CHAPTER VIII—HEATHEN LAND

CHAPTER VIII—HEATHEN LANDIn the morning old Everard awoke with a swollen head.“Gabby! Gabrielle!” He shouted. Then, wondering why on earth the girl did not reply, he struggled to his feet, opened the door and went up the three steps that led into her bedroom. Her bed was neatly made—it had not been slept in. He was so puzzled about it all that he looked out of the small open window to see if she’d fallen out—notwithstanding that the window was six feet from the ground. Then he passed his hand across his brow and remembered Rajah Macka’s visit. “Rajah Koo Macka!” he shouted.“God damn it! I don’t remember ’im going,” he mumbled, as he stumped his wooden leg about the room till the bungalow shook, and began whimpering like a fretful child, nearly falling down with sudden dizziness. Recovering himself, he got into a frightful rage and began to roar mighty oaths. “Gabby! Gabby! I’ll a-murder you! Where are you? Damn! My eyes! Ter ’ell with Macka! Ter ’ell with everything! Where are you?” Then he swung his wooden leg round, poked it right through the velvet-lined screen that Gabrielle had so neatly lined, and gave a terrible oath.Then he cooled down. The reaction had begun to set in. His brain began to reason over it all. He rushed outside, stumped about and stumped back again. “Where is she? What’s it all mean? She’s not the kind of girl to go off by night with Macka,” were his reflections. All day long he called and called. Then he left the bungalow and roamed away to the native villages in search of her. He kicked up an awful commotion. The natives for miles thought a new kind of spirit with a wooden leg had escaped from shadow-land, for as they peeped from their hut doors they saw old Everard frantically waving his arms, shouting vehemently, swearing and calling out: “Gabby! Gabby!” He arrived back at his bungalow at dusk. “Gab!” he shouted. But she was still missing. The old ex-sailor realised all that Gabrielle had been to him in his desolate life.He wept. He got terribly drunk and kept calling out: “Gabrielle! My Gab! Come back to your old father!” Then he mumbled in a self-soothing way: “She ain’t really gone. Macka’s so relygious. ’E wouldn’t take ’er from me. No! P’r’aps she’s gone to the b—— German’s wife at K——, or the mission-room at Tomba-kao.” Once more he got up and began to stump about. He seemed to go mad. He rushed again and again into the girl’s bedroom, caught his peg-leg in the fibre mats and fell down. “It’s ’er gown, ’er pretty gown,” he wailed. The tears rolled down his cheeks. He actually put his lips to the girl’s washed-out, torn garment and kissed it. Poor old man! He had never really found his true self. All the chances and virtues that might have been his had been shattered by gross surroundings.After a while he cooled down again. “Who’d ’ave thought it! Who’d ’ave thought it!” he wailed. He returned to his parlour. The room looked dark and comfortless. A terrible suspicion was haunting his mind. But it was too late. His faith in Macka’s supreme holiness had begun to slacken slightly. Old remembrances and God-given instincts that had been his in the long-ago, pre-rum days came back to him. But he sought the weak man’s support, and poured fiery liquid between his trembling lips.“Gabby! Gabby! Come to me! I’m ill, so ill!”Then he jumped, and looked quite startled and sober. He’d never hurried so much in his life as he put the bottle down and, with his eyes gleaming with half-fearful delight, stumped towards the front door. Someone had knocked.So great was his hurry that he stumbled as he rushed from the room. “She’s come back, me dear gal, come to ’er old pa!”He opened the door and stared at the form in the gloom for a moment, then swayed and fell down—fell in sheer misery and disappointment, for it wasn’t Gabrielle who stood there—it was Hillary.Hillary did not gasp or say one word that would suit the pages of a novel; he simply brought out the unromantic words: “God, what luck! He’s drunk!”The young apprentice swiftly leaned forward and picked up the old ex-sailor.Hillary’s whole soul was bursting to know why Gabrielle hadn’t kept the appointment by the lagoon. He was delighted to see Everard drunk. It had flashed through his sanguine, hopeful soul that there had been a domestic rumpus and that was the cause of Gabrielle not turning up at the trysting-place, where he had waited all night.He carried the old man as tenderly as possible into the parlour. The thought that he was really Gabrielle’s father made him feel quite tender towards the drunken man. He’d never been in that parlour before. He looked round. Where was she?“Gabrielle, your poor father’s taken ill—it’s Hillary who calls!” And then he stood holding the old man up, his heart thumping with the mighty expectation of seeing the girl enter the room, with secret joy at her father’s blind, drunken eyes at such an opportune moment.Hillary had come straight to Everard’s bungalow determined to risk all, to defy the old man outright and get one glimpse of the girl’s face and some kind of an explanation, even if he had to fight his way in. He called again: “Gabrielle! Gabrielle! Why don’t you come?” But the expected rustle of her dress, the glorious look of surprise in her eyes at seeing him as she rushed into the room, all that his imagination anticipated, was only mocked by the echo of his own voice.He sat the old man in the big arm-chair. Everard opened his eyes and stared like an imbecile at the youth.“Where’s my Gabby? Who the ’ell are you?” moaned the ex-sailor.“I’m Hillary, Gabrielle’s friend. I’m teaching her to play the violin; it will be a great help to her. She can make money by teaching, and be able to help you too,” blurted forth the apprentice in that inspiration that comes to lovers who have rehearsed a thousand excuses for suddenly appearing before a prospective father-in-law.Old Everard was too far gone with rum and grief to be interested in the commercial side of a prospective son-in-law.“You’re ’Illary! Violin! Play musick! You b—— villainous scoundrel! What have you done with ’er?” yelled the old man, as he struggled to his feet, a terribly vicious look in his eyes.“Done with who? Where’s Gabrielle?” Hillary shouted out in a voice that somehow managed to tell the old man that the youth before him thought that hetoohad a right to know where Gabrielle was.In a moment the ex-sailor’s mad passion subsided. He leaned forward and stared into Hillary’s eyes and saw the despair, the appeal, the light of sincerity and truth, everything that he had not seen in Koo Macka’s eyes. In a moment the old man relented.“Ain’t yer seen ’er, kid? She’s gone! Bolted with Macka, the Rajah! Find ’er, boy, find ’er for me. You can ’ave her, she’s my Gabby!” wailed the despairing father.Hillary’s heart nearly stopped beating. He couldn’t sum up courage enough to ask the old man to explain what he meant. He dreaded to hear something, he knew not what. Then the old man continued:“God forgive me for thinking ill of you.Hesent you ’ere ter-night to comfort ’er ole father.”Hillary still held the man’s hand, to givehimselfcourage as well as to comfort the old man.“’Ave a drop er rum, boy?” said the old man. Hillary did not hesitate. He held the tumblerful of liquid to his lips and swallowed the lot. Everard clutched the youth’s trembling hand and almost shed tears as the rum loosened the apprentice’s lips and he told the ex-sailor all that he felt for his daughter. Even Hillary was astonished to find that saturnine old drunkard so tender-hearted, so friendly towards him.After Everard had taken terrible oaths and sworn vengeance against the Rajah, he finished up by yelling into Hillary’s ears that he would give Hillary, or anyone else, two hundred pounds if they could trace Gabrielle’s whereabouts. Hillary took the distracted father’s hand and said: “I don’t want money; I only want to see Gabrielle, to bring your daughter back to you, and take her away from that man.” The apprentice couldn’t persuade himself to mention the name of the man who had apparently done him this great injury. Hillary had only seen the Papuan Rajah twice, but the man’s face was as vividly before him as if he had known him for a thousand years.At that moment he did not want Gabrielle’s father to see his eyes. He felt ashamed that they should be dimmed with emotion. He was overcome by the feeling that he was the first to love and have faith in woman; the first to have idealistic views about honour and the ways of men; the first to run away to sea with fourpence in his pocket to fight the world, to aspire for fame and wealth, only to find himself sleeping out in a strange land—in a dust-bin with the lid on! But at the thought of Gabrielle’s manner on the wreck, her tears, her eagerness to fly to Honolulu with him, the look in her eyes, his dark thoughts fled like bats from his brain, and once again hope reasserted itself.Hillary took the old ex-sailor’s hand and promised to stop the night with him. “Don’t let us waste the time, it will be dark soon,” said the apprentice. After a little rebellious talk Everard promised to drink no more, then putting on his cap he went off as obediently as a child to make inquiries. And so Everard went down to Rokeville, while Hillary went off on a voyage of discovery into the surrounding villages. His faith in Gabrielle had by now completely returned. He knew that she had strange notions, and had many girl friends among the Polynesian natives who dwelt with the native tribes. He so far recovered his spirits that he even whistled as he went off down the track. He made straight for the native village of Ackra Ackra, where the great head-hunter chief Ingrova dwelt. It was near to sunset when he at length passed through the great forest of giant bread-fruits that divided the native villages from the south-east shore. As he entered the tiny pagan citadel the women and girls greeted him with their friendly salutations and the usual cries fortam-bak(tobacco).The unlit coco-nut-oil lamps were swinging from the banyan boughs and flamboyants that sheltered the small huts and palavanas as he strode across therara(cleared space). The shaggy-headed native women clapped their hands as he passed. Some of the elder tattooed men and chiefesses puffed their short clay pipes and stared stolidly upon him. Just by the village patch Maga Maroo, pretty Silva Sula and some more dusky flappers threw their brown-stockinged legs skyward with delight as the dusky Lotharios gave wild encores in a strange barbarian tongue. Even Hillary smiled as he saw the artless, picturesque vanity of the girls as they sported their fine clothes on the tiny promenade that was the lamp-lit Strand of their little forest city. He saw at a glance by those demonstrative exhibitions of European toilets, and fringed swathings of yellow and scarlet sashes, that the artful traders had been that way exchanging their trumpery jewellery and gaudy silks for copra and shells.Arriving before the Chief Ingrova’s palatial palavana, Hillary was pleased to find that the great chief was at home. As the big, muscular, mop-headed islander stood before him, he made numerous stealthy inquiries to find out if the chief had the slightest hint of the girl’s whereabouts. But seeing that the chief was quite sincere in his protestations that he hadn’t seen her for quite two weeks, Hillary at once told him that she was missing from home. Hillary had persistently had the idea in his head that Gabrielle might be hiding in one of the villages in fear of her father’s wrath, for he could not help thinking that the old man had had a row with the girl and had deliberately kept that fact from him. The aged chief, who was a fine example of his race, swayed his war-club and wanted to go off in search of the missing girl at once. His eyes blazed with delight at the prospect of obtaining the head of the miscreant who had lured the girl from her home. The chief had a fierce idea of equity and justice; he was a stern disciplinarian in following the tenets of his religion, the code of morals laid down by his tribal ancestors. Indeed it was well known that he would not deviate from his ideas of honest finance by one shell or coco-nut. And it can be recorded that the mythological gods and legendary personages who were the great apostles of his creed were more to him in his inborn faith than the Biblical wonders of the Christian creed are to nine-tenths of the Sunday church-goers who worship at its altars.Hillary listened silently to the chief’s moralising and his loud lamentations over Gabrielle’s absence from home and felt assured that the chief knew nothing about it. It was true enough, Ingrova had never heard of Macka, otherwise Hillary might have been considerably enlightened, for the old chief was usually friendly to the white men. The apprentice gave the chief a plug of ship’s tobacco, then implored him to kill no one and secure no head for the adornment of his hut till he was quite certain that it was the head of the real culprit. Though Hillary was convinced that Ingrova had spoken the truth, he still nursed the idea that Gabrielle was somewhere in the vicinity of her father’s home. He could not bring himself to believe that Gabrielle had really bolted or been carried off by the Rajah. The idea of such a thing had left his mind. He had thought of her manner on the wreck only an hour before. “A girl so innocent that I wouldn’t utter a coarse word in her presence—she—go off with an abomination like that—a dark man—impossible!” had been his final summing up, and then in his vehemence he had kicked his Panama hat sky-high.Hillary’s face was flushed with the thoughts that surged through his head as he turned back and, gazing at Ingrova, said: “Look here, Ingrova, old pal, if you can find any trace whatsoever of the girl I’ll give you a lot of money and my best grey suit of clothes, see?” The apprentice knew that he was offering the chief inexhaustible wealth by promising him a suit of clothes. For if a Solomon Islander has one weakness it is a heartaching desire to possess European clothes.In a moment Ingrova’s ears were alert; his deep-set eyes twinkled with avarice. He immediately rubbed his dusky hands together and, lifting one hand, swore allegiance to Hillary’s cause. “I find girler if she bouter ’ere!” said he, bringing his war-club down with a terrific whack on the fallen bread-fruit trunk as they stood there in the silence of the forest.“What’s that?” The apprentice could hear approaching footsteps.He rubbed his eyes. What on earth had happened to Ingrova? There he stood, stiff and erect, his arms crooked; he had suddenly undergone a wonderful transformation—looked like some gnarled old tree trunk that had been carved so as to resemble a man. For only the eyes blinked. At the sound of approaching footsteps he had swiftly succumbed to the old primitive instincts, and become, as it were, a part of the silent tropical forest.Looking swiftly round, Hillary observed a dusky, wrinkled face and bright eyes peeping cautiously through the tall, thick ferns that grew around the spot where they stood. Ingrova’s form immediately relaxed; it was no enemy who sought to club him; it was only the friendly face of old Oom Pa. It was very evident that Oom Pa had heard the speech of the Englishman, and knowing that the white missionaries disapproved of very many of the things his priesthood called on him to do in the performance of heathen rites, he had approached warily. Seeing that only one white papalagi was there, Oom Pa stepped forth from the thickets and forced his finest deceitful smile to his thin lips.“Nice day,” quoth Hillary.“Verra nicer, papalagi,” muttered the heathen ecclesiastic, after looking up at Ingrova, who winked and raised his tattooed brows to reassure the suspicious priest. Oom Pa prostrated himself in his most gracious manner before Hillary. In a moment he had risen to his feet, and standing with head inclined he listened to Ingrova, who had begun to tell him the cause of the white man’s visit.“Oo woomba!” said the priest, rubbing his chin reflectively, then said: “Nicer white girl’s goner? She who gotter eyes like sky when stars walker ’bout, and gotter hair liker sunset on rivers?”“That’s her!” ejaculated Hillary dramatically. His heart thumped with hope. Oom Pa’s manner made him think that Gabrielle was somewhere close behind him, hiding in the palms. The old priest winked and put on a wise look. Then he looked up and, shaking his head all the while that he spoke, he told Hillary that he had not the slightest idea as to the girl’s whereabouts.“I not know where girl is, but I knower you mean white girl who comes and jumper onpae paeand dance at festival, one, two nights. But she did fly away like beautifultabarab(spirit) in forest.”