“Shall I dance?” Gabrielle repeated.
“What! Now!” he exclaimed. He lit his cigarette twice over, wondering if she were laughing at him or really meant that she would dance there on the spot.
Before he could say another word Gabrielle had risen to her feet and was dancing before him. He blew his nose, coughed, put on an inane smile and then fairly gasped in his astonishment and admiration. Her tripping feet softly brushed the blue forest flowers and tall, ferny grass that swished against her loose robe. Hillary’s embarrassment had changed to a tremendous interest in the originality of the dancer before him. He clapped his hands in a kind of obsequious way for an encore as she swayed in a most fascinating manner, her hair tumbling over her shoulders, her eyes shining, one hand holding up the fold of her sarong-like robe, just revealing her brown stocking above the left ankle. “Well, I’m blessed!” he breathed. She had begun to hum a weird melody; her right hand was outstretched, uplifted as though she held a goblet of wine and would drink a toast to some pagan deity.
He looked at the sunset; he half fancied that it had always been staring from the ocean rim, and would never set! And as he looked at the dancing figure she really did seem to hold a goblet in her outstretched hand—full to the brim—with the gold of sunset that touched the landscape and was glinting over her tumbling hair and eyes.
“The Solomon Isles! The Solomon Isles!” was all that he could breathe to himself as she stared at him, a strange fixed look in her eyes. A cockatoo fluttered down to the lowest bough of the bread-fruit tree, looked sideways on her swaying figure, slowly flapped its blue-tipped wings in surprise and chuckled discordantly.
“Ta-ra-ra-boom-de-ay!” chimed in Hillary, as he clapped his hands, stared idiotically and felt like hiding behind the thick trunk of the bread-fruit.
“Well now! You dance perfectly!” he gasped. Gabrielle had ceased tripping. She looked embarrassed and had begun to coil up her tumbling tresses.
“Worth chewing salt-horse and hard-tack on a dozen voyages to have seen what I’ve seen!” was the apprentice’s inward reflection.
“Do the girls in England dance like that?” she said in an eager, frightened way.
“Oh no, not as well as you’ve danced. Blest if they do!” said he. That last remark of hers made him realise that girl before him was half-wild and had danced before him as a child might ere it became self-conscious. “Fancy meeting a beautiful white girl, half-wild! It’s thrilling! I wonder what will be the end of it,” mused Hillary, as he stared on that strange maid whom he had chanced upon so suddenly.