“I’ve got money, I’ve been saving for years, saving for ’er, but she didn’t know!” Everard suddenly exclaimed. Then he looked at Hillary and continued: “Get a schooner; hire one; I’ll pay! I’ll spend a thousand to get Gabby back and smash Macka up!” As he finished he brought his spare wooden leg down crash on the table. Then he gripped the apprentice by the hand. “Don’t leave me yet, boy, I’m nervous. In the morning you can go out into the bay and see if you can ’ire a schooner. It’s three weeks’ sail to the New Guinea coast. Find out exactly where his blasted coastal village is. Get all perticulars about ’im.”
“Do you really think he’s kidnapped Gabrielle? It seems extraordinary in these enlightened times!” gasped the young apprentice, as he thought of Gabrielle on a three weeks’ voyage with Rajah Macka, the ex-missionary.
“Don’t think! She’s gone! Where is she?” Then the old man roared with dreadful vehemence: “Why, damn it all, I’ve been in the slave-trading line! I’ve crept into the native villages by night and stolen the girls as they slept beneath the palms! Cloryformed ’em! Smothered ’em! Tied ’em hup! Shot the b—— chiefs as they rushed from their dens to save their darters and wives! I ’ave! I ’ave!”
“No!” That monosyllable expressed all the horror of which Hillary was capable over Everard’s sudden confession and his private thoughts as to Gabrielle’s fate on that schooner with Macka.
“It’s retribution—that’s what it is,” wailed the old man.
Hillary took his hand and did his best to soothe him. Then he lit the oil lamp and sat down by the weeping ex-sailor.
“My Gabby’s like ’er mother, beautiful gal, but she’s ’aunted in ’er ’eart by them spirits of the Papuan race. ’Er mother seed a spirit-woman spring out from under the bed one night afore she died!”
“A spirit-woman!” gasped Hillary. Then he continued: “Do you mean to tell me that there are such things as spirit-women running about Bougainville?”
The old man looked vacantly into the apprentice’s eyes for a second, then said languidly, as though, he was too grieved to talk: “I seed a shadder meself ther other night, ’ere in this very room!”
Hillary looked sideways at the empty rum bottles in the corner of the room, then back again at the old man’s bleary eyes. “He’s got a touch of the D.T.’s,” thought the young apprentice.