“Dance onpae paeand run away into the forest!” said Hillary in surprise. “Good gracious! She’s not the girl I’m looking for. It’s a white girl I’m after, one who wears a blue dress, coiled-up tresses of gold that fall over her brow; she’s white and beautiful. Dance on your damnedpae pae! Phew!” said Hillary, putting his foot out and kicking vigorously.Oom Pa also metaphorically kicked himself. He wondered what trouble his incautious remarks might cause both to himself and the girl. He swiftly realised that it was an unusual thing for a white girl to do a jig on apae pae; he also knew that the white men might think that he had something to do with the girl’s strange leaning towards his heathenish creed, and so would blame him for anything that might have happened to her. Consequently he at once put his hand to his brow, shook his head and intimated that he was “old fool” to make such a mistake.Ingrova, who had immediately realised how near the priest had been to letting out that he knew something about Gabrielle, astutely changed the conversation and begged Hillary and the priest to enter his palavana. In a moment Ingrova had bent his stalwart figure and entered the low doorway of his rather palatial hut. Hillary and priest followed.The apprentice, who had never been inside a primitive homestead, was surprised as he entered the gloomy, tightly thatched dwelling-place of Ingrova. It was sheltered by the branches of two huge bread-fruits, was conical-shaped and had a large domed roof. The rooms were spacious, about twelve feet from wall to wall. Each room was lit up by primitive window holes. These windows had no glass in them, but were fashioned of twisted, interlaced bamboo twigs in a clever ornamental style, making them look like casements that opened on to feathery palm-trees. Indeed, often by night one could have peeped through those casements and seen the festival maidens dancing on the village green while rows of coco-nut-oil lamps twinkled from the palm and bread-fruit boughs. As the apprentice stared round the room, the dim light intensified the surroundings. Theywerestrange ornaments, no mistake about that. On the wooden walls hung the human skulls and bones of the sad departed. Noticing Hillary’s curious stare as he regarded the beautifully polished skulls, many of which still had hair clinging to the bone, Ingrova waxed sentimental, stepped forward and took the smallest skull down from its nail. Pointing to the empty sockets with his dusky finger, the chief murmured in sombre tones: “Ah papalagi, ’twas in these holes where once sparkled like unto stars in the wind-blown lagoon the eyes of her who was my firstparumpuan(wife).” Then he sighed, and continued: “’Tis true, O papalagi, that those eyes did once gaze and look kindly on him whom I did hate overmuch. But ’tis over now, these many years; and moreover, man, too, doth much which he no ought to do. And I say, O papalagi, does not the moon stare with kindness on more lagoons than one?”As he said this the old chief made several magic passes with his forefinger, pushing it across and within the sockets as he sighed deeply. Then he proceeded: “Here, between these teeth, was the tongue that sang to me when my head was weary and mucher trouble did come to my peoples.” At this moment the old warrior looked sadly through the doorway and sighed. Once more he put forth his hands and took down the remaining portion of that delicate skeleton. Hillary gazed in intense wonder. He noticed that the white bones were fastened together with finest sennet, joined with great artistic dexterity, not a bone being out of place. His thoughts about Gabrielle for the time being had vanished, as the mystery of that hut clung like a shroud about him. “What’s that?” he murmured, as he gazed on the gruesome object that Ingrova held up before him. He felt shivery in the gloom, notwithstanding the tropical heat and the buzzing sand-flies.As the two old hags who were squated on mats in the far corner of the room revealed their presence by giving a deep sigh, Ingrova proceeded: “Tis all that remains of her form, which I did lover overmuch. Look, O papalagi, here was her bosom; ’twas here that she gave unto my children nicer nourishing milk, children who now am great chiefs and chiefesses.”Saying this, the warrior ran his fingers down the curves of the dead woman’s throat bones till he arrived at the tiny bones of the breast, then his finger swerved to the right, passed round by the ribs and moved downward towards the sharp white bones of the thighs.“Good heavens!” was Hillary’s only audible comment, as he inwardly thanked God that white people did not keep their dead so that they could be inspected like grim photo albums on visiting days.Ingrova gently hung up those sad heirlooms of his past affections on their several nails again. Hillary, who by now had entered into the tragic spirit of the weird homestead, pointed to the various gruesome remains and asked Ingrova whose were the fourteen skulls that hung on a kind of clothes-line that ran across the room, close to the roof. Even old Oom Pa sighed as he watched Ingrova take down each bleached skull and solemnly point to the empty sockets, telling of bright eyes and gabbling tongues that once made music, sang songs, and knew laughter and tears. One had been a great high priest who had died at the hands of the white men sooner than swerve from the spiritual path that he deemed the right one. He was one of the old Solomon Island martyrs. Hillary noticed that this special skull was high-domed, revealing by its protuberance the reverence that man has for higher things, and also imagination. The teeth were perfect. Another was quite flat-headed, the hair woolly and the eye-sockets small. After much preamble on Ingrova’s part, Hillary gathered that this skull belonged to the social reformer of the tribe. Yet another high-domed remnant had bulging bone brows, the skull being altogether curiously shaped. “Who was he, O mighty Ingrova?” said Hillary with a good deal of reverence.Ingrova answered in this wise: “He was, O papalagi, the great witch-singer of these lands. It was in that little skull-hole where flamed the magic that sang unto us, telling the sorrow of the dying moons, and of the voices of wandering rivers and ocean caves. He looked through those holes” (here the chief pointed to the empty eye-sockets), “where stare the light of the stars, the sunsets and moonsets, when he did once stand beneath these very palms, by that doorway, and say to my tribe: ‘Man am no long to live, and, too, his love and joy oft depart ere his body go its way. All things must die, though the corals rise and the palms stand for ever before the eyes of day, man’s songs must cease and he got to sleep.’”“Dear me! What a nice old fellow he must have been,” muttered Hillary.Ingrova had gesticulated and spoken in such a way that he almost saw the sorrow of the poet’s long-dead eyes looking through the sockets of the skull.“Well, if this is a typical Solomon Island homestead, I’d sooner go out visiting in dear old England,” thought the apprentice, as Oom Pa suddenly prostrated himself on the prayer-mat and, turning over on his back, blew his stout, wrinkled stomach out with enormous breaths in some religious rite. Hillary made a solemn face and, responding to Ingrova’s appeal, placed his brow against a dead man’s beard that hung by the window hole. It was with a feeling of considerable relief that he so graciously bowed when two pretty native girls suddenly rushed into the room and stared at him with wonder-struck eyes. His white face fascinated them. They were attractive-looking maids, their massive crowns of hair tastefully ornamented with frangipani and scarlet hibiscus blossoms. Threaded shells dangled from their arms. One had large earrings hanging from her artificially distended lobes. They were two of Ingrova’s granddaughters. They at once proceeded to flirt with the apprentice, giving captivating glances from their fine dark eyes. And when he accepted a flower from pretty Noma, the tallest girl, he swiftly accepted a like offering from her companion, who had shot a jealous glance at her sister from her warm dark eyes. In the meantime, Oom Pa and Ingrova had met under the palms just outside the palavana.Ingrova’s eyes flashed with fire as old Oom Pa spoke close to his ear, for they liked not a white man to call in their village without asking. Though Ingrova was a brave chief, he too was a religious bigot, and his heart swelled with much devotion as he thought of what his gods would think to see the apprentice’s skull hanging amongst his most sacred religious trophies. He felt that a skull adorned with dark bronze curls would be a prize worth securing. Oom Pa placed his dusky hand to his mouth, coughed and looked around to see that none heard; then he said: “I say, O mighty Ingrova, this white papalagi may seek our hidden idols and be after no maid at all. What think you?”And Ingrova replied: “O mighty Oom Pa, favoured of the gods, did I not hear you say that you had seen such a one as this white maid?”Oom Pa puckered up his wrinkled eyebrows and swiftly told Ingrova how a white girl had danced unbidden on his great tambupae paeand then run away into the forest. On hearing this much Ingrova looked towards the palavan to see that the white man was not within earshot, and then, swelling his majestic, tattooed chest and shoulders, said scornfully: “It seemeth a grievous thing for a white maid to be missing, yet, I say, do not these cursed papalagi come into our bays on their ships and steal those we love, our wives, our sons and daughters, taking them to slavery, O Oom Pa?”“’Tis as thou sayest,” responded the priest. For a moment he reflected, then he looked up into Ingrova’s eyes with deep meaning and said: “Methinks ’tis true that he seeks a white maid, for he who hath a leg of wood did pass this way, calling in strange tones to all whom he met; and mark you, O Ingrova, this papalagi who is there in your palavana hath one eye that is the colour of the day and one the hue of the night.”Ingrova at this wisely nodded, as though to say that he too had noticed this strange thing. Then Oom Pa continued: “To have such eyes must mean that he is favoured by the gods of his own race, and so ’twere well that he should receive our friendship. And maybe, after all, ’tis the white man’s god who tattoos the skies!”Ingrova sighed deeply as he thought of the exquisite skull that might have adorned the walls of his palavana. Then he said: “’Tis well, Oom Pa, for the youth is to my liking.” And as they both stooped and re-entered the palavana doorway the young apprentice little dreamed how inscrutable Fate had given him one eye blue and the other brown so that he might not be killed that day by a Solomon Island chief. Fondest affection seemed to beam forth from Ingrova’s eyes as he looked at the apprentice. “Nice old heathen,” thought Hillary, as the big warrior sighed in deep thought and then placed his hands with regret among the rare bronze curls of the apprentice’s skull thatmighthave been his. But to give them their due, both Oom Pa and Ingrova were relieved that things were running smoothly. Together they took Hillary outside that he might inspect the wonders of the village. As he crossed the tinyraras(village greens) the dusky maids placed their hands where their hearts beat and sighed over the beauty of his eyes and the wondrous whiteness of his face.“Damn it all! I could take an interest in all this if I only knew where Gabrielle was,” thought Hillary, as he looked on the strange scene of native life around him. Notwithstanding his sorrows, he could not help thinking how akin primitive life was to civilised life. “One blows his nose on a palm leaf and the other on a silk handkerchief,” he murmured to himself. “Bless me, though it is a heathen village in the Solomon Isles, its dusky, tattooed inhabitants seem imbued with the same ideas and aspirations as my own people.”It was true enough: some of the tiny streets under the trees were clean and had large, well-built huts that were covered artistically with flowers of tropical vines. Other huts were small and very slovenly. Some of the maids had flowers in their hair and shining traduca shells hanging on their arms. Others wore tappa gowns, a few some remnant of European clothing, such as cast-off skirts, blouses, bodices and stockings. One or two wore only those undergarments that are frilled at the knees and succeeded in showing off their terra-cotta limbs in a most conspicuous fashion. Some had made real doors to their palavanas, whilst others still had doors that were made of old sacking. One played a cheap German fiddle while the kiddies on theraradanced with glee. In front of the native temple stood a monstrous idol, its big glass eyes apparently agog with laughter. And on a stump, facing it, stood the embryo parliamentary genius, Hank-koo, waving his skinny arms, beseeching the high chiefs to pass a law that would compel all the other chiefs to make their hut doors so that they opened inwards. “Why not have doors that open inwards when ’tis as well as opening towards?” he yelled, as he wiped his brow with a palm leaf. It was then that another fierce-looking being jumped on to a stump. He too swore by Quat (first god of heathen land) that for a door to open outwards was indeed beautiful. “Can not a dying man’s soul take flight with ease to shadow-land instead of being compelled to pull the door back ere departing hence?” And so the chiefs were always busy remaking doors that opened inwards or outwards, as they continually changed their minds over the virtues of such great things.“Comer, papalagi!” said Ingrova, as he beckoned Hillary to return towards his palatial palavana. “All is wonderful that I have seen, O great Ingrova,” said Hillary, as he stood once more outside the chief’s homestead.And then, as the chief leaned on his war-club, swelling his massive chest and bowing graciously, Hillary intimated that he must depart at once.Indeed the apprentice was getting impatient. “It’s no good hanging about here; this won’t find Gabrielle,” he thought, as he cursed the old skulls and the atmosphere of gloom that Ingrova’s gruesome exhibition had cast over him. “Why should I be made melancholy through Ingrova’s dead relatives? I don’t bring out the bones of my dead aunts and old uncles to make men miserable.” Such was his inward comment as he left the chief and hurried away. Thoughts of Gabrielle’s strange disappearance returned to him with redoubled force. He recalled how she had touched his hand for the first time. And as Hillary passed along by the forest banyans and saw the deep indigo of the far distant ocean, he stared on the rose-pearl flush of the sea horizon. “What a fool I was! I could have easily persuaded her to bolt that night on the derelict,” he thought, as he once more started on his way back to Everard’s.In due course he arrived back at Everard’s bungalow. The old man was terribly upset when Hillary told him that he had heard nothing about his daughter’s whereabouts. He trembled violently as he looked up at Hillary and said: “I’ve been up to Parsons’s shanty: no one has seen Gabby, or heard of her. What can it all mean?”Hillary made no reply. He did his best to cheer the old sailorman up. His unbounded faith in Gabrielle had returned. He recalled her innocent manner when she had offered him the little flower out of her hair when he had first met her on the lagoon. “No girl who gave a flower like that could do wrong,” he thought. Not only would he not entertain the idea that a dark Papuan man could have influence over Gabrielle, but he also persuaded the father to make no inquiries about the Rajah.“What proof have you got that the Rajah is the kind of man who would take advantage of any woman?” he inquired of Everard. Possibly he was influenced to make these remarks by a kind of Dutch courage. He imagined that there was far less chance of Everard’s suspicions being true if he himself blinded his own eyes to the possibilities of what a dark man might persuade a white girl to do. Over and over again he had recalled to memory Gabrielle’s eyes as she had gazed into his own on the derelict ship. “No! Impossible!” thought he. “I’ve got boundless faith in Gabrielle; I feel certain she’s only gone up to K——. She’s probably stopping with the German missionary’s wife and will be back to-morrow.”“Why the blazing h—— didn’t you go there to K—— and see?” said the old sailor in a petulant voice, as he suddenly looked apologetically at the apprentice. He had gripped Hillary’s hand gratefully in the thought that a strange youth should have such unbounded faith in his daughter.“I’ve only just thought of Gabrielle’s friendship with the missionary’s wife at K——,” said Hillary.Then Everard suddenly remembered that he had already sent a native servant up to K—— to inquire.All that night the old ex-sailor sat huddled in his arm-chair, crying softly to himself. He swore that he’d never drink again or hurt a hair of the girl’s head if she returned safely home.Hillary slept little. Once he walked into Gabrielle’s bedroom, gazed on her tiny trestle bed and thought of all she had said to him. Then he was obliged to go out of doors and walk up and down under the palms in an attempt to stifle his grief. In the morning he helped Everard to get the breakfast. The old man spoke kindly to him and repeatedly muttered to himself about his foolishness in thinking the youth was such a villain because he happened to be stranded in Bougainville and hadn’t a cent to bless himself with.“What did old Ingrova say?” suddenly asked the old man, as he swallowed some hot tea.“Oh, he had never even heard of Gabrielle.”“Never heard of her! The old liar!” almost yelled the old man.Hillary turned beetroot-red. He swallowed some hot tea and nearly fell on the floor. “You don’t mean to say Ingrova’s fooling us?”“Don’t worry, boy, Ingrova’s all right. I know ’im!” said Everard.“Thank God!” muttered Hillary. For he had suddenly called up terrible visions of ferocious head-hunters dancing round Gabrielle’s dying form.Anyway, his fears were quite dispelled by Everard’s manner and all that he proceeded to tell him. As the ex-sailor and the apprentice talked and then lapsed into silence over their own thoughts, the visitors began to arrive. It appeared that the grief-stricken father had been about telling all his friends that Gabrielle was missing from home. The first one to arrive at the bungalow after breakfast was Mango Pango. When Hillary opened the bungalow door she pretended to faint. Then she lifted her hands above her head and went on in a most dramatic fashion as Hillary explained to her that Gabrielle was still missing.“Whater you do ’ere?” said the pretty Polynesian girl, as she looked out of the corner of her eye as only a Polynesian maid can look without squinting. “I never knew that you knew Misser Gaberlielle,” she added, as Hillary smiled. Then she went on in a terrible style, for she had known Gabrielle since she was a child. “O Master Hill-e-aire, she kill! Some one fiercer head-hunter gotter her and cutter her head off!” she wailed, as she rolled her pretty eyes and then looked at Hillary in a swift flash that said “No gooder you loving girler without head—eh?” Giving this parting shot, Mango Pango ran off home to follow her domestic duties. And then a batch of native women and two white men arrived outside the bungalow to inquire if Gabrielle had returned. After a deal of jabbering and unheard-of ideas as to the cause of the girl’s absence, they put the coins in their pockets and went off mumbling. And still the old man gabbled on, saying: “How kind people are when folk are in trouble.”Hillary at last put on his hat and went off to make further inquiries. As he stood shaving himself before the mirror in the bungalow parlour, he thought of all that Gabrielle had told him about the haunting shadow-woman. He was half-inclined to tell the father of the girl’s strange talk on the derelict ship out in the bay. Then he decided not to do so, thinking that the old sailor had quite enough trouble on his shoulders. Somehow the thought of all that Gabrielle had told him about that shadow-woman eased Hillary’s mind. It gave him greater faith in the girl. He remembered the look in her eyes when she had sung the weird songs to him by the lagoon, and also in the forest once when they were parting. “Perhaps she’s a bit eccentric, and that accounts for her strange absence,” he thought. And the thought eased his mind and was more pleasant than the thoughts that had begun to haunt him. He recalled Rajah Koo Macka’s handsome face. He also recalled how he had read that dark men had strange and terrible influence over romantic girls. He knew very well that Gabrielle was terribly impressionable. Hillary gave himself a gash with his razor as he thought of this, and his hands began to tremble. Then he hastily dressed himself and told Everard that he was off to make inquiries about Macka. “We don’t knowwhohe is; he might be anyone, and villainous enough to lure your daughter deliberately away, after all,” said the apprentice, as he lit his pipe, said good-bye to the old man and went off to search and make inquiries.It was nearly dusk when Hillary returned from the villages and going down to the beach by the grog bar came across a Papuan sailor who, he had been told, was an old deck-hand off one of the Rajah’s ships.The artful Papuan at first swore that he did not know Macka, shook his head and said: “Me no savee!”Then Hillary took a handful of silver from his pocket and shook it before the Papuan’s eyes and hinted that if he could tell him of anyone whodidknow about Macka’s social position he would get well rewarded. In a moment the native’s manner changed. He took Hillary under the palms and told him a tale that fairly made the young apprentice gasp. And it was a story that would make anyone gasp.It was from this native’s lips that Hillary heard for the first time that Macka was an ex-missionary from Honolulu, and that he was a native from one of the coastal tribal villages of New Guinea, a tribal race who were the most ferocious and god-forsaken heathens in the Pacific world. The half-caste native sailor turned out to be a rather intelligent man. Indeed it appeared that he too was a converted heathen and had first got acquainted with Macka while attending mission-rooms in New Britain.“Do you mean to tell me that the Rajah Koo Macka is a member of a religious society?” gasped Hillary, as the native took a nip of his tobacco plug and then grinned from ear to ear.“It am so, boss!” said the man. Then the native continued: “’E am Rajah Makee and belonger misselinaries everywheres. ’E kidnapper too, and often taker Papuan girls, boys, men and women by nighter when no one looker!”“What do you mean?” said the apprentice with astonishment, only vaguely realising what “kidnapper” meant. Then the native calmly proceeded to enlighten him, and in a few moments Hillary had heard enough to convince him that the noble Rajah would not only be likely to abduct Gabrielle from her home, but old Everard and himself too if he thought they’d fetch a few dollars in the slave markets of the Bismarck Archipelago or elsewhere.So did Hillary discover that Rajah Macka was an inveterate cannibal, living on the flesh and weakness of people of his own race. For it appeared that he had sailed the Pacific for years, creeping into the bays of remote isles and kidnapping girls, boys, men and women till his schooner’s hold was crammed up to the hatchways with a terrified human merchandise. He usually sold the girls to chiefs in the Bismarck Archipelago and New Guinea; the boys and men he disposed of in New Guinea for plantation work or to be fattened up for sacrificial festivals, thepièce de résistanceof some mighty chief’s cannibalistic orgy. Macka was not the only one who dealt in the terrible blackbirding trade; Germans, Dutchmen and even English skippers made it their prime stock-in-trade.Hillary could hardly believe his ears as he listened to the character of the man who had been Everard’s welcome guest. He took the native sailor into Parsons’s grog bar, primed him well with drink and finally got all the information necessary to follow on the Rajah’s track. He discovered that he was a native of New Guinea, that he possessed a tambu temple there and was known as the “great Rajah” for hundreds of miles in Dutch New Guinea because he had been well educated by his heathen parents, who had sent him to Honolulu to be initiated into the virtues of Christianity.Though the sun was blazing down with terrific vigour from the cloudless sky, Hillary half ran as he stumbled across the tangled jungle growth on his way back to tell Everard all that he had heard about the Rajah. The native girls ran out of the little doors of the huts and begged him to give them one brass button from his apprenticeship suit. Crowds of native children, quite nude but for the hibiscus blossoms in their mop-heads and a wisp of a loin-cloth, rushed by the palms with loaded calabashes, crammed with fish caught in the shore lagoons. They were flying onward to the market village, the Billingsgate of the Solomon Isles; a place where shaggy-headed, sun-browned women exchanged shells for the fresh, shining fish. But Hillary had no eye for the scenes around him. He steamed like a wet shirt stuck out in the tropic sunlight as he hurried on; and the constellations of jungle mosquitoes and fat yellow sand-flies made their presence felt, driving their proboscis spears deep into his flesh, buzzing their musical appreciation to find he ate so well. The apprentice’s heart was beating like a drum; already the tale that he had heard had upset his ideas over the cause of Gabrielle’s absence. “Did she go off voluntarily with the Rajah, or had he kidnapped her?” That thought haunted him, tortured him. He stared towards the summits of the distant smoking volcanic ranges to the north-west and thought how they resembled his own heart, that was near to bursting with emotion, and how he too would like suddenly to shout his passionate desires to the sky. He sighed as he cut across the silver sands by the beach. He was going the long way round, for he dare not pass by the lagoon where Gabrielle had once sung to him.He was nearly dead with fatigue when he arrived at the bungalow. “Found ’er, boy?” came the dismal query that always smote his ears when he returned to Gabrielle’s home. Hillary simply shook his head and stared into the glassy eyes of the old man. Then he sat down and told the ex-sailor every word he had heard about Macka’s schooner and his reputation as a clever kidnapper of native girls and men in the Pacific isles.Old Everard jumped to his feet and hopped about on his wooden leg like a raving madman. Hillary tried to hold him down.Crash! The old man had stabbed the screen four times with his wooden member. Crash! He had picked up his spare, best Sunday wooden leg and smashed all the crockery off the shelf.“Don’t be a fool! Everard! Everard! Don’t go mad!” yelled Hillary at the top of his voice, as the demented sailor still smashed away.“I’ll save your daughter! I know where she is!” yelled the apprentice, as he endeavoured to stop the ex-sailor’s demented yells.The furniture of the bungalow and all the crockery were smashed before the mad old man calmed down. Then he took a pull at the rum bottle, sat down on the settee and recovering his breath stood up again and shouted: “Where’s theBird of Paradise, ’is ship? ’Is ship—has it sailed?” yelled the old man. Then he shouted: “He’s got her on theParadise! He’s got ’er, my Gabby! I see it all now! He’s an old blackbirder. Not a Rajah! Not a godly missionary! By the holy Virgin, forgive me, forgive me for being a damned fool!” the old fellow moaned, as he recalled Rajah Macka’s sombre voice and his exhortations when he had hesitated as to whether he’d give up drinking rum or no.Then the ex-sailor looked at Hillary and yelled: “Go, you blamed fool! Go and see if theBird of Paradisehas sailed from the harbour.”In a moment Hillary rushed away over the hills. In an hour he returned to the bungalow and told Everard that theBird of Paradisehad not been seen in the bay of Bougainville since the night when Gabrielle had been first missing.“She’s sailed in the night! ’E’s got ’er! ’E’s got ’er! She’s gone! She wasn’t willing! ’E stole ’er, just like ’e steals native girls! Boy, don’t worry. She’s a good girl, she is—one of the best,” said the distracted father, his voice lowering to a wailing monotone as he steadily beat his wooden leg on the floor in despair and hope.“Of course she’s a good girl,” said Hillary. His heart nearly stopped beating atthat, a thought he would not allow to haunt him.“There’s no time to lose, Mr. Everard. I’ll get a berth on some ship that’s bound to New Guinea. I’ll find a ship. I’ll stow away, I’ll do anything to get there and find his tambu house and rescue Gabrielle from his grasp. I’ll steal, I’ll rob anyone if it is necessary.” And as the apprentice said those things his eyes flashed fire, his face flushed with all the hope and the emotion that was in him.“I’ve got money, I’ve been saving for years, saving for ’er, but she didn’t know!” Everard suddenly exclaimed. Then he looked at Hillary and continued: “Get a schooner; hire one; I’ll pay! I’ll spend a thousand to get Gabby back and smash Macka up!” As he finished he brought his spare wooden leg down crash on the table. Then he gripped the apprentice by the hand. “Don’t leave me yet, boy, I’m nervous. In the morning you can go out into the bay and see if you can ’ire a schooner. It’s three weeks’ sail to the New Guinea coast. Find out exactly where his blasted coastal village is. Get all perticulars about ’im.”“Do you really think he’s kidnapped Gabrielle? It seems extraordinary in these enlightened times!” gasped the young apprentice, as he thought of Gabrielle on a three weeks’ voyage with Rajah Macka, the ex-missionary.“Don’t think! She’s gone! Where is she?” Then the old man roared with dreadful vehemence: “Why, damn it all,I’vebeen in the slave-trading line!I’vecrept into the native villages by night and stolen the girls as they slept beneath the palms! Cloryformed ’em! Smothered ’em! Tied ’em hup! Shot the b—— chiefs as they rushed from their dens to save their darters and wives!I’ave!I’ave!”“No!” That monosyllable expressed all the horror of which Hillary was capable over Everard’s sudden confession and his private thoughts as to Gabrielle’s fate on that schooner with Macka.“It’s retribution—that’s what it is,” wailed the old man.Hillary took his hand and did his best to soothe him. Then he lit the oil lamp and sat down by the weeping ex-sailor.“My Gabby’s like ’er mother, beautiful gal, but she’s ’aunted in ’er ’eart by them spirits of the Papuan race. ’Er mother seed a spirit-woman spring out from under the bed one night afore she died!”“A spirit-woman!” gasped Hillary. Then he continued: “Do you mean to tell me that there are such things as spirit-women running about Bougainville?”The old man looked vacantly into the apprentice’s eyes for a second, then said languidly, as though, he was too grieved to talk: “I seed a shadder meself ther other night, ’ere in this very room!”Hillary looked sideways at the empty rum bottles in the corner of the room, then back again at the old man’s bleary eyes. “He’s got a touch of the D.T.’s,” thought the young apprentice.Before midnight Everard lay in a drunken sleep. Hillary had made up a bed by the couch, but he couldn’t sleep. The idea of the girl being really abducted nearly sent him mad. Then he thought of Gabrielle’s strange talk on the hulk about shadow-women and of all that Everard had just told him about his wife’s being haunted by similar shadows. The idea of the shadow-woman haunted his mind in an unaccountable way, although he was naturally sceptical about such things as ghosts and enchantments.He sat by the small open window of the bungalow and, as the scents of the orange-trees drifted in on the cool night zephyrs, thought over all he had read about sorcerers, of the haunting shadow-figures that played such a prominent part in the love affairs of the medieval ages. Then he looked out of the window on to the moon-lit landscape and saw the tall, feathery palms; he even heard the rattling of the derrick of some schooner that was leaving before dawn. He thought of Mango Pango singing her old legendary songs in a chanting voice as she peeled spuds and chopped up the indigestible bread-fruit and tough yams for dinner, and finally summed up his belief in spirits in the one word “Rot!”And as old Everard lay just by him, snoring with a mighty bass snore, he felt half sorry that he couldn’t bring himself to believe implicitly that a shadowwomanhadlured the girl away from her home and had stopped her from keeping the tryst.“A shadow leaping about—preposterous! Sounds like Doctor Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Perhaps she’s been reading that book, and told her father about it while he was under the influence of drink,” reflected Hillary. He even brightened up as he persuaded himself that the girl’s wild sayings and her evident terror had all been brought about through reading that book. “She’s under the influence of Jekyll—that’s what’s the matter with this Everard family. Why, bless me, it’s all natural enough. I myself am out here in the Solomon Isles through reading books. I’d never have met Gabrielle, never heard of strangling shadows and that cursed Rajah Macka if it hadn’t been for Captain Marryat, Fenimore Cooper and Stevenson.”The young apprentice began to brighten up considerably as he reflected over the whole business. Everard’s snores sounded quite musical. He even began to think that if a terrible tragedyhadoccurred and Gabrielle was abducted and he was destined to go off and search for her across the seas, it was not so dreadful as nothing happening at all.So he thanked God that he was in the Solomon Isles, living amongst tattooed natives and strange old ex-sailormen who saw shadows and evil enchantresses dodging about their bungalow verandahs or racing under the moon-lit palms.And as he pondered and listened to the faint, far-off thunder of the surf on the coral reefs off Felisi beach he heard the guttural voices of the German sailors singing a chantey as their grey tramp-steamer went out on the tide, bound for the Bismarck Archipelago. Old Everard was still wheezing heavily, and at last Hillary too fell asleep to the sound of that steady snore.

CHAPTER VIII—HEATHEN LANDIn the morning old Everard awoke with a swollen head.“Gabby! Gabrielle!” He shouted. Then, wondering why on earth the girl did not reply, he struggled to his feet, opened the door and went up the three steps that led into her bedroom. Her bed was neatly made—it had not been slept in. He was so puzzled about it all that he looked out of the small open window to see if she’d fallen out—notwithstanding that the window was six feet from the ground. Then he passed his hand across his brow and remembered Rajah Macka’s visit. “Rajah Koo Macka!” he shouted.“God damn it! I don’t remember ’im going,” he mumbled, as he stumped his wooden leg about the room till the bungalow shook, and began whimpering like a fretful child, nearly falling down with sudden dizziness. Recovering himself, he got into a frightful rage and began to roar mighty oaths. “Gabby! Gabby! I’ll a-murder you! Where are you? Damn! My eyes! Ter ’ell with Macka! Ter ’ell with everything! Where are you?” Then he swung his wooden leg round, poked it right through the velvet-lined screen that Gabrielle had so neatly lined, and gave a terrible oath.Then he cooled down. The reaction had begun to set in. His brain began to reason over it all. He rushed outside, stumped about and stumped back again. “Where is she? What’s it all mean? She’s not the kind of girl to go off by night with Macka,” were his reflections. All day long he called and called. Then he left the bungalow and roamed away to the native villages in search of her. He kicked up an awful commotion. The natives for miles thought a new kind of spirit with a wooden leg had escaped from shadow-land, for as they peeped from their hut doors they saw old Everard frantically waving his arms, shouting vehemently, swearing and calling out: “Gabby! Gabby!” He arrived back at his bungalow at dusk. “Gab!” he shouted. But she was still missing. The old ex-sailor realised all that Gabrielle had been to him in his desolate life.He wept. He got terribly drunk and kept calling out: “Gabrielle! My Gab! Come back to your old father!” Then he mumbled in a self-soothing way: “She ain’t really gone. Macka’s so relygious. ’E wouldn’t take ’er from me. No! P’r’aps she’s gone to the b—— German’s wife at K——, or the mission-room at Tomba-kao.” Once more he got up and began to stump about. He seemed to go mad. He rushed again and again into the girl’s bedroom, caught his peg-leg in the fibre mats and fell down. “It’s ’er gown, ’er pretty gown,” he wailed. The tears rolled down his cheeks. He actually put his lips to the girl’s washed-out, torn garment and kissed it. Poor old man! He had never really found his true self. All the chances and virtues that might have been his had been shattered by gross surroundings.After a while he cooled down again. “Who’d ’ave thought it! Who’d ’ave thought it!” he wailed. He returned to his parlour. The room looked dark and comfortless. A terrible suspicion was haunting his mind. But it was too late. His faith in Macka’s supreme holiness had begun to slacken slightly. Old remembrances and God-given instincts that had been his in the long-ago, pre-rum days came back to him. But he sought the weak man’s support, and poured fiery liquid between his trembling lips.“Gabby! Gabby! Come to me! I’m ill, so ill!”Then he jumped, and looked quite startled and sober. He’d never hurried so much in his life as he put the bottle down and, with his eyes gleaming with half-fearful delight, stumped towards the front door. Someone had knocked.So great was his hurry that he stumbled as he rushed from the room. “She’s come back, me dear gal, come to ’er old pa!”He opened the door and stared at the form in the gloom for a moment, then swayed and fell down—fell in sheer misery and disappointment, for it wasn’t Gabrielle who stood there—it was Hillary.Hillary did not gasp or say one word that would suit the pages of a novel; he simply brought out the unromantic words: “God, what luck! He’s drunk!”The young apprentice swiftly leaned forward and picked up the old ex-sailor.Hillary’s whole soul was bursting to know why Gabrielle hadn’t kept the appointment by the lagoon. He was delighted to see Everard drunk. It had flashed through his sanguine, hopeful soul that there had been a domestic rumpus and that was the cause of Gabrielle not turning up at the trysting-place, where he had waited all night.He carried the old man as tenderly as possible into the parlour. The thought that he was really Gabrielle’s father made him feel quite tender towards the drunken man. He’d never been in that parlour before. He looked round. Where was she?“Gabrielle, your poor father’s taken ill—it’s Hillary who calls!” And then he stood holding the old man up, his heart thumping with the mighty expectation of seeing the girl enter the room, with secret joy at her father’s blind, drunken eyes at such an opportune moment.Hillary had come straight to Everard’s bungalow determined to risk all, to defy the old man outright and get one glimpse of the girl’s face and some kind of an explanation, even if he had to fight his way in. He called again: “Gabrielle! Gabrielle! Why don’t you come?” But the expected rustle of her dress, the glorious look of surprise in her eyes at seeing him as she rushed into the room, all that his imagination anticipated, was only mocked by the echo of his own voice.He sat the old man in the big arm-chair. Everard opened his eyes and stared like an imbecile at the youth.“Where’s my Gabby? Who the ’ell are you?” moaned the ex-sailor.“I’m Hillary, Gabrielle’s friend. I’m teaching her to play the violin; it will be a great help to her. She can make money by teaching, and be able to help you too,” blurted forth the apprentice in that inspiration that comes to lovers who have rehearsed a thousand excuses for suddenly appearing before a prospective father-in-law.Old Everard was too far gone with rum and grief to be interested in the commercial side of a prospective son-in-law.“You’re ’Illary! Violin! Play musick! You b—— villainous scoundrel! What have you done with ’er?” yelled the old man, as he struggled to his feet, a terribly vicious look in his eyes.“Done with who? Where’s Gabrielle?” Hillary shouted out in a voice that somehow managed to tell the old man that the youth before him thought that hetoohad a right to know where Gabrielle was.In a moment the ex-sailor’s mad passion subsided. He leaned forward and stared into Hillary’s eyes and saw the despair, the appeal, the light of sincerity and truth, everything that he had not seen in Koo Macka’s eyes. In a moment the old man relented.“Ain’t yer seen ’er, kid? She’s gone! Bolted with Macka, the Rajah! Find ’er, boy, find ’er for me. You can ’ave her, she’s my Gabby!” wailed the despairing father.Hillary’s heart nearly stopped beating. He couldn’t sum up courage enough to ask the old man to explain what he meant. He dreaded to hear something, he knew not what. Then the old man continued:“God forgive me for thinking ill of you.Hesent you ’ere ter-night to comfort ’er ole father.”Hillary still held the man’s hand, to givehimselfcourage as well as to comfort the old man.“’Ave a drop er rum, boy?” said the old man. Hillary did not hesitate. He held the tumblerful of liquid to his lips and swallowed the lot. Everard clutched the youth’s trembling hand and almost shed tears as the rum loosened the apprentice’s lips and he told the ex-sailor all that he felt for his daughter. Even Hillary was astonished to find that saturnine old drunkard so tender-hearted, so friendly towards him.After Everard had taken terrible oaths and sworn vengeance against the Rajah, he finished up by yelling into Hillary’s ears that he would give Hillary, or anyone else, two hundred pounds if they could trace Gabrielle’s whereabouts. Hillary took the distracted father’s hand and said: “I don’t want money; I only want to see Gabrielle, to bring your daughter back to you, and take her away from that man.” The apprentice couldn’t persuade himself to mention the name of the man who had apparently done him this great injury. Hillary had only seen the Papuan Rajah twice, but the man’s face was as vividly before him as if he had known him for a thousand years.At that moment he did not want Gabrielle’s father to see his eyes. He felt ashamed that they should be dimmed with emotion. He was overcome by the feeling that he was the first to love and have faith in woman; the first to have idealistic views about honour and the ways of men; the first to run away to sea with fourpence in his pocket to fight the world, to aspire for fame and wealth, only to find himself sleeping out in a strange land—in a dust-bin with the lid on! But at the thought of Gabrielle’s manner on the wreck, her tears, her eagerness to fly to Honolulu with him, the look in her eyes, his dark thoughts fled like bats from his brain, and once again hope reasserted itself.Hillary took the old ex-sailor’s hand and promised to stop the night with him. “Don’t let us waste the time, it will be dark soon,” said the apprentice. After a little rebellious talk Everard promised to drink no more, then putting on his cap he went off as obediently as a child to make inquiries. And so Everard went down to Rokeville, while Hillary went off on a voyage of discovery into the surrounding villages. His faith in Gabrielle had by now completely returned. He knew that she had strange notions, and had many girl friends among the Polynesian natives who dwelt with the native tribes. He so far recovered his spirits that he even whistled as he went off down the track. He made straight for the native village of Ackra Ackra, where the great head-hunter chief Ingrova dwelt. It was near to sunset when he at length passed through the great forest of giant bread-fruits that divided the native villages from the south-east shore. As he entered the tiny pagan citadel the women and girls greeted him with their friendly salutations and the usual cries fortam-bak(tobacco).The unlit coco-nut-oil lamps were swinging from the banyan boughs and flamboyants that sheltered the small huts and palavanas as he strode across therara(cleared space). The shaggy-headed native women clapped their hands as he passed. Some of the elder tattooed men and chiefesses puffed their short clay pipes and stared stolidly upon him. Just by the village patch Maga Maroo, pretty Silva Sula and some more dusky flappers threw their brown-stockinged legs skyward with delight as the dusky Lotharios gave wild encores in a strange barbarian tongue. Even Hillary smiled as he saw the artless, picturesque vanity of the girls as they sported their fine clothes on the tiny promenade that was the lamp-lit Strand of their little forest city. He saw at a glance by those demonstrative exhibitions of European toilets, and fringed swathings of yellow and scarlet sashes, that the artful traders had been that way exchanging their trumpery jewellery and gaudy silks for copra and shells.Arriving before the Chief Ingrova’s palatial palavana, Hillary was pleased to find that the great chief was at home. As the big, muscular, mop-headed islander stood before him, he made numerous stealthy inquiries to find out if the chief had the slightest hint of the girl’s whereabouts. But seeing that the chief was quite sincere in his protestations that he hadn’t seen her for quite two weeks, Hillary at once told him that she was missing from home. Hillary had persistently had the idea in his head that Gabrielle might be hiding in one of the villages in fear of her father’s wrath, for he could not help thinking that the old man had had a row with the girl and had deliberately kept that fact from him. The aged chief, who was a fine example of his race, swayed his war-club and wanted to go off in search of the missing girl at once. His eyes blazed with delight at the prospect of obtaining the head of the miscreant who had lured the girl from her home. The chief had a fierce idea of equity and justice; he was a stern disciplinarian in following the tenets of his religion, the code of morals laid down by his tribal ancestors. Indeed it was well known that he would not deviate from his ideas of honest finance by one shell or coco-nut. And it can be recorded that the mythological gods and legendary personages who were the great apostles of his creed were more to him in his inborn faith than the Biblical wonders of the Christian creed are to nine-tenths of the Sunday church-goers who worship at its altars.Hillary listened silently to the chief’s moralising and his loud lamentations over Gabrielle’s absence from home and felt assured that the chief knew nothing about it. It was true enough, Ingrova had never heard of Macka, otherwise Hillary might have been considerably enlightened, for the old chief was usually friendly to the white men. The apprentice gave the chief a plug of ship’s tobacco, then implored him to kill no one and secure no head for the adornment of his hut till he was quite certain that it was the head of the real culprit. Though Hillary was convinced that Ingrova had spoken the truth, he still nursed the idea that Gabrielle was somewhere in the vicinity of her father’s home. He could not bring himself to believe that Gabrielle had really bolted or been carried off by the Rajah. The idea of such a thing had left his mind. He had thought of her manner on the wreck only an hour before. “A girl so innocent that I wouldn’t utter a coarse word in her presence—she—go off with an abomination like that—a dark man—impossible!” had been his final summing up, and then in his vehemence he had kicked his Panama hat sky-high.Hillary’s face was flushed with the thoughts that surged through his head as he turned back and, gazing at Ingrova, said: “Look here, Ingrova, old pal, if you can find any trace whatsoever of the girl I’ll give you a lot of money and my best grey suit of clothes, see?” The apprentice knew that he was offering the chief inexhaustible wealth by promising him a suit of clothes. For if a Solomon Islander has one weakness it is a heartaching desire to possess European clothes.In a moment Ingrova’s ears were alert; his deep-set eyes twinkled with avarice. He immediately rubbed his dusky hands together and, lifting one hand, swore allegiance to Hillary’s cause. “I find girler if she bouter ’ere!” said he, bringing his war-club down with a terrific whack on the fallen bread-fruit trunk as they stood there in the silence of the forest.“What’s that?” The apprentice could hear approaching footsteps.He rubbed his eyes. What on earth had happened to Ingrova? There he stood, stiff and erect, his arms crooked; he had suddenly undergone a wonderful transformation—looked like some gnarled old tree trunk that had been carved so as to resemble a man. For only the eyes blinked. At the sound of approaching footsteps he had swiftly succumbed to the old primitive instincts, and become, as it were, a part of the silent tropical forest.Looking swiftly round, Hillary observed a dusky, wrinkled face and bright eyes peeping cautiously through the tall, thick ferns that grew around the spot where they stood. Ingrova’s form immediately relaxed; it was no enemy who sought to club him; it was only the friendly face of old Oom Pa. It was very evident that Oom Pa had heard the speech of the Englishman, and knowing that the white missionaries disapproved of very many of the things his priesthood called on him to do in the performance of heathen rites, he had approached warily. Seeing that only one white papalagi was there, Oom Pa stepped forth from the thickets and forced his finest deceitful smile to his thin lips.“Nice day,” quoth Hillary.“Verra nicer, papalagi,” muttered the heathen ecclesiastic, after looking up at Ingrova, who winked and raised his tattooed brows to reassure the suspicious priest. Oom Pa prostrated himself in his most gracious manner before Hillary. In a moment he had risen to his feet, and standing with head inclined he listened to Ingrova, who had begun to tell him the cause of the white man’s visit.“Oo woomba!” said the priest, rubbing his chin reflectively, then said: “Nicer white girl’s goner? She who gotter eyes like sky when stars walker ’bout, and gotter hair liker sunset on rivers?”“That’s her!” ejaculated Hillary dramatically. His heart thumped with hope. Oom Pa’s manner made him think that Gabrielle was somewhere close behind him, hiding in the palms. The old priest winked and put on a wise look. Then he looked up and, shaking his head all the while that he spoke, he told Hillary that he had not the slightest idea as to the girl’s whereabouts.“I not know where girl is, but I knower you mean white girl who comes and jumper onpae paeand dance at festival, one, two nights. But she did fly away like beautifultabarab(spirit) in forest.”