Gabrielle of the Lagoon: A Romance of the South Seas

by W. H. Myddleton

“You know not what men of my race love like, what we would do for a white girl such as you, Gabri-ar-le,” he muttered, as he glanced sideways at her.

Gabrielle saw the look in those flashing eyes of his. She trembled as she realised how completely she was in his power, and how once she had been fascinated by his voice and his handsome mien. Even then, at times, she half believed that he had repented the wrong he had done her. And the girl was hardly to blame for her credulity, for he never tired of pouring his flamboyant rhetoric in Malayan vers libre into her ears. He had some mighty faith in his maudlin Mohammedanistic babblings over love, winds, seas, stars, night, God and death. He was as crammed with pretended artlessness as he was of villainy.

Sometimes the girl felt strangely calm. The religious element that brings faith and comfort to men and women in the direst moments of life was part of her special birthright. She became more resigned to her lot and even went so far as to read some of the old books that she had discovered in the cuddy locker. So did she endeavour to stifle her thoughts. Many, many times she thought of the apprentice. What did he think of her sudden absence from Bougainville, of her not turning up at the trysting-place by the lagoon? She thought of his impulsive nature. She guessed that he must have gone straight to her home to see what had become of her. She thought of a thousand things that he would do in his attempt to discover her whereabouts. She imagined how her father raved, and must still be raving, perhaps grieving over her disappearance. But she never dreamed of all that really happened after she had left Bougainville in the blackbirding ship. When she recalled the incidents of the old derelict lying on the rocks off Bougainville and of Hillary’s boyish but earnest declaration of love she trembled in her anguish. She remembered the look in his eyes, the wild, fond sayings that had come spontaneously to his lips. Then she laid her head down on the cuddy table and wept bitterly.

One night when the Bird of Paradise had been at sea about two weeks the heat was so terrific that she implored the Rajah to let her sit out on deck. He was obdurate and would not hear of such a thing. “No, no, putih bunga (white flower)” was his only reply, as he lapsed into the Malayan tongue, speaking as though to himself. Then he walked away and disappeared forward. In a moment Gabrielle made up her mind and had slipped out of the cuddy, determined to go on deck and breathe the cool night air. She almost cried out as she rushed, plomp! into the arms of the half-caste mate. “Savo, maro, Cowan, bunga,” whispered the burly mulatto, as he lost his mental balance at seeing the beauty of the girl. He caught her in his arms, clutched her flesh like some fierce animal, put his vile lips to her white throat and breathed hotly on her face. He tried to press his blubbery lips against her own. In a moment the girl had managed to release herself from that hateful clasp.

“What’s the matter, my pretty putih bunga, marva awaya?” said Koo Macka, suddenly coming up, as the mulatto mate slipped hastily along the deck out of sight.

“Nothing is the matter; I simply felt ill, faint; I’m better now,” said Gabrielle fearfully, as she swiftly realised that it would not do to make an enemy of the mulatto mate. For a moment the Rajah looked suspiciously around him, then he sternly ordered her to go back at once into the saloon.

And so it was that Gabrielle sat in her bunk that night and stared through the port-hole so that she might get a breath of the cool midnight breeze that drifted at intervals across the hot tropic seas.

The stars were shining in their thousands as she sat there watching and crying softly to herself. She could plainly see the bluish, ghost-like gleam of the horizon, far away, as she stared out of the cabin port-hole. It was then that she once more heard a mysterious wail coming from somewhere out in the silence of the night. Her lips went dry with fright as she gazed and listened in her terror. She distinctly observed a shadow slip across the deck. Then the wail came again and was followed by a deep, retching moaning and sounds of the hushed voices of men who were speaking in a strange language. “What does it all mean?” she muttered to herself, as once more her ears caught the indistinct utterances of agony. And still she listened and felt quite sure that what she heard was no trick of her imagination, but was some last appeal of helplessness to relentless men ere they strangled their victim. In the terror of all that she felt her overwrought brain became strangely calm. She sat quite still and watched in a dazed way, crouching in her bunk, her eyes peering through the port-hole. She gazed up at the swaying sails as they glided on beneath the stars. The wind had shifted to the south-west, for she saw the canvas veer and darken patches of starry sky as the yards went round and the crew aloft chanted some Malayan chantey. So weirdly bright was the tropic sky that the rigging and the forms of the toiling crew were distinctly outlined with the decks, sails, spars. She could even discern the long cracks of the deck planks as the ethereal light of far-off worlds pulsed in the sky and sent a glimmer down between the masts and sails. A fearful curiosity overcame the fright she first felt as she saw three stalwart, mop-headed men standing by the lifted hatchway amidships. The scene was directly along the deck facing the cuddy’s cabin port-hole from which she stared. The sight that met her astonished eyes made her tremble: the three swarthy, demon-like men were grabbing the bodies of the dead which were being passed up from the vessel’s fetid hold! Some of the crew were down below busily pushing those limp, pathetic figures up to the outstretched hands of those on deck. Gabrielle knew they were dead bodies, there was no mistaking their limpness as the heads of the silent forms fell first in one direction then in another. And still they pushed up the limp bodies of dead native girls and youths, and one by one passed them along to that crew of sea-thugs, who carelessly pushed them over the bulwarks into the sea! Gabrielle distinctly heard the splash as they fell.

She half fancied that she heard long-drawn groans coming from the direction of the sea. Nor was she mistaken, for they pitched the dying overboard too! The crew of slavers were not over-sensitive in such matters.

The girl was still staring, dumbfounded, when the men softly closed the hatchway over that terrible drama of life below. Then she heard the dull thuds of the locks being secured and rammed home. They even placed the thick canvas covering over the hatchway again and so closed the cracks that mercifully had let a breath of fresh air into that breathing mass of shrieking merchandise—kidnapped native girls, men and women! As soon as Gabrielle saw those demon undertakers steal away into the shadows towards the forecastle she realised that it was no nightmare, no horror of an imaginary world that she had felt and witnessed. It was all real enough. In a flash her brain had realised all that it really meant. She remembered how her own father had talked about the horrors of the blackbirding ships, and how the huddled victims died in the fetid hold. She recalled how he had even confessed that he too had once dabbled in the slave traffic. And as she remembered she saw herself as a child again, listening in wonder at her father’s knees as he proudly told his beachcomber guests of the “glorious good old blackbirding days.”