Gabrielle of the Lagoon: A Romance of the South Seas

by W. H. Myddleton

Only the devil himself could adequately describe the deeper meanings of the ritual of the tambu houses in New Guinea.

The tambu house in which Gabrielle found herself was a low-roofed apartment about forty feet long and thirty wide, not more than twelve feet in height. Its rows of windows consisted of small circles cut in the wooden walls, something after the style of port-holes in a ship. It was lit by the artificial glimmer of coconut-oil hanging lamps, which seemed only to add to its shadowy mystery. These innumerable oil lamps, hanging from beams over the wide pae pae (stage platform), were for the prime purpose of revealing the attractions of the half-caste girls who regularly performed at the tambu fetishes. These girls were mostly Polynesians, Arafuras, Bugis, Dyaks and a bastard type of Chinese and Melanesian, mostly girls who had been brought to the coast of New Guinea by the blackbirding ships when they had been children. Such was the mixed group of feminine frailty that was performing and dancing when Gabrielle entered the tambu temple. The stage walls were richly decorated with scarlet and white hibiscus blossom that hung on woven threads. The floors were thickly covered with ornamental matting. On the walls hung the revered fetish ceremonial implements and sacred taboo remnants, such as—skulls, old men’s beards, dead maidens’ hair, threaded human teeth and all that was weirdly suggestive of death and orgyism. The front of the wide stage was adorned by the hideous fetish idols. The middle figure was about eight feet high, had four arms, and seemed to be carved out of one solid lump of wood. It had one mighty yellow tooth issuing from the carven mouth, which leered in an everlasting grin that did not seem out of place when the grotesque dances were in full swing. A serpent-like thing was twined about its wooden arms and again round the waists of the two somewhat smaller images that stood one on each side of it. A look of agony was wonderfully expressed by the swollen veins on the chest, arms and forehead, as the fanged mouth of the strong embracing reptile gripped the right ear of that symbolical piece of New Guinea sculptural art. It represented some tragic legendary Malayan episode; indeed it was a kind of Laocoon of heathen-land; but instead of being clothed with those symbols of beauty that exalt a lump of carven insensate wood to a higher state, it was clothed with symbols of ugliness and lust. And the barbarian sculptor who had achieved this revolting but still artistic result had fashioned the idol on the left-hand side with feminine attributes that were physically expressed from the full wooden lips down to the twisted ivory-nailed toes of the delicate feet. Notwithstanding the allegorical hint of sexuality in the huge middle figure (its hideous character was intensified by Nature’s artless handiwork, for fat-bodied green palm worms crawled in and out of its stretched wooden lips), it was a truly wonderful bit of work; it stood there telling with an indisputable voice how strong a force man’s passions often are.

Even the Rajah had the grace to stand between Gabrielle and that monstrous wooden trio as they passed them by. The Rajah was getting wary. A look in Gabrielle’s eyes at times had told him that a fire smouldered in her soul. And once while on board his schooner she had lifted his set of crockery presented to him by the Astrolabe German Missionary Society (together with an illuminated address) and smashed them to atoms at his feet, calling him such names as he deserved. As for the tambu dancers who stood by the idols in a semi-nude state, armlets and leglets and threaded shells jingling on their moving limbs, they were as wonderful in their way as the South Sea Laocoon. For in some unexplainable way they did the very things that the idol so hideously expressed; yet they did not inspire an observer with that artistic admiration and feeling of terror which the idol inspired. Had it not been for the love of life that burns so fiercely in youth and her newly awakened love for Hillary—for Gabrielle still believed that he would cross her path again—she would have snatched up one of the barbarian scimitars that lay by the floor-mats of that hellish abode and dramatically ended her existence.

Koo Macka had fiercely gripped her by the arm as he led her along the centre transept. The rich scents that came from the abundant wreaths of exotic flowers on the walls and in calabashes on the floor made Gabrielle feel sick. A large, black-winged cockatoo, with its right foot chained to a small pedestal on which it stood, looked sideways at Gabrielle and started to yell its discordant language in a most vicious way as it snapped its big curved beak. It was evidently some sacred tambu bird, for the high priest gazed in horror as the bird flapped its wings, and glanced up and down at Gabrielle’s white face and golden-bronze tresses that tumbled over her shoulders.

“Shut up!” yelled the Rajah. In a moment the bird closed its wings and seemed subdued. This obedience of the bird to the will of the Rajah made a great impression among the superstitious throng. The chanting maids and tambu chiefesses lifted their thick-lipped faces and shouted: “Cowan! Lao Rajahah! a loca Laki, putih bunga bini!” (“The Rajah has brought unto his people a beautiful flower-like wife!”)

Hideous stout old cannibals lifted coco-nut goblets to their blubbery lips and forcibly expressed by hideous winks and squints their inward thoughts about the white girl’s beauty.

It must indeed have been a novel sight to see that bronze-golden-haired girl led towards the festival altars by their mighty Rajah Koo Macka. As to what the girl herself was thinking, she was utterly ignorant of the cause of the hubbub and the barbarian cheering around her. The liquor that had been forced between her lips had quite dazed her brain. As Macka’s old bapa came forward from the front row of the squatting audience and led the tambu dancers up to the stage, Gabrielle only stared as one stares on a strange scene in a dream. She didn’t move a muscle as rows of mop-headed Papuan, Malayan and half-caste girls stood in a row and then threw their limbs about till the treduca shells made music that harmonised with the lewdness displayed before her happily unconscious eyes.

It was only when the Rajah stepped forward, attired in full civilised costume that proclaimed him a member of New Guinea Rajahship, that the girl began to tremble. The large scarlet waist-sash, the magnificent, coiled-up turban and the robe that fell to his feet only made him appear the more terrifying to her eyes.

In a moment he had seized her by the wrist. And in her helpless terror she did all that he demanded of her—lifted her arms to the roof, chanted and sang a song with strange words in a strange tongue. Just by her side sat a raving old tiki-priest; he was the finest bit of hideousness extant; even the big wooden idol before which he repeatedly prostrated himself had pleasant features compared to that living representative of the tambu temple creed.

Directly he had finished his weird incantations and hollow-voiced acclamations he made the tribal sign to the handsome Rajah, who thereupon immediately stooped and kissed Gabrielle, first on the mouth, then on her feet, as he fell prone before her. Then he rose, looked into her eyes and began to chant. To his astonishment the girl looked up at him, a half smile on her sad face as she swayed her flower-bedecked form and began to swerve with inimitable grace to the tum-tum of the barbarian orchestra. She lifted her hands to the wooden ceiling, softly chanting an old Malayan melody that neither they nor she had ever heard before. The music of her voice seemed to hold the wild audience spellbound. And when the girl put forth her hands and responded in a wonderful way to the mystical passes of the Rajah’s small, womanish hands, the whole motley crew waved their dusky arms in delight. The dancing maidens threw their limbs in envious rapture, and tried in vain to imitate the rhythmical grace of Gabrielle’s trance-like movements. For all their wild acts, and the jingle of their brass and bone leglets and armlets as they made their wretched limb-tossings, their performance was as nothing compared to the white girl’s wondrous grace.