Gabrielle watched him. She was terribly ill, too dazed to protest. She was alone on the seas with this man and what could she do? Her final response to his miserable hypocrisy was to burst into a violent fit of weeping.
For three or four days she was quite unable to move. It was only through the careful nursing of the Malayan cabin-boy, a frizzly headed, bright-eyed little fellow, that she was at last encouraged to take food. He was a child, and so he appealed to Gabrielle. The very innocence of his eyes as he stared in delightful curiosity at her golden hair and white arms when he crept in with the food to her bunk cheered her as much as she could be cheered under such circumstances.
Sometimes she would lie there helpless and think that she was mad, strange fancies floating through her brain. And sometimes Macka would step softly into the dingy saloon and play on the melancholy organ that he had once used in his tribal mission-rooms. His voice would tremble with passionate appeal and subtle seductiveness as he breathed forth Malayan melodies that haunted Gabrielle’s ears. Those melodies had a terrible influence over the girl, and one night when the vessel was rolling wildly, being buffeted along before a typhoon, the girl screamed out from her bunk: “Stop! Stop! I’ll go mad if you sing that strange thing again!”
Then the Rajah ceased as obediently as a scolded child and softly crept away. He knew the potent magic of those heathen Malayan melodies! He knew! He knew! And when he had passed out on to the vessel’s deck Gabrielle called out: “Tombo! Tombo!” In a moment the little Papuan boy rushed into her cabin.
“Whater you wanter? Whater matter, nicer vovams?”
“Tombo, what’s that shadow-thing that runs about the deck at night? I saw it through the port-hole last night.” Then she said: “And I heard faint cries, wails. What was it? What does it all mean, Tombo?”
Tombo made no reply with his lips, but he softly nestled up against the girl and looked up into her eyes with terrible earnestness. Then he shook his head and said: “I looker after you, Misser Gaberlelle.” Suddenly the boy rushed from the girl’s side and out of the cuddy in fright.
Gabrielle listened and heard a scream: the Rajah had called the boy and, meeting him on the deck, had kicked him. The Papuan skipper had noticed that the kid was a bit too communicative with his kidnapped prisoner. Possibly he thought that the boy might let out the truth about the ship and give Gabrielle some hint as to why it sailed by night with all lights out, as it tacked on its course far off the beaten track of trading ships.
It was quite a week before Gabrielle ventured out of the small cuddy’s berth and entered the saloon. Even when she did so she was apparently so weak that she was obliged to secure the assistance of little Tombo, who held her hand as she wandered about. The Rajah immediately began his sinuous overtures and muttered violent protestations of love into her ears. At times the Papuan could hardly conceal his temper when the girl persistently pestered him with questions, asking him where the Bird of Paradise was bound for.
“You noa worry. You are all right. I take you across the seas and some days you go back to your peoples—when you lover me!” he would say, as he gave a look of deep meaning that the girl persistently pretended not to understand. He would not allow her to walk out on deck unless he were close by. His hungry eyes seemed ever on the alert. Probably he had a fixed idea in his brain that the girl would make another attempt to take her life. And still he swore most earnestly by the virtue of the Christian apostles that he had only kidnapped her from her father’s homestead because of his overpowering love for her.