Gabrielle of the Lagoon: A Romance of the South Seas

by W. H. Myddleton

“For I went down south for to see my Sal,

Singing Polly-wolly-doodle all the day.

For I’m off to Lousianna for to see my Susiannah,

Singing Polly-wolly-doodle all the way!”

And all the while he made gallant signs to the two pretty Polynesian girls who had rushed from the store hard by to see who sang so loudly and well. At the close of each verse he placed his hand on his heart and bowed to the girls in such a way that their awestruck eyes fairly shone in the sudden glory of it all. Heaven knows what land and among what people he had been reared in his youth, but it was certainly a bow that would not have shamed an actor in any courtly love scene. The traders and sunburnt shellbacks—a mixture of various nationalities, yellowish, whitish, greenish and olive-hued men, decorated with a multitudinous variety of whiskers and beards—stamped their sea-booted feet and thumped their rum mugs till the shanty vibrated to their hilarious appreciation.

Suddenly Ulysses caught sight of Hillary. For a moment he stared at the apprentice in surprise. Hillary became the cynosure of all eyes as the shellbacks looked over their shoulders at him. “You! You here!” he yelled. Then he strode forward and, bending himself with laughter, struck Hillary on the back with his open hand, nearly fracturing his collar bone.

“How’s the gal! By the heathen gods of these sun-boiled Solomon Isles, she was a real bewt!” Saying this, he gave a massive wink, pushed his antediluvian helmet hat on one side, stood upright till his head bashed against the grog bar’s roof and shouted: “Give the boy a drink. Hey there, you son of a gorilla potman, bring us a deep sea for two!”

In a moment the bar-keeper disappeared to obey that mighty voice. Bringing the drinks, he obsequiously placed them on the counter and asked for the wherewithal. The onlooking shellbacks rubbed their eyes and chuckled in their glee as Ulysses yelled: “Money! Damn yer cheek to think I pay drink by drink!” Saying that, he brought his fist down with such a crash on the bar that old Parsons without more hesitation ticked off the drinks on his big account slate that hung behind the bar and trembled in some fear.

Hillary buried his nose in the cool liquor. He wanted a drink badly, but not so much to quench his thirst as to drown his thoughts.

No presence in the world could be more welcome to the young apprentice than that of the big man standing amongst the motley crew of shellbacks. Those men were all Hillary’s opposites, so far as temperament goes, and so all the more welcome to him in his sorrow. Nothing worried them. They were the grand philosophers of Bougainville, for each night they summed up the whole mystery of life and creation with an infallible certainty.

The supreme personality inside that grog bar was the giant stranger who had disturbed Gabrielle and Hillary in the forest and had now recognised the apprentice. Hillary’s new-found friend, for such he turned out to be, had an individuality worth a thousand ordinary people. The very expression of his face was infectious as his eyes roamed over the bar and fathomed the weakness and strength of the faces round the room. Yes, Ulysses was a judge; only one glance and he knew which man was likely to stand a drink with the least argument. He had only been a visitor to the bar for a few days when Hillary appeared on the scene, and yet he was the acknowledged king of beachcomber-land. Parsons’s bar echoed with wild songs, laughter and impromptu oaths of glee as he sang. Neither Hillary nor the shellbacks had ever heard or seen anything like him before. And the tales he told! He’d been everywhere! He swallowed half-a-pint of rum at one gulp. Then he took a large parchment chart from his capacious inside pocket, unfolded it on the bar and made the shellbacks and traders turn green with envy as he ran his huge forefinger along the curves and lines of the latitudes and longitudes of endless seas. He told of remote isles where pearls lay hidden that he alone knew. Millions of them! Then he looked unblushingly into the faces of those grizzly, sunburnt men as they stuck their goatee whiskers out in astonishment and, bending over his map once more, ran his huge forefinger up to the north-west, right up to Sumatra in the Malay Archipelago, and switched off to the Loo-choo Isles in the Yellow Sea. “Treasure hidden there,” said he, giving a potent sidelong wink before he ran his finger, bang! right across the wide Pacific Ocean down to the Paumotu Group and onward south-west to the tropic of Capricorn. His descriptive ability was marvellous: with upraised forefinger and laughing eyes he described the weird inhabitants of remote uncharted isles and the beauty of their native women. Even the astounded Polynesian maids sighed when his countenance flushed in some rapturous thought as he re-described the wondrous beauty of maids who dwelt on those remote isles of the wine-dark seas. He hinted of tattooed queens who had favoured his presence! He had ascended thrones! Discarded kings had sat, and still sat, forlorn in their isolation, cursing their heathen queens and the melancholy hour when Ulysses entered their barbarian halls. Not one Penelope but a score awaited his return.

“Well now! Who’d ’a’ thought it!” was the solitary comment of the most garrulous shellback to be found within a hundred miles south of the line. That remark was followed by a critical glance at Ulysses’ massive frame, his rugged, handsome face, the virile moustache and fierce-looking vandyke beard, to say nothing of the omniscient-looking eyes that flatly challenged anyone who would dare doubt their owner’s veracity. Hillary took to him like a shot. He made up his mind to keep him in sight or die in the attempt. The young apprentice felt that it had been almost worth his while to have travelled the world if only to run across that magnificent vagabond. “He’s the man! He’ll find Macka, polish him off the earth and save Gabrielle. He’ll hire a schooner if a schooner’s to be hired on this planet!” reflected Hillary, and he wasn’t far wrong in his swift summary of Ulysses’ character. Then he took a moderate sip of his rum, for he had laid a half-crown on the bar and called for drinks, and Ulysses with inimitable grace had gazed admiringly into the apprentice’s eyes, pocketed the change and treated him! This natural courtesy of the South Seas amused Hillary immensely. To him it was a true act of brotherhood; in its liberality it vividly illustrated the divine creed of “One-man-as-good-as-another.”

As the night wore on the shellbacks and traders began to roll off from the precincts of the bar, some to their ships in the bay and some to their native wives. As the last stragglers went out of the doorway and the oil lamps began to burn low Ulysses lay down on the long settee. He had taken up his abode in the shanty—never asked the bar-keeper’s permission, not he. He had simply taken possession of the bar by day and the settee by night. Hillary, who had lurked by his side through the whole evening, had quite thought to follow him home to his lodgings or back to his ship, for though Ulysses told much of his past he was extremely reticent about his present affairs, where he had come from or where he was bound for. Hillary was disheartened to find that he was stopping in the shanty for the night, but his need of that mighty personage made him determine not to be outdone.