“Dance onpae paeand run away into the forest!” said Hillary in surprise. “Good gracious! She’s not the girl I’m looking for. It’s a white girl I’m after, one who wears a blue dress, coiled-up tresses of gold that fall over her brow; she’s white and beautiful. Dance on your damnedpae pae! Phew!” said Hillary, putting his foot out and kicking vigorously.Oom Pa also metaphorically kicked himself. He wondered what trouble his incautious remarks might cause both to himself and the girl. He swiftly realised that it was an unusual thing for a white girl to do a jig on apae pae; he also knew that the white men might think that he had something to do with the girl’s strange leaning towards his heathenish creed, and so would blame him for anything that might have happened to her. Consequently he at once put his hand to his brow, shook his head and intimated that he was “old fool” to make such a mistake.Ingrova, who had immediately realised how near the priest had been to letting out that he knew something about Gabrielle, astutely changed the conversation and begged Hillary and the priest to enter his palavana. In a moment Ingrova had bent his stalwart figure and entered the low doorway of his rather palatial hut. Hillary and priest followed.The apprentice, who had never been inside a primitive homestead, was surprised as he entered the gloomy, tightly thatched dwelling-place of Ingrova. It was sheltered by the branches of two huge bread-fruits, was conical-shaped and had a large domed roof. The rooms were spacious, about twelve feet from wall to wall. Each room was lit up by primitive window holes. These windows had no glass in them, but were fashioned of twisted, interlaced bamboo twigs in a clever ornamental style, making them look like casements that opened on to feathery palm-trees. Indeed, often by night one could have peeped through those casements and seen the festival maidens dancing on the village green while rows of coco-nut-oil lamps twinkled from the palm and bread-fruit boughs. As the apprentice stared round the room, the dim light intensified the surroundings. Theywerestrange ornaments, no mistake about that. On the wooden walls hung the human skulls and bones of the sad departed. Noticing Hillary’s curious stare as he regarded the beautifully polished skulls, many of which still had hair clinging to the bone, Ingrova waxed sentimental, stepped forward and took the smallest skull down from its nail. Pointing to the empty sockets with his dusky finger, the chief murmured in sombre tones: “Ah papalagi, ’twas in these holes where once sparkled like unto stars in the wind-blown lagoon the eyes of her who was my firstparumpuan(wife).” Then he sighed, and continued: “’Tis true, O papalagi, that those eyes did once gaze and look kindly on him whom I did hate overmuch. But ’tis over now, these many years; and moreover, man, too, doth much which he no ought to do. And I say, O papalagi, does not the moon stare with kindness on more lagoons than one?”As he said this the old chief made several magic passes with his forefinger, pushing it across and within the sockets as he sighed deeply. Then he proceeded: “Here, between these teeth, was the tongue that sang to me when my head was weary and mucher trouble did come to my peoples.” At this moment the old warrior looked sadly through the doorway and sighed. Once more he put forth his hands and took down the remaining portion of that delicate skeleton. Hillary gazed in intense wonder. He noticed that the white bones were fastened together with finest sennet, joined with great artistic dexterity, not a bone being out of place. His thoughts about Gabrielle for the time being had vanished, as the mystery of that hut clung like a shroud about him. “What’s that?” he murmured, as he gazed on the gruesome object that Ingrova held up before him. He felt shivery in the gloom, notwithstanding the tropical heat and the buzzing sand-flies.As the two old hags who were squated on mats in the far corner of the room revealed their presence by giving a deep sigh, Ingrova proceeded: “Tis all that remains of her form, which I did lover overmuch. Look, O papalagi, here was her bosom; ’twas here that she gave unto my children nicer nourishing milk, children who now am great chiefs and chiefesses.”Saying this, the warrior ran his fingers down the curves of the dead woman’s throat bones till he arrived at the tiny bones of the breast, then his finger swerved to the right, passed round by the ribs and moved downward towards the sharp white bones of the thighs.“Good heavens!” was Hillary’s only audible comment, as he inwardly thanked God that white people did not keep their dead so that they could be inspected like grim photo albums on visiting days.Ingrova gently hung up those sad heirlooms of his past affections on their several nails again. Hillary, who by now had entered into the tragic spirit of the weird homestead, pointed to the various gruesome remains and asked Ingrova whose were the fourteen skulls that hung on a kind of clothes-line that ran across the room, close to the roof. Even old Oom Pa sighed as he watched Ingrova take down each bleached skull and solemnly point to the empty sockets, telling of bright eyes and gabbling tongues that once made music, sang songs, and knew laughter and tears. One had been a great high priest who had died at the hands of the white men sooner than swerve from the spiritual path that he deemed the right one. He was one of the old Solomon Island martyrs. Hillary noticed that this special skull was high-domed, revealing by its protuberance the reverence that man has for higher things, and also imagination. The teeth were perfect. Another was quite flat-headed, the hair woolly and the eye-sockets small. After much preamble on Ingrova’s part, Hillary gathered that this skull belonged to the social reformer of the tribe. Yet another high-domed remnant had bulging bone brows, the skull being altogether curiously shaped. “Who was he, O mighty Ingrova?” said Hillary with a good deal of reverence.Ingrova answered in this wise: “He was, O papalagi, the great witch-singer of these lands. It was in that little skull-hole where flamed the magic that sang unto us, telling the sorrow of the dying moons, and of the voices of wandering rivers and ocean caves. He looked through those holes” (here the chief pointed to the empty eye-sockets), “where stare the light of the stars, the sunsets and moonsets, when he did once stand beneath these very palms, by that doorway, and say to my tribe: ‘Man am no long to live, and, too, his love and joy oft depart ere his body go its way. All things must die, though the corals rise and the palms stand for ever before the eyes of day, man’s songs must cease and he got to sleep.’”“Dear me! What a nice old fellow he must have been,” muttered Hillary.Ingrova had gesticulated and spoken in such a way that he almost saw the sorrow of the poet’s long-dead eyes looking through the sockets of the skull.“Well, if this is a typical Solomon Island homestead, I’d sooner go out visiting in dear old England,” thought the apprentice, as Oom Pa suddenly prostrated himself on the prayer-mat and, turning over on his back, blew his stout, wrinkled stomach out with enormous breaths in some religious rite. Hillary made a solemn face and, responding to Ingrova’s appeal, placed his brow against a dead man’s beard that hung by the window hole. It was with a feeling of considerable relief that he so graciously bowed when two pretty native girls suddenly rushed into the room and stared at him with wonder-struck eyes. His white face fascinated them. They were attractive-looking maids, their massive crowns of hair tastefully ornamented with frangipani and scarlet hibiscus blossoms. Threaded shells dangled from their arms. One had large earrings hanging from her artificially distended lobes. They were two of Ingrova’s granddaughters. They at once proceeded to flirt with the apprentice, giving captivating glances from their fine dark eyes. And when he accepted a flower from pretty Noma, the tallest girl, he swiftly accepted a like offering from her companion, who had shot a jealous glance at her sister from her warm dark eyes. In the meantime, Oom Pa and Ingrova had met under the palms just outside the palavana.Ingrova’s eyes flashed with fire as old Oom Pa spoke close to his ear, for they liked not a white man to call in their village without asking. Though Ingrova was a brave chief, he too was a religious bigot, and his heart swelled with much devotion as he thought of what his gods would think to see the apprentice’s skull hanging amongst his most sacred religious trophies. He felt that a skull adorned with dark bronze curls would be a prize worth securing. Oom Pa placed his dusky hand to his mouth, coughed and looked around to see that none heard; then he said: “I say, O mighty Ingrova, this white papalagi may seek our hidden idols and be after no maid at all. What think you?”And Ingrova replied: “O mighty Oom Pa, favoured of the gods, did I not hear you say that you had seen such a one as this white maid?”Oom Pa puckered up his wrinkled eyebrows and swiftly told Ingrova how a white girl had danced unbidden on his great tambupae paeand then run away into the forest. On hearing this much Ingrova looked towards the palavan to see that the white man was not within earshot, and then, swelling his majestic, tattooed chest and shoulders, said scornfully: “It seemeth a grievous thing for a white maid to be missing, yet, I say, do not these cursed papalagi come into our bays on their ships and steal those we love, our wives, our sons and daughters, taking them to slavery, O Oom Pa?”“’Tis as thou sayest,” responded the priest. For a moment he reflected, then he looked up into Ingrova’s eyes with deep meaning and said: “Methinks ’tis true that he seeks a white maid, for he who hath a leg of wood did pass this way, calling in strange tones to all whom he met; and mark you, O Ingrova, this papalagi who is there in your palavana hath one eye that is the colour of the day and one the hue of the night.”Ingrova at this wisely nodded, as though to say that he too had noticed this strange thing. Then Oom Pa continued: “To have such eyes must mean that he is favoured by the gods of his own race, and so ’twere well that he should receive our friendship. And maybe, after all, ’tis the white man’s god who tattoos the skies!”Ingrova sighed deeply as he thought of the exquisite skull that might have adorned the walls of his palavana. Then he said: “’Tis well, Oom Pa, for the youth is to my liking.” And as they both stooped and re-entered the palavana doorway the young apprentice little dreamed how inscrutable Fate had given him one eye blue and the other brown so that he might not be killed that day by a Solomon Island chief. Fondest affection seemed to beam forth from Ingrova’s eyes as he looked at the apprentice. “Nice old heathen,” thought Hillary, as the big warrior sighed in deep thought and then placed his hands with regret among the rare bronze curls of the apprentice’s skull thatmighthave been his. But to give them their due, both Oom Pa and Ingrova were relieved that things were running smoothly. Together they took Hillary outside that he might inspect the wonders of the village. As he crossed the tinyraras(village greens) the dusky maids placed their hands where their hearts beat and sighed over the beauty of his eyes and the wondrous whiteness of his face.“Damn it all! I could take an interest in all this if I only knew where Gabrielle was,” thought Hillary, as he looked on the strange scene of native life around him. Notwithstanding his sorrows, he could not help thinking how akin primitive life was to civilised life. “One blows his nose on a palm leaf and the other on a silk handkerchief,” he murmured to himself. “Bless me, though it is a heathen village in the Solomon Isles, its dusky, tattooed inhabitants seem imbued with the same ideas and aspirations as my own people.”It was true enough: some of the tiny streets under the trees were clean and had large, well-built huts that were covered artistically with flowers of tropical vines. Other huts were small and very slovenly. Some of the maids had flowers in their hair and shining traduca shells hanging on their arms. Others wore tappa gowns, a few some remnant of European clothing, such as cast-off skirts, blouses, bodices and stockings. One or two wore only those undergarments that are frilled at the knees and succeeded in showing off their terra-cotta limbs in a most conspicuous fashion. Some had made real doors to their palavanas, whilst others still had doors that were made of old sacking. One played a cheap German fiddle while the kiddies on theraradanced with glee. In front of the native temple stood a monstrous idol, its big glass eyes apparently agog with laughter. And on a stump, facing it, stood the embryo parliamentary genius, Hank-koo, waving his skinny arms, beseeching the high chiefs to pass a law that would compel all the other chiefs to make their hut doors so that they opened inwards. “Why not have doors that open inwards when ’tis as well as opening towards?” he yelled, as he wiped his brow with a palm leaf. It was then that another fierce-looking being jumped on to a stump. He too swore by Quat (first god of heathen land) that for a door to open outwards was indeed beautiful. “Can not a dying man’s soul take flight with ease to shadow-land instead of being compelled to pull the door back ere departing hence?” And so the chiefs were always busy remaking doors that opened inwards or outwards, as they continually changed their minds over the virtues of such great things.“Comer, papalagi!” said Ingrova, as he beckoned Hillary to return towards his palatial palavana. “All is wonderful that I have seen, O great Ingrova,” said Hillary, as he stood once more outside the chief’s homestead.And then, as the chief leaned on his war-club, swelling his massive chest and bowing graciously, Hillary intimated that he must depart at once.Indeed the apprentice was getting impatient. “It’s no good hanging about here; this won’t find Gabrielle,” he thought, as he cursed the old skulls and the atmosphere of gloom that Ingrova’s gruesome exhibition had cast over him. “Why should I be made melancholy through Ingrova’s dead relatives? I don’t bring out the bones of my dead aunts and old uncles to make men miserable.” Such was his inward comment as he left the chief and hurried away. Thoughts of Gabrielle’s strange disappearance returned to him with redoubled force. He recalled how she had touched his hand for the first time. And as Hillary passed along by the forest banyans and saw the deep indigo of the far distant ocean, he stared on the rose-pearl flush of the sea horizon. “What a fool I was! I could have easily persuaded her to bolt that night on the derelict,” he thought, as he once more started on his way back to Everard’s.In due course he arrived back at Everard’s bungalow. The old man was terribly upset when Hillary told him that he had heard nothing about his daughter’s whereabouts. He trembled violently as he looked up at Hillary and said: “I’ve been up to Parsons’s shanty: no one has seen Gabby, or heard of her. What can it all mean?”Hillary made no reply. He did his best to cheer the old sailorman up. His unbounded faith in Gabrielle had returned. He recalled her innocent manner when she had offered him the little flower out of her hair when he had first met her on the lagoon. “No girl who gave a flower like that could do wrong,” he thought. Not only would he not entertain the idea that a dark Papuan man could have influence over Gabrielle, but he also persuaded the father to make no inquiries about the Rajah.“What proof have you got that the Rajah is the kind of man who would take advantage of any woman?” he inquired of Everard. Possibly he was influenced to make these remarks by a kind of Dutch courage. He imagined that there was far less chance of Everard’s suspicions being true if he himself blinded his own eyes to the possibilities of what a dark man might persuade a white girl to do. Over and over again he had recalled to memory Gabrielle’s eyes as she had gazed into his own on the derelict ship. “No! Impossible!” thought he. “I’ve got boundless faith in Gabrielle; I feel certain she’s only gone up to K——. She’s probably stopping with the German missionary’s wife and will be back to-morrow.”“Why the blazing h—— didn’t you go there to K—— and see?” said the old sailor in a petulant voice, as he suddenly looked apologetically at the apprentice. He had gripped Hillary’s hand gratefully in the thought that a strange youth should have such unbounded faith in his daughter.“I’ve only just thought of Gabrielle’s friendship with the missionary’s wife at K——,” said Hillary.Then Everard suddenly remembered that he had already sent a native servant up to K—— to inquire.All that night the old ex-sailor sat huddled in his arm-chair, crying softly to himself. He swore that he’d never drink again or hurt a hair of the girl’s head if she returned safely home.Hillary slept little. Once he walked into Gabrielle’s bedroom, gazed on her tiny trestle bed and thought of all she had said to him. Then he was obliged to go out of doors and walk up and down under the palms in an attempt to stifle his grief. In the morning he helped Everard to get the breakfast. The old man spoke kindly to him and repeatedly muttered to himself about his foolishness in thinking the youth was such a villain because he happened to be stranded in Bougainville and hadn’t a cent to bless himself with.