“By the gods of this b—— cannibal isle, I’ll pulverise him to dust! Macka! Macka! Where art thou, old missionary of the South Seas? I’m yer man!”
The Rajah turned a ghastly yellowish hue. He made a rush but he was too late—Gabrielle caught him by the coat and tripped him up. He fell headlong to the floor.
A mighty wind like the first breath of warning from a tornado seemed to blow as a hoarse voice, vibrant with pent-up emotion, said: “In there, say ye! You god-damned heathen!”
Gabrielle stared, petrified with astonishment; there before her stood the big rude man who had disturbed Hillary and herself when she sat singing on the banyan bough by the lagoon in Bougainville. If she was surprised, it is certain that Rajah Koo Macka was. He thought that the world had tumbled on his turbaned head as he fell. He struggled to his feet, and rushed outside the door of the tambu house.
“Stand up!” said Samuel Bilbao, confronting him quite calmly as he began to tuck up his coat sleeves. Hillary, who had made a rush for Macka, was stayed by Gabrielle’s hand. She had rushed forward and leapt into his arms. The attitude of the big Britisher as he stood there, cool as a cucumber, as calm as though he stood on a village green in England preparing to exchange fisticuffs in a five minutes’ contest, made every onlooker step back and form a half-circle behind Ulysses’s back.
“Put your fists up, Macka mine! Old Macka the missionary!” yelled Ulysses, as he struck the clasp-knife from the man’s hand and threw it, plop! like a tennis ball into the cook’s hand. The rest of the Sea Foam’s crew stood just behind, fronting the huddled natives in the shade of the stunted ivory-nut palms. Some had revolvers in hand ready to obey Bilbao their esteemed skipper’s wishes.
The Rajah made a desperate rush towards the white man. He saw that his only chance was to escape through the throng that had encircled him as he stood there hesitating.
No mercy shone in the depths of those clear, grey, English eyes; no sympathetic gleam for the swarthy coward who defiled girls, kidnapped husbands, wives, lovers and children, yet had not the courage to stand up and protect himself from the fists of a white man.
Ulysses stood with shoulders thrown back, and as the winds from the mountains blew his yellowish moustache-ends backwards, till they almost touched his shoulder curves, he looked a veritable Nemesis in dungaree pants and dilapidated helmet-hat. But a more relentless Nemesis lurked in the shadows of the jungle, waiting to put the finishing touch to the Papuan Rajah’s sinister career. It was Maroshe, his long-ago, cast-off wife, the Koiari maid into whose ears he had once breathed the sacred ritual vows, when he was in love with her.
She had been the most eager to give Bilbao the information he and Hillary sought on first coming ashore in that village at sunset. She had quickly understood why the white men were so anxious to get information concerning the Rajah’s whereabouts. She knew that they were seeking the white girl—her rival! The sudden turn of affairs had made her chuckle with delight. “The gods are kind to me,” she had said to herself. She had intended that very night to creep into the Rajah’s sleeping-chamber and deal with him according to the old prescribed rites of her creed, which had a special punishment for those who dare trample on a maiden’s vows. She had followed Bilbao and the crew stealthily up the track. She even heard Gabrielle’s astonished cry before she rushed into her own hut and made her secret preparations. And now she lay close in the shade of the jungle, prone on her belly like some half-reptilian, half-human creature, as she watched her old lover tremble before the glance of the stern papalagi. She held a goblet in her skinny hand; it was half filled with a dark fluid. On she crawled, hand over hand and knee over knee, nearer and nearer to the spot where Macka and Ulysses faced one another. She chuckled, half-woefully, at the thought of this dramatic opportunity which would give her her long-desired revenge. The Fates had willed it so. She had once really loved that man, and it would have been hard to have approached him whilst he slept in his old bapa’s tambu house. And there he was, standing in the presence of the white girl whose beauty inspired her with courage to give him the sacred draught.