“Hallo, Ramai!” she exclaimed, as a graceful native girl suddenly stepped out of the bamboo thickets, stared with large dark eyes at her, then made as if to pass on. “Don’t go, Ramai,” said Gabrielle. The girl stared sphinx-like for a second, then moved on. “I go, Madesi, to pray, tabaran! Must go or die!” answered the strange maid as she turned round, then pointed her dark finger in the direction of the god-house that was situated somewhere in the taboo mountains.
“Your old god-houses! Do you really believe in them?” said Gabrielle, looking earnestly into the strange maid’s serious eyes. For a moment Ramai stared, put her brown knee forward, made a magic pass with her hands above her head, and said: “The gods have spoken more than once to Ramai when the stars did shine in the lagoons and the caves by Temeroesi, and told the future. And am I not sacred in the eyes of the gods? For I am head singer at the tambu festivals, so are my love affairs good, and chiefs have died for that look from my eyes that would tell all that a woman may say.”
“If I danced on the pae paes would I be loved too?” said Gabrielle almost eagerly.
“Pale-faced Marama, you no dance; the gods like not your kind!” Ramai answered almost scornfully. Then she glided away into the shadows on the other side of the track and disappeared.
Gabrielle burst into a merry peal of laughter. Once more she looked at her image in the lagoon and began to chant and sway and clap her hands rhythmically, just as she had seen the natives do. The deep boom of the bronze pigeon recalled her to herself as she stood throwing her shapely limbs softly to and fro. The songs of the birds seemed to remind her that she was no longer a child, and that such antics were a bit out of place now that she wore long dresses. She stopped dead, and put her hands into the folds of her hair that had fallen in a glinting mass to her shoulders as she shuffled her sandalled feet in the long jungle grass.
“I’m really getting awful,” was her next reflection. The sun was lying broad on the western sea-line; it looked like an enormous, dissipated, blood-splashed face that would hurry to hide itself below the rim of the ocean, away from the violent wooing of the hot, impassioned, tropic day.
Gabrielle stared across the seas from the hill-top and half fancied that that great hot face grinned from ear to ear over all it had seen. A peculiar feeling of fright seized her heart. In a moment she had turned and hurried away. She felt quite relieved as she sighted her father’s bungalow beneath the shade of the bread-fruits. “It’s late. Won’t Dad swear! I don’t care; men must swear, I suppose,” she muttered as she plucked up courage and entered the small door of the solitary homestead.
The shadows of evening had fallen; the last cockatoo had chimed its discordant vesper from the banyans near by. The room was nearly dark as she opened the door; only a faint stream of light crept through the wide-open casement that was thickly covered with twining tropic vine and sickly yellowish blossoms. To her astonishment, she was received by her father with a broad smile of welcome. “Come in, deary, don’t stand there! What yer frightened of—you beauty?” said old Everard, as his lean, clean-shaven face looked up at the girl in a warning way and he placed a forcible accent on the last two words.
“Who’s here that he should be so affable?” thought Gabrielle.
Turning round, she was startled to see a tall figure standing by the window. In a moment she hurried to the mantel piece and, striking a match, lit the small oil lamp, scolding her father all the time for his discourtesy in allowing a stranger to stand in the darkness. As she turned and gazed at the visitor she almost gave a cry, so impressed was she by the appearance of the man before her. It was the handsome Rajah Koo Macka, the half-caste Malayo-Papuan missionary. He was attired in semi-European clothes, but with this difference—round his waist was twined a large red sash and on his head the tribal insignia of the Malay Archipelago Rajahship, which consisted of coils of richly coloured material swathed round and round to resemble a turban. He looked like a handsome Corsair who had suddenly stepped out of an Eastern seraglio. For a moment the girl stared in astonishment; the Rajah corresponded with her conception of what the grand old heroes of romance were like.