Before midnight Everard lay in a drunken sleep. Hillary had made up a bed by the couch, but he couldn’t sleep. The idea of the girl being really abducted nearly sent him mad. Then he thought of Gabrielle’s strange talk on the hulk about shadow-women and of all that Everard had just told him about his wife’s being haunted by similar shadows. The idea of the shadow-woman haunted his mind in an unaccountable way, although he was naturally sceptical about such things as ghosts and enchantments.
He sat by the small open window of the bungalow and, as the scents of the orange-trees drifted in on the cool night zephyrs, thought over all he had read about sorcerers, of the haunting shadow-figures that played such a prominent part in the love affairs of the medieval ages. Then he looked out of the window on to the moon-lit landscape and saw the tall, feathery palms; he even heard the rattling of the derrick of some schooner that was leaving before dawn. He thought of Mango Pango singing her old legendary songs in a chanting voice as she peeled spuds and chopped up the indigestible bread-fruit and tough yams for dinner, and finally summed up his belief in spirits in the one word “Rot!”
And as old Everard lay just by him, snoring with a mighty bass snore, he felt half sorry that he couldn’t bring himself to believe implicitly that a shadowwoman had lured the girl away from her home and had stopped her from keeping the tryst.
“A shadow leaping about—preposterous! Sounds like Doctor Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Perhaps she’s been reading that book, and told her father about it while he was under the influence of drink,” reflected Hillary. He even brightened up as he persuaded himself that the girl’s wild sayings and her evident terror had all been brought about through reading that book. “She’s under the influence of Jekyll—that’s what’s the matter with this Everard family. Why, bless me, it’s all natural enough. I myself am out here in the Solomon Isles through reading books. I’d never have met Gabrielle, never heard of strangling shadows and that cursed Rajah Macka if it hadn’t been for Captain Marryat, Fenimore Cooper and Stevenson.”
The young apprentice began to brighten up considerably as he reflected over the whole business. Everard’s snores sounded quite musical. He even began to think that if a terrible tragedy had occurred and Gabrielle was abducted and he was destined to go off and search for her across the seas, it was not so dreadful as nothing happening at all.
So he thanked God that he was in the Solomon Isles, living amongst tattooed natives and strange old ex-sailormen who saw shadows and evil enchantresses dodging about their bungalow verandahs or racing under the moon-lit palms.
And as he pondered and listened to the faint, far-off thunder of the surf on the coral reefs off Felisi beach he heard the guttural voices of the German sailors singing a chantey as their grey tramp-steamer went out on the tide, bound for the Bismarck Archipelago. Old Everard was still wheezing heavily, and at last Hillary too fell asleep to the sound of that steady snore.
CHAPTER IX—THE HOMERIC SPIRIT
When Hillary awoke in the morning he found Everard in a most sober condition. “Boy, thank God you’re here; I’m down in the mouth. I’ve been thinking.” Then the old man looked wistfully at the apprentice and said: “You can’t go off to New Guinea and rescue my Gabrielle from that damned villain on your own, can you?”
“No, I don’t suppose I can,” responded the apprentice, as he sipped his tea and eagerly drank in the old ex-sailor’s words. He knew that Everard was a man of the world and a seafarer, although he was such a fool in his domestic affairs. He also knew that Everard knew more about hiring schooners than he did. Indeed Hillary had found it a hard enough job to secure the most menial berth on board the boats. So he felt that to get a schooner to sail specially out of port on his behalf was a dubious prospect, to say the least.