After seeing that sight Gabrielle became seriously ill, mentally as well as physically. She lay sleepless through the night and longed for forgetfulness. The scene she had witnessed as they cast the kidnapped dead into the sea had completely horrified her. In her mind over and over again she found herself counting the dead bodies she had seen thrown overboard. It took her that way. She had often heard the mission men talk about the cruelty of the kidnapping business, but it required such a sight as she had witnessed to make her realise the truth of what she had heard. True enough, it is hard for anyone to realise the horrors of the slave traffic till they see the actual results with their own eyes.
Possibly the great poet will never be born who could write the poem that would adequately describe the Brown Man’s Burden so that the Western world could read and realise that the White Man’s Burden is not the only one that men have to bear through spreading Western principles among the islands of remote seas.
Gabrielle got out of her bunk that same night and pushed every available article of furniture against her cabin door. She realised what she was in for. It was the first hint she had had that she was not the only wretched victim that trembled in fear on that ship. And as she lay sleepless, thinking of everything and of those trembling, terror-stricken girls and youths that made the cargo in the airless, fevered hold not twenty feet from her bunk, she half envied her own terrible position.
Next day when the Rajah noticed the look of horror in the girl’s eyes as he rattled off his vers libre he retired as gracefully as possible and quickly arrayed himself in his most attractive attire of Rajahship.
He placed the rich, scarlet-hued turban on his skull. He tied the yellow waist-sash about him so that the bow fell coquettishly down at his left hip. He even cleaned his teeth with cigar ash and manipulated an artistic curl at the ends of his dark moustache. Then he proceeded to haunt Gabrielle again. He read the Bible aloud; he put such well-simulated sincerity into his melodious voice that Gabrielle rubbed her eyes and half wondered if she had dreamed that terrible sight of the night before. As she sat at the low cuddy table and the dark man sat right opposite her with the knees of his long, thin legs bunched beneath the table, she listened to his splendid lies. He went so far as to tell her how he had a great reputation for good works, of how he roamed the seas searching to redress the wrongs done to helpless girls, men and native women! He swore that his ship roamed the South Seas expressly to attempt to put down slave traffic! He knew! he knew! that the girl had some inkling of the kind of vessel she was on.
“Gabrielle,” said he, “you knower not my troubles, and how when I do capture slave-ship I have to rescue the victims and put them down in the hold of this vessel till sucher time as I can take them to some isle where they can be safe till they are returned to their own people!”
“Could it be true?” was Gabrielle’s inward thought, as she watched the man’s face and saw nothing but the light of a proud achievement in his eyes. And it must be admitted that there was some truth in all that he told the girl about his reputation. For was it not well known from Apia to Dutch New Guinea that Rajah Koo Macka was a great Christian Rajah? And was it not true that he had been in receipt of thousands of pounds that had been collected through the kind medium of Christian societies who were interested in the noble endeavour to put down slave traffic in the South Seas? And who can deny the fact that thousands of men and women in England had unconsciously contributed towards the expenses incurred by the Rajah in fitting out his ship, the Bird of Paradise, for the sole purpose of abducting natives and for following his monstrous inclinations.
And there he sat in his cosy cuddy, a splendid example of the civilised, converted Papuan invested with a hideous power by weak-minded charity-givers who saw no just cause for their charity in their own country.
The Rajah was a living libel on true missionary work and on the reputation of the missionaries themselves. With others of his profession, he had often let his helpless merchandise out on hire into the hands of wealthy half-caste and sensual white men. And when native girls gave birth to half-caste children soon after their arrival on the sugar plantations as far away as Brisbane, the innocent missionaries got the blame for what had happened to the girls who had been contaminated after leaving their native isles. But all this is only a detail in the Rajah’s life. He was a genius in his way. No man living would have had the patience to talk and talk, and sing and chant as he did to his beautiful, helpless prisoner. God only knows how he got Gabrielle to believe in him again. Perhaps it wasn’t so strange when one thinks of her tender years and the mighty pretence of the astute Rajah. Night after night he came to her and went on his bended knees. Sometimes he held the Bible in his hand, babbled over its pages and said: “O Gabri-ar-le, give thy purest love unto me and I swear on this divine book that I will take thee back unto thy father.”
On hearing this Gabrielle’s heart leapt with hope. “Perhaps he isn’t all bad and has relented,” she thought. Then she glanced steadily into the Papuan’s eyes and said: “I swear that I will bear no ill-feeling towards you if you will only take me home again.” Then with that wonderful instinct that women reveal when in such a grievous pass, she added: “I can easily say that I was washed out to sea in a canoe that night and that your ship picked me up, and then no blame will be attached to you; you may even be rewarded. Will you take me back to Bougainville?” Saying this, she looked earnestly into the heathen’s eyes and continued: “Father was very drunk that night, you know; he heard or guessed nothing of all that happened; he wouldn’t dream of the truth.”