Hillary still held the man’s hand, to give himself courage as well as to comfort the old man.
“’Ave a drop er rum, boy?” said the old man. Hillary did not hesitate. He held the tumblerful of liquid to his lips and swallowed the lot. Everard clutched the youth’s trembling hand and almost shed tears as the rum loosened the apprentice’s lips and he told the ex-sailor all that he felt for his daughter. Even Hillary was astonished to find that saturnine old drunkard so tender-hearted, so friendly towards him.
After Everard had taken terrible oaths and sworn vengeance against the Rajah, he finished up by yelling into Hillary’s ears that he would give Hillary, or anyone else, two hundred pounds if they could trace Gabrielle’s whereabouts. Hillary took the distracted father’s hand and said: “I don’t want money; I only want to see Gabrielle, to bring your daughter back to you, and take her away from that man.” The apprentice couldn’t persuade himself to mention the name of the man who had apparently done him this great injury. Hillary had only seen the Papuan Rajah twice, but the man’s face was as vividly before him as if he had known him for a thousand years.
At that moment he did not want Gabrielle’s father to see his eyes. He felt ashamed that they should be dimmed with emotion. He was overcome by the feeling that he was the first to love and have faith in woman; the first to have idealistic views about honour and the ways of men; the first to run away to sea with fourpence in his pocket to fight the world, to aspire for fame and wealth, only to find himself sleeping out in a strange land—in a dust-bin with the lid on! But at the thought of Gabrielle’s manner on the wreck, her tears, her eagerness to fly to Honolulu with him, the look in her eyes, his dark thoughts fled like bats from his brain, and once again hope reasserted itself.
Hillary took the old ex-sailor’s hand and promised to stop the night with him. “Don’t let us waste the time, it will be dark soon,” said the apprentice. After a little rebellious talk Everard promised to drink no more, then putting on his cap he went off as obediently as a child to make inquiries. And so Everard went down to Rokeville, while Hillary went off on a voyage of discovery into the surrounding villages. His faith in Gabrielle had by now completely returned. He knew that she had strange notions, and had many girl friends among the Polynesian natives who dwelt with the native tribes. He so far recovered his spirits that he even whistled as he went off down the track. He made straight for the native village of Ackra Ackra, where the great head-hunter chief Ingrova dwelt. It was near to sunset when he at length passed through the great forest of giant bread-fruits that divided the native villages from the south-east shore. As he entered the tiny pagan citadel the women and girls greeted him with their friendly salutations and the usual cries for tam-bak (tobacco).
The unlit coco-nut-oil lamps were swinging from the banyan boughs and flamboyants that sheltered the small huts and palavanas as he strode across the rara (cleared space). The shaggy-headed native women clapped their hands as he passed. Some of the elder tattooed men and chiefesses puffed their short clay pipes and stared stolidly upon him. Just by the village patch Maga Maroo, pretty Silva Sula and some more dusky flappers threw their brown-stockinged legs skyward with delight as the dusky Lotharios gave wild encores in a strange barbarian tongue. Even Hillary smiled as he saw the artless, picturesque vanity of the girls as they sported their fine clothes on the tiny promenade that was the lamp-lit Strand of their little forest city. He saw at a glance by those demonstrative exhibitions of European toilets, and fringed swathings of yellow and scarlet sashes, that the artful traders had been that way exchanging their trumpery jewellery and gaudy silks for copra and shells.
Arriving before the Chief Ingrova’s palatial palavana, Hillary was pleased to find that the great chief was at home. As the big, muscular, mop-headed islander stood before him, he made numerous stealthy inquiries to find out if the chief had the slightest hint of the girl’s whereabouts. But seeing that the chief was quite sincere in his protestations that he hadn’t seen her for quite two weeks, Hillary at once told him that she was missing from home. Hillary had persistently had the idea in his head that Gabrielle might be hiding in one of the villages in fear of her father’s wrath, for he could not help thinking that the old man had had a row with the girl and had deliberately kept that fact from him. The aged chief, who was a fine example of his race, swayed his war-club and wanted to go off in search of the missing girl at once. His eyes blazed with delight at the prospect of obtaining the head of the miscreant who had lured the girl from her home. The chief had a fierce idea of equity and justice; he was a stern disciplinarian in following the tenets of his religion, the code of morals laid down by his tribal ancestors. Indeed it was well known that he would not deviate from his ideas of honest finance by one shell or coco-nut. And it can be recorded that the mythological gods and legendary personages who were the great apostles of his creed were more to him in his inborn faith than the Biblical wonders of the Christian creed are to nine-tenths of the Sunday church-goers who worship at its altars.
Hillary listened silently to the chief’s moralising and his loud lamentations over Gabrielle’s absence from home and felt assured that the chief knew nothing about it. It was true enough, Ingrova had never heard of Macka, otherwise Hillary might have been considerably enlightened, for the old chief was usually friendly to the white men. The apprentice gave the chief a plug of ship’s tobacco, then implored him to kill no one and secure no head for the adornment of his hut till he was quite certain that it was the head of the real culprit. Though Hillary was convinced that Ingrova had spoken the truth, he still nursed the idea that Gabrielle was somewhere in the vicinity of her father’s home. He could not bring himself to believe that Gabrielle had really bolted or been carried off by the Rajah. The idea of such a thing had left his mind. He had thought of her manner on the wreck only an hour before. “A girl so innocent that I wouldn’t utter a coarse word in her presence—she—go off with an abomination like that—a dark man—impossible!” had been his final summing up, and then in his vehemence he had kicked his Panama hat sky-high.
Hillary’s face was flushed with the thoughts that surged through his head as he turned back and, gazing at Ingrova, said: “Look here, Ingrova, old pal, if you can find any trace whatsoever of the girl I’ll give you a lot of money and my best grey suit of clothes, see?” The apprentice knew that he was offering the chief inexhaustible wealth by promising him a suit of clothes. For if a Solomon Islander has one weakness it is a heartaching desire to possess European clothes.
In a moment Ingrova’s ears were alert; his deep-set eyes twinkled with avarice. He immediately rubbed his dusky hands together and, lifting one hand, swore allegiance to Hillary’s cause. “I find girler if she bouter ’ere!” said he, bringing his war-club down with a terrific whack on the fallen bread-fruit trunk as they stood there in the silence of the forest.