“What did old Ingrova say?” suddenly asked the old man, as he swallowed some hot tea.“Oh, he had never even heard of Gabrielle.”“Never heard of her! The old liar!” almost yelled the old man.Hillary turned beetroot-red. He swallowed some hot tea and nearly fell on the floor. “You don’t mean to say Ingrova’s fooling us?”“Don’t worry, boy, Ingrova’s all right. I know ’im!” said Everard.“Thank God!” muttered Hillary. For he had suddenly called up terrible visions of ferocious head-hunters dancing round Gabrielle’s dying form.Anyway, his fears were quite dispelled by Everard’s manner and all that he proceeded to tell him. As the ex-sailor and the apprentice talked and then lapsed into silence over their own thoughts, the visitors began to arrive. It appeared that the grief-stricken father had been about telling all his friends that Gabrielle was missing from home. The first one to arrive at the bungalow after breakfast was Mango Pango. When Hillary opened the bungalow door she pretended to faint. Then she lifted her hands above her head and went on in a most dramatic fashion as Hillary explained to her that Gabrielle was still missing.“Whater you do ’ere?” said the pretty Polynesian girl, as she looked out of the corner of her eye as only a Polynesian maid can look without squinting. “I never knew that you knew Misser Gaberlielle,” she added, as Hillary smiled. Then she went on in a terrible style, for she had known Gabrielle since she was a child. “O Master Hill-e-aire, she kill! Some one fiercer head-hunter gotter her and cutter her head off!” she wailed, as she rolled her pretty eyes and then looked at Hillary in a swift flash that said “No gooder you loving girler without head—eh?” Giving this parting shot, Mango Pango ran off home to follow her domestic duties. And then a batch of native women and two white men arrived outside the bungalow to inquire if Gabrielle had returned. After a deal of jabbering and unheard-of ideas as to the cause of the girl’s absence, they put the coins in their pockets and went off mumbling. And still the old man gabbled on, saying: “How kind people are when folk are in trouble.”Hillary at last put on his hat and went off to make further inquiries. As he stood shaving himself before the mirror in the bungalow parlour, he thought of all that Gabrielle had told him about the haunting shadow-woman. He was half-inclined to tell the father of the girl’s strange talk on the derelict ship out in the bay. Then he decided not to do so, thinking that the old sailor had quite enough trouble on his shoulders. Somehow the thought of all that Gabrielle had told him about that shadow-woman eased Hillary’s mind. It gave him greater faith in the girl. He remembered the look in her eyes when she had sung the weird songs to him by the lagoon, and also in the forest once when they were parting. “Perhaps she’s a bit eccentric, and that accounts for her strange absence,” he thought. And the thought eased his mind and was more pleasant than the thoughts that had begun to haunt him. He recalled Rajah Koo Macka’s handsome face. He also recalled how he had read that dark men had strange and terrible influence over romantic girls. He knew very well that Gabrielle was terribly impressionable. Hillary gave himself a gash with his razor as he thought of this, and his hands began to tremble. Then he hastily dressed himself and told Everard that he was off to make inquiries about Macka. “We don’t knowwhohe is; he might be anyone, and villainous enough to lure your daughter deliberately away, after all,” said the apprentice, as he lit his pipe, said good-bye to the old man and went off to search and make inquiries.It was nearly dusk when Hillary returned from the villages and going down to the beach by the grog bar came across a Papuan sailor who, he had been told, was an old deck-hand off one of the Rajah’s ships.The artful Papuan at first swore that he did not know Macka, shook his head and said: “Me no savee!”Then Hillary took a handful of silver from his pocket and shook it before the Papuan’s eyes and hinted that if he could tell him of anyone whodidknow about Macka’s social position he would get well rewarded. In a moment the native’s manner changed. He took Hillary under the palms and told him a tale that fairly made the young apprentice gasp. And it was a story that would make anyone gasp.It was from this native’s lips that Hillary heard for the first time that Macka was an ex-missionary from Honolulu, and that he was a native from one of the coastal tribal villages of New Guinea, a tribal race who were the most ferocious and god-forsaken heathens in the Pacific world. The half-caste native sailor turned out to be a rather intelligent man. Indeed it appeared that he too was a converted heathen and had first got acquainted with Macka while attending mission-rooms in New Britain.“Do you mean to tell me that the Rajah Koo Macka is a member of a religious society?” gasped Hillary, as the native took a nip of his tobacco plug and then grinned from ear to ear.“It am so, boss!” said the man. Then the native continued: “’E am Rajah Makee and belonger misselinaries everywheres. ’E kidnapper too, and often taker Papuan girls, boys, men and women by nighter when no one looker!”“What do you mean?” said the apprentice with astonishment, only vaguely realising what “kidnapper” meant. Then the native calmly proceeded to enlighten him, and in a few moments Hillary had heard enough to convince him that the noble Rajah would not only be likely to abduct Gabrielle from her home, but old Everard and himself too if he thought they’d fetch a few dollars in the slave markets of the Bismarck Archipelago or elsewhere.So did Hillary discover that Rajah Macka was an inveterate cannibal, living on the flesh and weakness of people of his own race. For it appeared that he had sailed the Pacific for years, creeping into the bays of remote isles and kidnapping girls, boys, men and women till his schooner’s hold was crammed up to the hatchways with a terrified human merchandise. He usually sold the girls to chiefs in the Bismarck Archipelago and New Guinea; the boys and men he disposed of in New Guinea for plantation work or to be fattened up for sacrificial festivals, thepièce de résistanceof some mighty chief’s cannibalistic orgy. Macka was not the only one who dealt in the terrible blackbirding trade; Germans, Dutchmen and even English skippers made it their prime stock-in-trade.Hillary could hardly believe his ears as he listened to the character of the man who had been Everard’s welcome guest. He took the native sailor into Parsons’s grog bar, primed him well with drink and finally got all the information necessary to follow on the Rajah’s track. He discovered that he was a native of New Guinea, that he possessed a tambu temple there and was known as the “great Rajah” for hundreds of miles in Dutch New Guinea because he had been well educated by his heathen parents, who had sent him to Honolulu to be initiated into the virtues of Christianity.Though the sun was blazing down with terrific vigour from the cloudless sky, Hillary half ran as he stumbled across the tangled jungle growth on his way back to tell Everard all that he had heard about the Rajah. The native girls ran out of the little doors of the huts and begged him to give them one brass button from his apprenticeship suit. Crowds of native children, quite nude but for the hibiscus blossoms in their mop-heads and a wisp of a loin-cloth, rushed by the palms with loaded calabashes, crammed with fish caught in the shore lagoons. They were flying onward to the market village, the Billingsgate of the Solomon Isles; a place where shaggy-headed, sun-browned women exchanged shells for the fresh, shining fish. But Hillary had no eye for the scenes around him. He steamed like a wet shirt stuck out in the tropic sunlight as he hurried on; and the constellations of jungle mosquitoes and fat yellow sand-flies made their presence felt, driving their proboscis spears deep into his flesh, buzzing their musical appreciation to find he ate so well. The apprentice’s heart was beating like a drum; already the tale that he had heard had upset his ideas over the cause of Gabrielle’s absence. “Did she go off voluntarily with the Rajah, or had he kidnapped her?” That thought haunted him, tortured him. He stared towards the summits of the distant smoking volcanic ranges to the north-west and thought how they resembled his own heart, that was near to bursting with emotion, and how he too would like suddenly to shout his passionate desires to the sky. He sighed as he cut across the silver sands by the beach. He was going the long way round, for he dare not pass by the lagoon where Gabrielle had once sung to him.He was nearly dead with fatigue when he arrived at the bungalow. “Found ’er, boy?” came the dismal query that always smote his ears when he returned to Gabrielle’s home. Hillary simply shook his head and stared into the glassy eyes of the old man. Then he sat down and told the ex-sailor every word he had heard about Macka’s schooner and his reputation as a clever kidnapper of native girls and men in the Pacific isles.Old Everard jumped to his feet and hopped about on his wooden leg like a raving madman. Hillary tried to hold him down.Crash! The old man had stabbed the screen four times with his wooden member. Crash! He had picked up his spare, best Sunday wooden leg and smashed all the crockery off the shelf.“Don’t be a fool! Everard! Everard! Don’t go mad!” yelled Hillary at the top of his voice, as the demented sailor still smashed away.“I’ll save your daughter! I know where she is!” yelled the apprentice, as he endeavoured to stop the ex-sailor’s demented yells.The furniture of the bungalow and all the crockery were smashed before the mad old man calmed down. Then he took a pull at the rum bottle, sat down on the settee and recovering his breath stood up again and shouted: “Where’s theBird of Paradise, ’is ship? ’Is ship—has it sailed?” yelled the old man. Then he shouted: “He’s got her on theParadise! He’s got ’er, my Gabby! I see it all now! He’s an old blackbirder. Not a Rajah! Not a godly missionary! By the holy Virgin, forgive me, forgive me for being a damned fool!” the old fellow moaned, as he recalled Rajah Macka’s sombre voice and his exhortations when he had hesitated as to whether he’d give up drinking rum or no.Then the ex-sailor looked at Hillary and yelled: “Go, you blamed fool! Go and see if theBird of Paradisehas sailed from the harbour.”In a moment Hillary rushed away over the hills. In an hour he returned to the bungalow and told Everard that theBird of Paradisehad not been seen in the bay of Bougainville since the night when Gabrielle had been first missing.“She’s sailed in the night! ’E’s got ’er! ’E’s got ’er! She’s gone! She wasn’t willing! ’E stole ’er, just like ’e steals native girls! Boy, don’t worry. She’s a good girl, she is—one of the best,” said the distracted father, his voice lowering to a wailing monotone as he steadily beat his wooden leg on the floor in despair and hope.“Of course she’s a good girl,” said Hillary. His heart nearly stopped beating atthat, a thought he would not allow to haunt him.“There’s no time to lose, Mr. Everard. I’ll get a berth on some ship that’s bound to New Guinea. I’ll find a ship. I’ll stow away, I’ll do anything to get there and find his tambu house and rescue Gabrielle from his grasp. I’ll steal, I’ll rob anyone if it is necessary.” And as the apprentice said those things his eyes flashed fire, his face flushed with all the hope and the emotion that was in him.“I’ve got money, I’ve been saving for years, saving for ’er, but she didn’t know!” Everard suddenly exclaimed. Then he looked at Hillary and continued: “Get a schooner; hire one; I’ll pay! I’ll spend a thousand to get Gabby back and smash Macka up!” As he finished he brought his spare wooden leg down crash on the table. Then he gripped the apprentice by the hand. “Don’t leave me yet, boy, I’m nervous. In the morning you can go out into the bay and see if you can ’ire a schooner. It’s three weeks’ sail to the New Guinea coast. Find out exactly where his blasted coastal village is. Get all perticulars about ’im.”“Do you really think he’s kidnapped Gabrielle? It seems extraordinary in these enlightened times!” gasped the young apprentice, as he thought of Gabrielle on a three weeks’ voyage with Rajah Macka, the ex-missionary.“Don’t think! She’s gone! Where is she?” Then the old man roared with dreadful vehemence: “Why, damn it all,I’vebeen in the slave-trading line!I’vecrept into the native villages by night and stolen the girls as they slept beneath the palms! Cloryformed ’em! Smothered ’em! Tied ’em hup! Shot the b—— chiefs as they rushed from their dens to save their darters and wives!I’ave!I’ave!”“No!” That monosyllable expressed all the horror of which Hillary was capable over Everard’s sudden confession and his private thoughts as to Gabrielle’s fate on that schooner with Macka.“It’s retribution—that’s what it is,” wailed the old man.Hillary took his hand and did his best to soothe him. Then he lit the oil lamp and sat down by the weeping ex-sailor.“My Gabby’s like ’er mother, beautiful gal, but she’s ’aunted in ’er ’eart by them spirits of the Papuan race. ’Er mother seed a spirit-woman spring out from under the bed one night afore she died!”“A spirit-woman!” gasped Hillary. Then he continued: “Do you mean to tell me that there are such things as spirit-women running about Bougainville?”The old man looked vacantly into the apprentice’s eyes for a second, then said languidly, as though, he was too grieved to talk: “I seed a shadder meself ther other night, ’ere in this very room!”Hillary looked sideways at the empty rum bottles in the corner of the room, then back again at the old man’s bleary eyes. “He’s got a touch of the D.T.’s,” thought the young apprentice.Before midnight Everard lay in a drunken sleep. Hillary had made up a bed by the couch, but he couldn’t sleep. The idea of the girl being really abducted nearly sent him mad. Then he thought of Gabrielle’s strange talk on the hulk about shadow-women and of all that Everard had just told him about his wife’s being haunted by similar shadows. The idea of the shadow-woman haunted his mind in an unaccountable way, although he was naturally sceptical about such things as ghosts and enchantments.He sat by the small open window of the bungalow and, as the scents of the orange-trees drifted in on the cool night zephyrs, thought over all he had read about sorcerers, of the haunting shadow-figures that played such a prominent part in the love affairs of the medieval ages. Then he looked out of the window on to the moon-lit landscape and saw the tall, feathery palms; he even heard the rattling of the derrick of some schooner that was leaving before dawn. He thought of Mango Pango singing her old legendary songs in a chanting voice as she peeled spuds and chopped up the indigestible bread-fruit and tough yams for dinner, and finally summed up his belief in spirits in the one word “Rot!”And as old Everard lay just by him, snoring with a mighty bass snore, he felt half sorry that he couldn’t bring himself to believe implicitly that a shadowwomanhadlured the girl away from her home and had stopped her from keeping the tryst.“A shadow leaping about—preposterous! Sounds like Doctor Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Perhaps she’s been reading that book, and told her father about it while he was under the influence of drink,” reflected Hillary. He even brightened up as he persuaded himself that the girl’s wild sayings and her evident terror had all been brought about through reading that book. “She’s under the influence of Jekyll—that’s what’s the matter with this Everard family. Why, bless me, it’s all natural enough. I myself am out here in the Solomon Isles through reading books. I’d never have met Gabrielle, never heard of strangling shadows and that cursed Rajah Macka if it hadn’t been for Captain Marryat, Fenimore Cooper and Stevenson.”The young apprentice began to brighten up considerably as he reflected over the whole business. Everard’s snores sounded quite musical. He even began to think that if a terrible tragedyhadoccurred and Gabrielle was abducted and he was destined to go off and search for her across the seas, it was not so dreadful as nothing happening at all.So he thanked God that he was in the Solomon Isles, living amongst tattooed natives and strange old ex-sailormen who saw shadows and evil enchantresses dodging about their bungalow verandahs or racing under the moon-lit palms.And as he pondered and listened to the faint, far-off thunder of the surf on the coral reefs off Felisi beach he heard the guttural voices of the German sailors singing a chantey as their grey tramp-steamer went out on the tide, bound for the Bismarck Archipelago. Old Everard was still wheezing heavily, and at last Hillary too fell asleep to the sound of that steady snore.

