“Bini mine! You are mine! I curse your race, curse your apostles, your Christ and all that you damnable Christians believe in!”
The girl stood trembling. What had happened, she wondered. A new feeling of hope flashed through her misery as the man continued to blaspheme and rave.
Gabrielle knew nothing about the schooner that had anchored off the village of Tumba-Tumba that afternoon. But the Rajah knew. He had watched the obstinate tacking of the schooner for three hours that afternoon as it persistently hugged the coast. And his apprehensions had been increased when it had finally anchored within a quarter of a mile from the shore where his own vessel the Bird of Paradise lay. For the blackbirding craft had returned the day before from the Bismarck Archipelago, after disposing of its remaining living freight in the various slave markets. There was little doubt in Macka’s mind as to why that craft was hugging the coast. He knew what white men were like in their wrath, and what they were likely to do when they discovered that a girl of their own race had been kidnapped in the same manner that they themselves had kidnapped thousands of natives. He knew that old Everard, drunkard though he was, would develop a mighty virtue when he discovered that his own daughter had met a kidnapping fate! He knew also that many of the Papuans and half-castes of the Solomon Isles had sailed with him on his blackbirding voyages, and so knew him for a blackbirder by night and a noble missionary by day. And, realising that those old shipmates of his would give him away for a bribe, he had come to Gabrielle with the intention of taking her farther along the coast. He was determined not to give her up after all his trouble and scheming.
“Gabri-ar-le, I comer you, for I wanter you to fly away from here. I go forth before dawn, we go together to Arfu where I have many friends and can make you great princess,” said he, lapsing in his fright into the old pidgin-English.
A look of horror leapt into the girl’s eyes.
“You promised—you know what you’ve promised about my going home to my father again?” she murmured.
The man turned his face away. Even he seemed ashamed as he turned aside and looked through the door out into the night. He put forth his hands in a pleading way: “Gabri-ar-le, you must, must come, I will——”
He said no more. He turned his head and then rushed to the door. What was that gabbling? A mob of curious natives, all excited and murmuring in a hubbub of expectation, were evidently coming up the track that led to the quiet tambu house.
“What’s that noise? Who are you fetching here?” shouted Gabrielle, as she heard the sounds coming nearer and nearer.
Then he heard it again—it was a sound that came to Macka’s ears like the trump of doom!—and to the girl’s ears like the voice of an angel. It was the sound of a big voice shouting in her own tongue, the English language: