw-pines ahead of them looked just like the rotting masts of an old wreck.
“Come nearer, dearest,” said the young apprentice, just as he had done on the derelict hulk. Then he said: “Gabrielle, don’t cry, dearest. I love you with all my heart and soul. I realise now how you must have felt that night on the old hulk off Bougainville, when you wanted me to jump into the sea and die with you.”
He pulled her softly towards him, rained impassioned kisses on her mouth and once more looked down into the depths of her eyes. Their lips met again and again. He placed his fingers in the folds of her glorious hair and breathed the music of his soul into her ears.
Like some herald of a phantom day, a great radiance flushed the horizon—it was the moon rising far out to sea. It was then that Hillary looked into the girl’s eyes and said tenderly: “Is this to be the end, dearest?”
“I’ll go anywhere with you,” said Gabrielle.
A soft drift of wind came across the hot seas, ruffled the glassy deep swell of the ocean, blowing Gabrielle’s tresses out as she stood there. Nor did the torn blue blouse, the dilapidated shoes and her jungle-scratched face impair her beauty.