“Who’s torn your dress?” he said, as he struggled against the impulse that he felt, for he had put forth his arms to draw the girl to him. But he didn’t do so.
Pouring a little more Jamaica rum into his tea, he swallowed it, smacked his lips and said: “Don’t grissel. I’m not going to bully you for tearing your clothes. S’pose you’ve been arambling ’bout ther scrub at yer old games, admiring ther beauties of Nathure?” He pursed his lips and gave a cynical grin as he made the foregoing remark. Then he continued: “I saw you t’other day talking to that blasted runaway ship’s apprentice, ’Illary, I think they call ’im. Do yer want to disgrace your old father by talking to ther likes of ’im, a damned penniless, stranded runaway apprentice, nothing but a fiddler with a shabby, brass-bound suit on!”
Then the old evangelical zealot of vagabon gospel and the best Jamaica rum put his big-rimmed hat on, looked at the clock and went stumping down the track by the palms to look after the Kanakas who were employed on the copra, coffee and pine-apple plantations.
As soon as the sounds of his stumping footsteps had died away the pretty native girl, “Wanga-woo,” from Setiwao village, made her characteristic somersault through the front door. She had come to tidy the bungalow in her usual way. Even that nymph-like creature looked sideways at Gabrielle, noticed the pallor of her face and wondered at the absence of the usual cheery salutation that had always greeted her. It took the native child no time to tidy up. Then she ran outside the homestead and returned with her big market basket full of luscious tropical fruits: mangoes, two big over-ripe pine-apples, limes and reddish oranges lying on their own dark green leaves.
“You liker them, Misser Gaberlel? They belonger nicer you!”
The native child’s voice and action cheered up Everard’s daughter wonderfully. Then, as she lay down on the parlour settee to rest her aching head, she heard the little maid running away into the forest, back to her village, singing:
“Willy-wa noo, Woo-le woo wail-o,
Cowana te o le suva, mango-te ma bak!”
Then the sound died away and Gabrielle felt glad to hear it no longer, and lying there thinking and thinking, and softly crying to herself, she fell fast asleep, and slept through most of the hot tropical day. When she awoke sunset had already fired the mountain palms. As she sat on the bamboo seat by the door she heard her father’s voice. She knew he was drunk; the rollicking, hoarse intonation of, his song was unmistakable as the sounds came nearer. He had been away to the plantations to see Rajah Koo Macka, who was supposed to be purchasing a lot of copra for cargo for his ship that lay off Bougainville.
In a moment the girl had made up her mind, had risen and run off into the forest. Sunset was sending its golden streams across the banyan groves as she passed under the giant trees that were smothered with huge scarlet blossoms. Already the koo-koo owl had stolen from the deeper shadows and was hooting forth its “To woo—to-woo-woo!”
“I wish I hadn’t overslept,” she murmured to herself as she felt a longing to see one of her own sex. For she had made up her mind to go around the coast to see Mrs. S——, the German missionary’s wife. She was a cold-eyed white woman, this missionary’s wife, but still, she was white. Gabrielle had thought to tell her of the terrible shadow that had come to her in the night, and had hoped for her sympathy and advice. She would have gone even then, but she knew that the white woman’s residence was miles round the coast and it would be quite dark before she arrived there. She also remembered that Mrs. S—— was a terrible coward and would not venture from her husband’s bungalow after dark on account of the rumours going about that tabarans (evil spirits) lurked in the forests when the tambu worshippers were chanting their sacred rites.