The apprentice reddened to the ears and blessed the darkness as he thought of his boldness and softly pulled the delicate folds together again. “I’ve done it now! She’ll think I’m a terrible fellow,” was Hillary’s hasty reflection as the girl remained silent. Then he tried to excuse himself. “I’ve read of men doing that in novels and poems,” he said in a semi-apologetic tone.
“So have I,” replied Gabrielle; then she laughed softly. And Hillary wondered what wondrous deed of virtue he had done that God should shower such unbounded happiness on his head.
It was a perfect night in Gabrielle Everard’s life. No shadow came to haunt the silence of those moments as she sat by Hillary’s side. Only the shadows of the torn sails waving to and fro in the warm tropic wind fell from aloft to touch their happy faces. The soft confusion of Gabrielle’s hair harmonised with the bright thoughts that floated in his mind. The smell of the rotting tarred ropes and the palmy fragrance of the south wind over the sea mingled together and formed a part of his sensations.
It was close on midnight when the apprentice remembered the flight of time, which passes with greater swiftness over the heads of lovers than of sad old men and women. Even the rats seemed to scamper and squeak in regret as they both rose and reluctantly crept across the silent deck. A slight breeze had sprung up from the south-east
“Make haste!” Hillary whispered as they arrived by the rotting bulwark near the risky rope gangway. The apprentice looked with apprehension out to sea when he noticed that the former calm expanse of ocean was slightly ruffled. “Quick! Quick!” he said, and then Gabrielle went over the side and trusted her weight to the taut gangway rope. “Thank God!” murmured Hillary, as she stepped from the swinging gangway into the canoe. Then to his infinite relief he noticed that the wind had dropped. Though she had embarked, he had still stood hesitating as to whether it was safe to venture back to the shore.
“I don’t think it will blow, and it’s only a mile to the shore,” he thought, as the girl carefully took her place in the prow. The moon was just setting as the gangway swung back and Hillary stepped into the fragile craft. Then, like two ghosts, they paddled away, back to the mainland.
CHAPTER VII—WHEN THE STARS DANCED
The day after Hillary and Gabrielle’s love tryst on the derelict off Bougainville old Everard sat in his bungalow rubbing his hands with delight. He had been over the slope in Rokeville “celebrating” at the grog bar, had been to the store and flirted with the trader’s pretty half-caste daughters, and had tapped his wooden leg significantly as the schooner skippers heard how he’d done things in his day; then he had returned home, full of the best Jamaica rum. It wasn’t the rum, or the praise and encores of the shellbacks in Parsons’s grog bar, or the surreptitious kiss he’d given pretty Mango Pango on his way home that made him so jovial; it was because he’d met Rajah Koo Macka, who was calling at the bungalow that evening. Already the shadows were falling over the mountains. He was still busily shouting directions to his daughter as though he stood on the fore-deck of that wondrous ship that had sailed all seas and found all that is considered impossible and absurd in this new day. He had artfully enticed Gabrielle to dress herself up, so that she might appear at her very best when Rajah Macka arrived.
“Put the flowers in yer ’air, and don’t forget to put thet blue robe thing on,” said the ex-sailor, as he critically surveyed his daughter and tapped his wooden leg to punctuate his appreciation. “That’s it! That’s it! You do look nice!”
Gabrielle’s eyes were shining with pleasure as she listened to her Dad’s praise. He so seldom praised her. Then she gazed into the bamboo looking-glass. Her vanity was excusable, for the scarlet and white hibiscus blossoms made the bronze-gold tresses shine as the sunset shines on a mountain lagoon.