As the young apprentice hurried on, his Byronic neckerchief fluttering from his throat like a flag, his eyes twinkled with delight. The glamour Gabrielle had created in his head threw a poetic gleam over the rugged island landscape and on the brooding wealth of nature around him. The blue lagoons, nestled by the lines of ivory-nut palms, looked like petrified patches of fallen tropic sky that had been mysteriously frozen into bright mirrors. Then they seemed to break up into musical ripples of laughter, for a covey of bronze-hued, pretty native girls had modestly dived down into their blue depths as he suddenly emerged into the open. He distinctly saw the bubbles where they had disappeared, and he knew that they were all standing on the sandy bottom of the lagoon hastily slipping on their loin-cloths before they boldly reappeared on the surface.
“Talofa! Papalagi!” said one as her shiny head bobbed on the surface, her eyes sparkling as she gazed shoreward and blew the apprentice a kiss as he was passing out of sight. Then he arrived on the lonely shore tracks. The Papuan birds of paradise looked like fragments of feathered rainbows haunting old shores as they floated over the sea. The orange-striped cockatoos, sitting high in the tall flamboyants and tamuni-trees, seemed to shout “Cockatoo-e whoo! Cock-a-too whoo! Make haste! Make haste!” as he approached. They rose in a glittering shower from their roosts, gave dismal muttering as they fluttered over his head, till, hanging their coral-red feet loosely, they resettled on the boughs of the tasselled breadfruits. It was a wildly desolate spot; not a sail specked the horizon as Hillary tramped along, singing to himself. Except for the solitary dark man who lay fast asleep in his outrigger canoe, that was becalmed a few yards beyond the coral reefs, he wandered in a world alone. Only the bright-plumaged birds populated the wooded promontories, cheeks and slopes.
As the young apprentice walked slowly along, making time, he repeatedly glanced seaward to see how low the sun was setting. Arriving opposite the alligator-shaped promontory at Nu-poa, he sighted the scattered palavanas of the small hut citadel, Ko-Koa. It was a fishing village; quite a score of canoes floated hard by on the lagoons. The romping heathen kiddies waved their paddles as he passed by. Their alert eyes seldom missed the passing of a papalagi. From out the thatched beehive-shaped homesteads, under the mangoes and mahogany-trees, rushed several old chiefs and their women-kind, who at once began loudly to lament the dearth of tobacco and gin and loose cash.
Attractive girls offered him their fabulous wealth of shells and fish in exchange for a silk handkerchief. “You got nice lady fren, papalagi?—one who ’av’ gotter old pair stocking she no wanter?” said one coy maid whose soul yearned to attract some dusky Lothario’s waning glances. But it was all innocent enough in a way. “Women are the same the world over, blest if they aren’t!” he murmured, as he gave a bashful maid a small piece of red ribbon in exchange for her beautifully carved bone hair-comb, which she handed him with inimitable grace, for brown maids are very ambitious for the love of a white man. Some of the youths and maids were half-caste and three-quarter caste, a mixture of Polynesian and Melanesian. Armlets and leglets fashioned from the pretty treduca shells jingled as the girls romped round the apprentice.
Those girls of mixed blood were mostly of graceful deportment, many having fine, intellectual eyes. Neither did they possess the ungainly head-mop. Indeed, standing there under the distant palms of the lower shore, their wavy hair tossing to the sea-winds, they made a picturesque sight. And one might easily have imagined that they were tawny mermaids who had crept up the sands so as to stand under the green-leafed palms to comb their tresses and wail luring songs. Hillary stood still for a moment and gazed on that enchanting scene of primitive life, fascinated. Out on the edge of the promontory sat yet another covey of semi-Papuan and Polynesian maids. It was not fancy; they were really singing mysterious songs as they sought to lure the sun-varnished native fishermen who paddled or sailed their buoyant catamarans over the wine-dark waters. Hillary bolted under the palms to escape the embarrassing attentions of both the cadging chiefs and those Solomon Island Nausicaas and Circes. It was not long after that he arrived by the side of the wide lagoon that Gabrielle would cross in her canoe if she kept the appointment. She would come by water, whereas he had travelled three miles, the long way round by the coast. As he stood by the lagoon it seemed to stretch before him like a beautiful mirror that reflected tall fern and palm trees. Even the bright-winged lories were distinctly visible as their shadows flitted across the sky. “Will she come? Is it all a dream?” thought he as his heart thumped heavily.
It seemed incredible to Hillary that he should really be standing there by that lagoon in the cannibalistic Solomon Isles, waiting to see a beautiful white girl paddle towards him across the blue waters. He had not waited long before round the bend of the lagoon, far off, came a ripple, quite visible on the waters; in another moment the curved, ornamental prow of a canoe appeared as the moving paddle leapt into full view. The sun was setting and the blaze shot right across the Pacific and touched the mountains to the south-east, sending transcendent hues and shadows down on to the lagoon waters and again into the forests.
Women play all sorts of tricks with credulous men and their instinctive love of beauty. True enough, Gabrielle was an artist in the delicate business of self-attire. She knew exactly where to place the blue ribbon at her throat and the crushed crimson flower in the crown of her hair so that it might appeal to the senses of a mere man. The blue and white flowers stuck in her tresses looked unreal, for her hair shone as though it had been set on fire by the hues of the sunset. Her robe might have been cut out of some burnished cloud material such as the angels wear. “Fancy! She’s come!” murmured Hillary as the prow of the canoe softly swerved broadside on to the sandy shore. “Come on, dearest,” he said. Gabrielle looked tired and was breathing fast through her haste in paddling across the wide lagoon. She looked very pale. “What’s the matter, dear?”
“Father’s drunk.”
“Is he?” said Hillary, as he metaphorically brought his fist down and swept such an unromantic nuisance as a father off the face of the earth. Even Gabrielle looked up quickly as she heard him take a deep breath as he swept old Everard to dust, pulverised. He hadn’t rehearsed through the feverish night all that he intended to do at that moment, and written a mighty poem, to be finally thwarted by a drunken father.
Something kin to the fire that shone in the apprentice’s eyes shone in Gabrielle’s eyes also. She trembled, and obediently did all that he bade her do. In a moment they had taken hold of the prow of the canoe and between them dragged it for thirty yards over the shallows that separated the deeper lagoon waters from the sea. They were right opposite to where the Pacific waves gambol into a thousand creeks and coral caves. Without a moment’s hesitation Gabrielle jumped into the canoe. “Be careful, dear,” whispered the apprentice.