“She hath given herself unto me!” so ran a thought through his mind. He lost control of his acquired civilised astuteness and began to press impassioned kisses on her upturned mouth. He felt her arms clasp him in a responsive embrace.
“Putih! Mine!” he whispered, his voice hoarse with passion. Her scented tresses fell about his face. He fiercely pulled the fringe of her bodice open at the neck and pressed burning kisses on the whiteness of her throat.
“Don’t! Don’t!” she cried softly. But he held her the tighter; it was a merciless grip. She had begun to struggle. He was surprised at her strength as she suddenly put forth her arms, clutched him by the throat with one hand and with the other caught him by the shoulder and pushed. For a moment he made little effort to ward her off. Slowly, to her delight, she felt him going back, backwards towards her cabin door as she pushed in her frenzy. And still she struggled and still she felt his big form receding till his turbaned head was half-an-inch out of the door. She gave a smothered cry of delight; she was winning in that terrible encounter that was a struggle of life and death to her. Alas! she had not reckoned with the cunning of that Papuan kidnapper. He almost smiled as he allowed her to force him back yet a little more. Even she half wondered why she was winning so easily. Then out shot his hand; at last she had enabled him to reach and grip hold of the handle of the cabin-door that opened outwards into the saloon; in a moment he had pulled it to; crash! it went as he slammed it and pushed the bolt!
She and he were alone, shut in the cabin. They stood facing one another in the dusk, like two half-baffled figures. Only the stars faintly visible through the port-hole told of the ocean world outside as Gabrielle looked first at the dark form before her and then out into the night. She could not scream as he seized her in a tight clasp. Only a moment and she had ceased to struggle, was crying softly to herself as he pressed burning kisses on her face and drew her towards him.
He continued his love-making ill far into the night. Although the girl was completely in the Rajah’s power, he still showed an unaccustomed restraint. Heathen though he was, he could, when occasion demanded, hold his passions in reserve. They would be gratified later, he told himself, as he gloated over the defenceless girl. She would be even more at his mercy in his native coastal village, in his own private dwelling.
And still the stars shone over the wide ocean-way of night. Only the sounds of the swelling sails and their muffled flop! flop! broke the silence, as the vessel rose to the swell and rolled like a helpless derelict on the silent tropic seas. Tramp! tramp! went the watch over head. Then someone in the forecastle began to sing; it came faint but distinct, some old Malayan chantey drifting aft as the wide wings of the wind moved across that great world of waters.
It was night-time, and three days after the Rajah’s cowardly attack, when Gabrielle heard the Malayan sailors singing one of their weird chanteys in a cheerful voice. She at once looked through the port-hole of her berth, wherein she had made herself a willing prisoner, only allowing the Malayan cabin-boy Tombo to enter with her meals. She stared aloft. The vessel at that very moment was altering its course. She distinctly noticed the apparent movement of the stars as the dark canvas sails veered. Again she heard the gabble and hustle as the helm was put hard over. It looked just as though the moon had given a frightened skid across the sky. They had just let the hatchway down with a bang, had finished pitching the dead victims of the hold overboard. But still the Rajah shouted his orders. He was calling in a strange language. She tried to understand, but not a word was familiar to her. “What’s it all mean? Are we there?” she wondered, as she looked round her in despair. She gazed to the southward. Her heart gave a tremendous thump as she sighted, a long, low line of dark coast to the starboard. Then she knew that at last the Bird of Paradise lay off the dreaded coast of wild New Guinea.
Words cannot describe the misery of Gabrielle’s heart as she saw the coast-line of that strange, rugged land and realised that when once she was ashore there she would be completely in the Rajah’s power. It seemed to her that a great shadow from that mountainous world swept across the sea and struck her soul with despair as a solitary cloud, like a castaway’s raft, crept under the moon. Her hair fluttered to the cool night breeze, her fingers clutched the rim of the port-hole as she still stared towards that desolate, terrible coast-line. But had Gabrielle Everard been able to look astern and see across half-a-thousand miles what a sight would have cheered her despairing heart. She would have seen the Sea Foam dipping gracefully, bounding onward, travelling south-south-west across the coral sea beneath the tropic moon with all sail set, and Mango Pango dancing on deck, while the great Ulysses, with hand placed sentimentally on his heart, thundered out:
“Oh, I went down South for to see my Sal,
Singing Polly-wolly-doodle all the way!”
and Hillary, still full of romance and hope, playing the violin like some pagan god, accompanying each song the big man sang.