In the morning old Everard awoke with a swollen head.

“Gabby! Gabrielle!” He shouted. Then, wondering why on earth the girl did not reply, he struggled to his feet, opened the door and went up the three steps that led into her bedroom. Her bed was neatly made—it had not been slept in. He was so puzzled about it all that he looked out of the small open window to see if she’d fallen out—notwithstanding that the window was six feet from the ground. Then he passed his hand across his brow and remembered Rajah Macka’s visit. “Rajah Koo Macka!” he shouted.

“God damn it! I don’t remember ’im going,” he mumbled, as he stumped his wooden leg about the room till the bungalow shook, and began whimpering like a fretful child, nearly falling down with sudden dizziness. Recovering himself, he got into a frightful rage and began to roar mighty oaths. “Gabby! Gabby! I’ll a-murder you! Where are you? Damn! My eyes! Ter ’ell with Macka! Ter ’ell with everything! Where are you?” Then he swung his wooden leg round, poked it right through the velvet-lined screen that Gabrielle had so neatly lined, and gave a terrible oath.

Then he cooled down. The reaction had begun to set in. His brain began to reason over it all. He rushed outside, stumped about and stumped back again. “Where is she? What’s it all mean? She’s not the kind of girl to go off by night with Macka,” were his reflections. All day long he called and called. Then he left the bungalow and roamed away to the native villages in search of her. He kicked up an awful commotion. The natives for miles thought a new kind of spirit with a wooden leg had escaped from shadow-land, for as they peeped from their hut doors they saw old Everard frantically waving his arms, shouting vehemently, swearing and calling out: “Gabby! Gabby!” He arrived back at his bungalow at dusk. “Gab!” he shouted. But she was still missing. The old ex-sailor realised all that Gabrielle had been to him in his desolate life.

He wept. He got terribly drunk and kept calling out: “Gabrielle! My Gab! Come back to your old father!” Then he mumbled in a self-soothing way: “She ain’t really gone. Macka’s so relygious. ’E wouldn’t take ’er from me. No! P’r’aps she’s gone to the b—— German’s wife at K——, or the mission-room at Tomba-kao.” Once more he got up and began to stump about. He seemed to go mad. He rushed again and again into the girl’s bedroom, caught his peg-leg in the fibre mats and fell down. “It’s ’er gown, ’er pretty gown,” he wailed. The tears rolled down his cheeks. He actually put his lips to the girl’s washed-out, torn garment and kissed it. Poor old man! He had never really found his true self. All the chances and virtues that might have been his had been shattered by gross surroundings.

After a while he cooled down again. “Who’d ’ave thought it! Who’d ’ave thought it!” he wailed. He returned to his parlour. The room looked dark and comfortless. A terrible suspicion was haunting his mind. But it was too late. His faith in Macka’s supreme holiness had begun to slacken slightly. Old remembrances and God-given instincts that had been his in the long-ago, pre-rum days came back to him. But he sought the weak man’s support, and poured fiery liquid between his trembling lips.

“Gabby! Gabby! Come to me! I’m ill, so ill!”

Then he jumped, and looked quite startled and sober. He’d never hurried so much in his life as he put the bottle down and, with his eyes gleaming with half-fearful delight, stumped towards the front door. Someone had knocked.

So great was his hurry that he stumbled as he rushed from the room. “She’s come back, me dear gal, come to ’er old pa!”

He opened the door and stared at the form in the gloom for a moment, then swayed and fell down—fell in sheer misery and disappointment, for it wasn’t Gabrielle who stood there—it was Hillary.

Hillary did not gasp or say one word that would suit the pages of a novel; he simply brought out the unromantic words: “God, what luck! He’s drunk!”

The young apprentice swiftly leaned forward and picked up the old ex-sailor.

Hillary’s whole soul was bursting to know why Gabrielle hadn’t kept the appointment by the lagoon. He was delighted to see Everard drunk. It had flashed through his sanguine, hopeful soul that there had been a domestic rumpus and that was the cause of Gabrielle not turning up at the trysting-place, where he had waited all night.

He carried the old man as tenderly as possible into the parlour. The thought that he was really Gabrielle’s father made him feel quite tender towards the drunken man. He’d never been in that parlour before. He looked round. Where was she?

“Gabrielle, your poor father’s taken ill—it’s Hillary who calls!” And then he stood holding the old man up, his heart thumping with the mighty expectation of seeing the girl enter the room, with secret joy at her father’s blind, drunken eyes at such an opportune moment.

Hillary had come straight to Everard’s bungalow determined to risk all, to defy the old man outright and get one glimpse of the girl’s face and some kind of an explanation, even if he had to fight his way in. He called again: “Gabrielle! Gabrielle! Why don’t you come?” But the expected rustle of her dress, the glorious look of surprise in her eyes at seeing him as she rushed into the room, all that his imagination anticipated, was only mocked by the echo of his own voice.

He sat the old man in the big arm-chair. Everard opened his eyes and stared like an imbecile at the youth.

“Where’s my Gabby? Who the ’ell are you?” moaned the ex-sailor.

“I’m Hillary, Gabrielle’s friend. I’m teaching her to play the violin; it will be a great help to her. She can make money by teaching, and be able to help you too,” blurted forth the apprentice in that inspiration that comes to lovers who have rehearsed a thousand excuses for suddenly appearing before a prospective father-in-law.

Old Everard was too far gone with rum and grief to be interested in the commercial side of a prospective son-in-law.

“You’re ’Illary! Violin! Play musick! You b—— villainous scoundrel! What have you done with ’er?” yelled the old man, as he struggled to his feet, a terribly vicious look in his eyes.

“Done with who? Where’s Gabrielle?” Hillary shouted out in a voice that somehow managed to tell the old man that the youth before him thought that hetoohad a right to know where Gabrielle was.

In a moment the ex-sailor’s mad passion subsided. He leaned forward and stared into Hillary’s eyes and saw the despair, the appeal, the light of sincerity and truth, everything that he had not seen in Koo Macka’s eyes. In a moment the old man relented.

“Ain’t yer seen ’er, kid? She’s gone! Bolted with Macka, the Rajah! Find ’er, boy, find ’er for me. You can ’ave her, she’s my Gabby!” wailed the despairing father.

Hillary’s heart nearly stopped beating. He couldn’t sum up courage enough to ask the old man to explain what he meant. He dreaded to hear something, he knew not what. Then the old man continued:

“God forgive me for thinking ill of you.Hesent you ’ere ter-night to comfort ’er ole father.”

Hillary still held the man’s hand, to givehimselfcourage as well as to comfort the old man.

“’Ave a drop er rum, boy?” said the old man. Hillary did not hesitate. He held the tumblerful of liquid to his lips and swallowed the lot. Everard clutched the youth’s trembling hand and almost shed tears as the rum loosened the apprentice’s lips and he told the ex-sailor all that he felt for his daughter. Even Hillary was astonished to find that saturnine old drunkard so tender-hearted, so friendly towards him.

After Everard had taken terrible oaths and sworn vengeance against the Rajah, he finished up by yelling into Hillary’s ears that he would give Hillary, or anyone else, two hundred pounds if they could trace Gabrielle’s whereabouts. Hillary took the distracted father’s hand and said: “I don’t want money; I only want to see Gabrielle, to bring your daughter back to you, and take her away from that man.” The apprentice couldn’t persuade himself to mention the name of the man who had apparently done him this great injury. Hillary had only seen the Papuan Rajah twice, but the man’s face was as vividly before him as if he had known him for a thousand years.

At that moment he did not want Gabrielle’s father to see his eyes. He felt ashamed that they should be dimmed with emotion. He was overcome by the feeling that he was the first to love and have faith in woman; the first to have idealistic views about honour and the ways of men; the first to run away to sea with fourpence in his pocket to fight the world, to aspire for fame and wealth, only to find himself sleeping out in a strange land—in a dust-bin with the lid on! But at the thought of Gabrielle’s manner on the wreck, her tears, her eagerness to fly to Honolulu with him, the look in her eyes, his dark thoughts fled like bats from his brain, and once again hope reasserted itself.

Hillary took the old ex-sailor’s hand and promised to stop the night with him. “Don’t let us waste the time, it will be dark soon,” said the apprentice. After a little rebellious talk Everard promised to drink no more, then putting on his cap he went off as obediently as a child to make inquiries. And so Everard went down to Rokeville, while Hillary went off on a voyage of discovery into the surrounding villages. His faith in Gabrielle had by now completely returned. He knew that she had strange notions, and had many girl friends among the Polynesian natives who dwelt with the native tribes. He so far recovered his spirits that he even whistled as he went off down the track. He made straight for the native village of Ackra Ackra, where the great head-hunter chief Ingrova dwelt. It was near to sunset when he at length passed through the great forest of giant bread-fruits that divided the native villages from the south-east shore. As he entered the tiny pagan citadel the women and girls greeted him with their friendly salutations and the usual cries fortam-bak(tobacco).

The unlit coco-nut-oil lamps were swinging from the banyan boughs and flamboyants that sheltered the small huts and palavanas as he strode across therara(cleared space). The shaggy-headed native women clapped their hands as he passed. Some of the elder tattooed men and chiefesses puffed their short clay pipes and stared stolidly upon him. Just by the village patch Maga Maroo, pretty Silva Sula and some more dusky flappers threw their brown-stockinged legs skyward with delight as the dusky Lotharios gave wild encores in a strange barbarian tongue. Even Hillary smiled as he saw the artless, picturesque vanity of the girls as they sported their fine clothes on the tiny promenade that was the lamp-lit Strand of their little forest city. He saw at a glance by those demonstrative exhibitions of European toilets, and fringed swathings of yellow and scarlet sashes, that the artful traders had been that way exchanging their trumpery jewellery and gaudy silks for copra and shells.

Arriving before the Chief Ingrova’s palatial palavana, Hillary was pleased to find that the great chief was at home. As the big, muscular, mop-headed islander stood before him, he made numerous stealthy inquiries to find out if the chief had the slightest hint of the girl’s whereabouts. But seeing that the chief was quite sincere in his protestations that he hadn’t seen her for quite two weeks, Hillary at once told him that she was missing from home. Hillary had persistently had the idea in his head that Gabrielle might be hiding in one of the villages in fear of her father’s wrath, for he could not help thinking that the old man had had a row with the girl and had deliberately kept that fact from him. The aged chief, who was a fine example of his race, swayed his war-club and wanted to go off in search of the missing girl at once. His eyes blazed with delight at the prospect of obtaining the head of the miscreant who had lured the girl from her home. The chief had a fierce idea of equity and justice; he was a stern disciplinarian in following the tenets of his religion, the code of morals laid down by his tribal ancestors. Indeed it was well known that he would not deviate from his ideas of honest finance by one shell or coco-nut. And it can be recorded that the mythological gods and legendary personages who were the great apostles of his creed were more to him in his inborn faith than the Biblical wonders of the Christian creed are to nine-tenths of the Sunday church-goers who worship at its altars.

Hillary listened silently to the chief’s moralising and his loud lamentations over Gabrielle’s absence from home and felt assured that the chief knew nothing about it. It was true enough, Ingrova had never heard of Macka, otherwise Hillary might have been considerably enlightened, for the old chief was usually friendly to the white men. The apprentice gave the chief a plug of ship’s tobacco, then implored him to kill no one and secure no head for the adornment of his hut till he was quite certain that it was the head of the real culprit. Though Hillary was convinced that Ingrova had spoken the truth, he still nursed the idea that Gabrielle was somewhere in the vicinity of her father’s home. He could not bring himself to believe that Gabrielle had really bolted or been carried off by the Rajah. The idea of such a thing had left his mind. He had thought of her manner on the wreck only an hour before. “A girl so innocent that I wouldn’t utter a coarse word in her presence—she—go off with an abomination like that—a dark man—impossible!” had been his final summing up, and then in his vehemence he had kicked his Panama hat sky-high.

Hillary’s face was flushed with the thoughts that surged through his head as he turned back and, gazing at Ingrova, said: “Look here, Ingrova, old pal, if you can find any trace whatsoever of the girl I’ll give you a lot of money and my best grey suit of clothes, see?” The apprentice knew that he was offering the chief inexhaustible wealth by promising him a suit of clothes. For if a Solomon Islander has one weakness it is a heartaching desire to possess European clothes.

In a moment Ingrova’s ears were alert; his deep-set eyes twinkled with avarice. He immediately rubbed his dusky hands together and, lifting one hand, swore allegiance to Hillary’s cause. “I find girler if she bouter ’ere!” said he, bringing his war-club down with a terrific whack on the fallen bread-fruit trunk as they stood there in the silence of the forest.

“What’s that?” The apprentice could hear approaching footsteps.

He rubbed his eyes. What on earth had happened to Ingrova? There he stood, stiff and erect, his arms crooked; he had suddenly undergone a wonderful transformation—looked like some gnarled old tree trunk that had been carved so as to resemble a man. For only the eyes blinked. At the sound of approaching footsteps he had swiftly succumbed to the old primitive instincts, and become, as it were, a part of the silent tropical forest.

Looking swiftly round, Hillary observed a dusky, wrinkled face and bright eyes peeping cautiously through the tall, thick ferns that grew around the spot where they stood. Ingrova’s form immediately relaxed; it was no enemy who sought to club him; it was only the friendly face of old Oom Pa. It was very evident that Oom Pa had heard the speech of the Englishman, and knowing that the white missionaries disapproved of very many of the things his priesthood called on him to do in the performance of heathen rites, he had approached warily. Seeing that only one white papalagi was there, Oom Pa stepped forth from the thickets and forced his finest deceitful smile to his thin lips.

“Nice day,” quoth Hillary.

“Verra nicer, papalagi,” muttered the heathen ecclesiastic, after looking up at Ingrova, who winked and raised his tattooed brows to reassure the suspicious priest. Oom Pa prostrated himself in his most gracious manner before Hillary. In a moment he had risen to his feet, and standing with head inclined he listened to Ingrova, who had begun to tell him the cause of the white man’s visit.

“Oo woomba!” said the priest, rubbing his chin reflectively, then said: “Nicer white girl’s goner? She who gotter eyes like sky when stars walker ’bout, and gotter hair liker sunset on rivers?”

“That’s her!” ejaculated Hillary dramatically. His heart thumped with hope. Oom Pa’s manner made him think that Gabrielle was somewhere close behind him, hiding in the palms. The old priest winked and put on a wise look. Then he looked up and, shaking his head all the while that he spoke, he told Hillary that he had not the slightest idea as to the girl’s whereabouts.

“I not know where girl is, but I knower you mean white girl who comes and jumper onpae paeand dance at festival, one, two nights. But she did fly away like beautifultabarab(spirit) in forest.”

