They lost no time in embarking. A trader was likely to pass at any moment, and Everard had threatened to “kick Hillary into the middle of next week” if he found that villainous apprentice hanging around his daughter. They could just hear the faint echoes of the tribal drums in the Buka-Buka mountains as their canoe shot silently out into the bay. They were off, paddling away together into the unknown seas of romance. Such was that world of rugged shore and dark blue waters to Hillary as he gazed up at the darkening sky. God had just lit the first star, and as he gazed upward it flashed into sight.
Gabrielle really did look like some beautiful visionary creature sitting there; and she was voiceless, as befits those who travel across tropic seas of love. The apprentice paddled a long time, then at last he could hear the faint monotones of the seas that were ceaselessly beating against the reefs and the big bulk of the wreck.
“Allow me!” he said. His voice trembled as he took hold of her hand firmly, as though he thought she might escape. The prow bumped gently against the hulks’ side near the gangway. That big, three-masted derelict looked like some huge phantom ship as it loomed up there in the silent waters off Bougainville. “Come on, dear.” Very carefully he placed his arms around her and step by step carried her up the ragged rope gangway.
Their heads were nearly up to the level of the deck, but there were still two more steps to climb. “Hold tight, dear,” he whispered. His voice seemed to travel like an echo across the silence of the tropic night. Just for a second he gazed into Gabrielle’s eyes, then he gently dropped her down on to the deck. At that moment reality returned; things took some definite shape; Hillary recalled time, the world and the far-off cities.
A drove of frightened rats went shrieking and squeaking down the alleyway towards the forecastle. The remnants of torn sail and tangled rigging flapped mournfully to the winds as they both slipped hurriedly across the warped deck. Hillary felt the ecstasy that is the highest attainment of mortal happiness. Had she wholly belonged to him, body and soul, he would not have been half so happy. He stared aloft at the tall masts and felt a mighty sympathy for that vessel lying there by the desolate shores of its last anchorage, for the jib-boom at the bow seemed to point helplessly at the far-away horizon, to which it could never sail. “This way! Come on!” he whispered, as he gazed around in some mad thought that the ghosts of the old crew were enviously hanging round in their great off-watch.
They sat down in silence on the old form that was close against the poop, just by the entrance to the saloon. Immediately over their heads, by the deck rails of the now rotting poop, was the spot where the old captain had stood when he sailed the seas. As the apprentice looked upwards he suddenly remembered that he was on the very derelict that had once been the ship of the old skipper who had left the books at Everard’s bungalow, the books from which Gabrielle had gathered her romance.
In his mind he saw that old derelict when it sailed the seas in its prime, when the figure-head with outstretched hands at the bows (now with one arm broken off and its emblematic, once beautiful face fast rotting) had bounded across the waves like a living thing, long before Hillary was born. The influence of the surroundings and the girl beside him stirred his fancy. In imagination he saw the old skipper standing on the poop watching the blue horizons and the starlight and moonlight that shone in another age, so far as his own brief run of years were concerned. In a flash he realised that out of all the cargoes the captain had jealously guarded in his long voyages it was the old books that had brought him solace in his cabin that had proved the most wonderful merchandise after all. Where were the imported pianos that had been shipped for the Australasian colonies, Fiji, Java, Callao and Shanghai? What had been their fate? They had been thumped and thumped to distraction and destruction while men drank their grog. Where were the cargoes of old grandfather clocks and German-made alarms? But more wonderful than all was the fact that Gabrielle sat beside him on that very ship, her heart aglow with the romance that she had gathered out of the pages of the old captain’s books. True enough, that skipper never wrote the books, but he lived an adventurous life in the big world, and who will say that he may not have been wiser than the authors?
Hillary looked through the saloon port-hole just behind them and half fancied he saw a ghostly glimmer of the oil lamps that had shone in that saloon in the dusk of other days; he even saw the shadows of men moving about the cuddy table. But it was no ghostly pageant of the post at all, simply a stream of moonlight on the torn sail that waved to and fro as it hung from the main-yard and sent its shadow into the dark saloon.
The atmosphere that surrounded the wreck and the music of the wind in the decaying rigging affected Gabrielle also. Her old tom-boy demeanor, had completely vanished. Hillary only said, “Well Gabrielle,” and she heard the music in those two words. For a moment they both forgot the world beyond that hulk. Only the stars existed, and they shone into Gabrielle’s eyes as their lips met. The passionate phrases that he had so carefully rehearsed, all the poetic vehemence of the night before, had faded. Not one mad vow escaped his lips. He only held her tenderly, as though he were afraid that she might crumble in his arms—fall as dust to his feet. Not an atom of passion come to ruffle the poetry of his feelings. For the young apprentice was really in love. Her hair touched his face. It thrilled him as music thrills dreaming men. “Gabrielle, you are very beautiful How strange that no man has claimed you before. For that, at least, I thank God.”
The girl was silent. “Don’t you believe me?” he added. He glanced swiftly at her face. It was deathly white. Hillary thought it was the rats scampering across the deck that had brought that startled look. Then Gabrielle burst into tears.