“Dance onpae paeand run away into the forest!” said Hillary in surprise. “Good gracious! She’s not the girl I’m looking for. It’s a white girl I’m after, one who wears a blue dress, coiled-up tresses of gold that fall over her brow; she’s white and beautiful. Dance on your damnedpae pae! Phew!” said Hillary, putting his foot out and kicking vigorously.

Oom Pa also metaphorically kicked himself. He wondered what trouble his incautious remarks might cause both to himself and the girl. He swiftly realised that it was an unusual thing for a white girl to do a jig on apae pae; he also knew that the white men might think that he had something to do with the girl’s strange leaning towards his heathenish creed, and so would blame him for anything that might have happened to her. Consequently he at once put his hand to his brow, shook his head and intimated that he was “old fool” to make such a mistake.

Ingrova, who had immediately realised how near the priest had been to letting out that he knew something about Gabrielle, astutely changed the conversation and begged Hillary and the priest to enter his palavana. In a moment Ingrova had bent his stalwart figure and entered the low doorway of his rather palatial hut. Hillary and priest followed.

The apprentice, who had never been inside a primitive homestead, was surprised as he entered the gloomy, tightly thatched dwelling-place of Ingrova. It was sheltered by the branches of two huge bread-fruits, was conical-shaped and had a large domed roof. The rooms were spacious, about twelve feet from wall to wall. Each room was lit up by primitive window holes. These windows had no glass in them, but were fashioned of twisted, interlaced bamboo twigs in a clever ornamental style, making them look like casements that opened on to feathery palm-trees. Indeed, often by night one could have peeped through those casements and seen the festival maidens dancing on the village green while rows of coco-nut-oil lamps twinkled from the palm and bread-fruit boughs. As the apprentice stared round the room, the dim light intensified the surroundings. Theywerestrange ornaments, no mistake about that. On the wooden walls hung the human skulls and bones of the sad departed. Noticing Hillary’s curious stare as he regarded the beautifully polished skulls, many of which still had hair clinging to the bone, Ingrova waxed sentimental, stepped forward and took the smallest skull down from its nail. Pointing to the empty sockets with his dusky finger, the chief murmured in sombre tones: “Ah papalagi, ’twas in these holes where once sparkled like unto stars in the wind-blown lagoon the eyes of her who was my firstparumpuan(wife).” Then he sighed, and continued: “’Tis true, O papalagi, that those eyes did once gaze and look kindly on him whom I did hate overmuch. But ’tis over now, these many years; and moreover, man, too, doth much which he no ought to do. And I say, O papalagi, does not the moon stare with kindness on more lagoons than one?”

As he said this the old chief made several magic passes with his forefinger, pushing it across and within the sockets as he sighed deeply. Then he proceeded: “Here, between these teeth, was the tongue that sang to me when my head was weary and mucher trouble did come to my peoples.” At this moment the old warrior looked sadly through the doorway and sighed. Once more he put forth his hands and took down the remaining portion of that delicate skeleton. Hillary gazed in intense wonder. He noticed that the white bones were fastened together with finest sennet, joined with great artistic dexterity, not a bone being out of place. His thoughts about Gabrielle for the time being had vanished, as the mystery of that hut clung like a shroud about him. “What’s that?” he murmured, as he gazed on the gruesome object that Ingrova held up before him. He felt shivery in the gloom, notwithstanding the tropical heat and the buzzing sand-flies.

As the two old hags who were squated on mats in the far corner of the room revealed their presence by giving a deep sigh, Ingrova proceeded: “Tis all that remains of her form, which I did lover overmuch. Look, O papalagi, here was her bosom; ’twas here that she gave unto my children nicer nourishing milk, children who now am great chiefs and chiefesses.”

Saying this, the warrior ran his fingers down the curves of the dead woman’s throat bones till he arrived at the tiny bones of the breast, then his finger swerved to the right, passed round by the ribs and moved downward towards the sharp white bones of the thighs.

“Good heavens!” was Hillary’s only audible comment, as he inwardly thanked God that white people did not keep their dead so that they could be inspected like grim photo albums on visiting days.

Ingrova gently hung up those sad heirlooms of his past affections on their several nails again. Hillary, who by now had entered into the tragic spirit of the weird homestead, pointed to the various gruesome remains and asked Ingrova whose were the fourteen skulls that hung on a kind of clothes-line that ran across the room, close to the roof. Even old Oom Pa sighed as he watched Ingrova take down each bleached skull and solemnly point to the empty sockets, telling of bright eyes and gabbling tongues that once made music, sang songs, and knew laughter and tears. One had been a great high priest who had died at the hands of the white men sooner than swerve from the spiritual path that he deemed the right one. He was one of the old Solomon Island martyrs. Hillary noticed that this special skull was high-domed, revealing by its protuberance the reverence that man has for higher things, and also imagination. The teeth were perfect. Another was quite flat-headed, the hair woolly and the eye-sockets small. After much preamble on Ingrova’s part, Hillary gathered that this skull belonged to the social reformer of the tribe. Yet another high-domed remnant had bulging bone brows, the skull being altogether curiously shaped. “Who was he, O mighty Ingrova?” said Hillary with a good deal of reverence.

Ingrova answered in this wise: “He was, O papalagi, the great witch-singer of these lands. It was in that little skull-hole where flamed the magic that sang unto us, telling the sorrow of the dying moons, and of the voices of wandering rivers and ocean caves. He looked through those holes” (here the chief pointed to the empty eye-sockets), “where stare the light of the stars, the sunsets and moonsets, when he did once stand beneath these very palms, by that doorway, and say to my tribe: ‘Man am no long to live, and, too, his love and joy oft depart ere his body go its way. All things must die, though the corals rise and the palms stand for ever before the eyes of day, man’s songs must cease and he got to sleep.’”

“Dear me! What a nice old fellow he must have been,” muttered Hillary.

Ingrova had gesticulated and spoken in such a way that he almost saw the sorrow of the poet’s long-dead eyes looking through the sockets of the skull.

“Well, if this is a typical Solomon Island homestead, I’d sooner go out visiting in dear old England,” thought the apprentice, as Oom Pa suddenly prostrated himself on the prayer-mat and, turning over on his back, blew his stout, wrinkled stomach out with enormous breaths in some religious rite. Hillary made a solemn face and, responding to Ingrova’s appeal, placed his brow against a dead man’s beard that hung by the window hole. It was with a feeling of considerable relief that he so graciously bowed when two pretty native girls suddenly rushed into the room and stared at him with wonder-struck eyes. His white face fascinated them. They were attractive-looking maids, their massive crowns of hair tastefully ornamented with frangipani and scarlet hibiscus blossoms. Threaded shells dangled from their arms. One had large earrings hanging from her artificially distended lobes. They were two of Ingrova’s granddaughters. They at once proceeded to flirt with the apprentice, giving captivating glances from their fine dark eyes. And when he accepted a flower from pretty Noma, the tallest girl, he swiftly accepted a like offering from her companion, who had shot a jealous glance at her sister from her warm dark eyes. In the meantime, Oom Pa and Ingrova had met under the palms just outside the palavana.

Ingrova’s eyes flashed with fire as old Oom Pa spoke close to his ear, for they liked not a white man to call in their village without asking. Though Ingrova was a brave chief, he too was a religious bigot, and his heart swelled with much devotion as he thought of what his gods would think to see the apprentice’s skull hanging amongst his most sacred religious trophies. He felt that a skull adorned with dark bronze curls would be a prize worth securing. Oom Pa placed his dusky hand to his mouth, coughed and looked around to see that none heard; then he said: “I say, O mighty Ingrova, this white papalagi may seek our hidden idols and be after no maid at all. What think you?”

And Ingrova replied: “O mighty Oom Pa, favoured of the gods, did I not hear you say that you had seen such a one as this white maid?”

Oom Pa puckered up his wrinkled eyebrows and swiftly told Ingrova how a white girl had danced unbidden on his great tambupae paeand then run away into the forest. On hearing this much Ingrova looked towards the palavan to see that the white man was not within earshot, and then, swelling his majestic, tattooed chest and shoulders, said scornfully: “It seemeth a grievous thing for a white maid to be missing, yet, I say, do not these cursed papalagi come into our bays on their ships and steal those we love, our wives, our sons and daughters, taking them to slavery, O Oom Pa?”

“’Tis as thou sayest,” responded the priest. For a moment he reflected, then he looked up into Ingrova’s eyes with deep meaning and said: “Methinks ’tis true that he seeks a white maid, for he who hath a leg of wood did pass this way, calling in strange tones to all whom he met; and mark you, O Ingrova, this papalagi who is there in your palavana hath one eye that is the colour of the day and one the hue of the night.”

Ingrova at this wisely nodded, as though to say that he too had noticed this strange thing. Then Oom Pa continued: “To have such eyes must mean that he is favoured by the gods of his own race, and so ’twere well that he should receive our friendship. And maybe, after all, ’tis the white man’s god who tattoos the skies!”

Ingrova sighed deeply as he thought of the exquisite skull that might have adorned the walls of his palavana. Then he said: “’Tis well, Oom Pa, for the youth is to my liking.” And as they both stooped and re-entered the palavana doorway the young apprentice little dreamed how inscrutable Fate had given him one eye blue and the other brown so that he might not be killed that day by a Solomon Island chief. Fondest affection seemed to beam forth from Ingrova’s eyes as he looked at the apprentice. “Nice old heathen,” thought Hillary, as the big warrior sighed in deep thought and then placed his hands with regret among the rare bronze curls of the apprentice’s skull thatmighthave been his. But to give them their due, both Oom Pa and Ingrova were relieved that things were running smoothly. Together they took Hillary outside that he might inspect the wonders of the village. As he crossed the tinyraras(village greens) the dusky maids placed their hands where their hearts beat and sighed over the beauty of his eyes and the wondrous whiteness of his face.

“Damn it all! I could take an interest in all this if I only knew where Gabrielle was,” thought Hillary, as he looked on the strange scene of native life around him. Notwithstanding his sorrows, he could not help thinking how akin primitive life was to civilised life. “One blows his nose on a palm leaf and the other on a silk handkerchief,” he murmured to himself. “Bless me, though it is a heathen village in the Solomon Isles, its dusky, tattooed inhabitants seem imbued with the same ideas and aspirations as my own people.”

It was true enough: some of the tiny streets under the trees were clean and had large, well-built huts that were covered artistically with flowers of tropical vines. Other huts were small and very slovenly. Some of the maids had flowers in their hair and shining traduca shells hanging on their arms. Others wore tappa gowns, a few some remnant of European clothing, such as cast-off skirts, blouses, bodices and stockings. One or two wore only those undergarments that are frilled at the knees and succeeded in showing off their terra-cotta limbs in a most conspicuous fashion. Some had made real doors to their palavanas, whilst others still had doors that were made of old sacking. One played a cheap German fiddle while the kiddies on theraradanced with glee. In front of the native temple stood a monstrous idol, its big glass eyes apparently agog with laughter. And on a stump, facing it, stood the embryo parliamentary genius, Hank-koo, waving his skinny arms, beseeching the high chiefs to pass a law that would compel all the other chiefs to make their hut doors so that they opened inwards. “Why not have doors that open inwards when ’tis as well as opening towards?” he yelled, as he wiped his brow with a palm leaf. It was then that another fierce-looking being jumped on to a stump. He too swore by Quat (first god of heathen land) that for a door to open outwards was indeed beautiful. “Can not a dying man’s soul take flight with ease to shadow-land instead of being compelled to pull the door back ere departing hence?” And so the chiefs were always busy remaking doors that opened inwards or outwards, as they continually changed their minds over the virtues of such great things.

“Comer, papalagi!” said Ingrova, as he beckoned Hillary to return towards his palatial palavana. “All is wonderful that I have seen, O great Ingrova,” said Hillary, as he stood once more outside the chief’s homestead.

And then, as the chief leaned on his war-club, swelling his massive chest and bowing graciously, Hillary intimated that he must depart at once.

Indeed the apprentice was getting impatient. “It’s no good hanging about here; this won’t find Gabrielle,” he thought, as he cursed the old skulls and the atmosphere of gloom that Ingrova’s gruesome exhibition had cast over him. “Why should I be made melancholy through Ingrova’s dead relatives? I don’t bring out the bones of my dead aunts and old uncles to make men miserable.” Such was his inward comment as he left the chief and hurried away. Thoughts of Gabrielle’s strange disappearance returned to him with redoubled force. He recalled how she had touched his hand for the first time. And as Hillary passed along by the forest banyans and saw the deep indigo of the far distant ocean, he stared on the rose-pearl flush of the sea horizon. “What a fool I was! I could have easily persuaded her to bolt that night on the derelict,” he thought, as he once more started on his way back to Everard’s.

In due course he arrived back at Everard’s bungalow. The old man was terribly upset when Hillary told him that he had heard nothing about his daughter’s whereabouts. He trembled violently as he looked up at Hillary and said: “I’ve been up to Parsons’s shanty: no one has seen Gabby, or heard of her. What can it all mean?”

Hillary made no reply. He did his best to cheer the old sailorman up. His unbounded faith in Gabrielle had returned. He recalled her innocent manner when she had offered him the little flower out of her hair when he had first met her on the lagoon. “No girl who gave a flower like that could do wrong,” he thought. Not only would he not entertain the idea that a dark Papuan man could have influence over Gabrielle, but he also persuaded the father to make no inquiries about the Rajah.

“What proof have you got that the Rajah is the kind of man who would take advantage of any woman?” he inquired of Everard. Possibly he was influenced to make these remarks by a kind of Dutch courage. He imagined that there was far less chance of Everard’s suspicions being true if he himself blinded his own eyes to the possibilities of what a dark man might persuade a white girl to do. Over and over again he had recalled to memory Gabrielle’s eyes as she had gazed into his own on the derelict ship. “No! Impossible!” thought he. “I’ve got boundless faith in Gabrielle; I feel certain she’s only gone up to K——. She’s probably stopping with the German missionary’s wife and will be back to-morrow.”

“Why the blazing h—— didn’t you go there to K—— and see?” said the old sailor in a petulant voice, as he suddenly looked apologetically at the apprentice. He had gripped Hillary’s hand gratefully in the thought that a strange youth should have such unbounded faith in his daughter.

“I’ve only just thought of Gabrielle’s friendship with the missionary’s wife at K——,” said Hillary.

Then Everard suddenly remembered that he had already sent a native servant up to K—— to inquire.

All that night the old ex-sailor sat huddled in his arm-chair, crying softly to himself. He swore that he’d never drink again or hurt a hair of the girl’s head if she returned safely home.

Hillary slept little. Once he walked into Gabrielle’s bedroom, gazed on her tiny trestle bed and thought of all she had said to him. Then he was obliged to go out of doors and walk up and down under the palms in an attempt to stifle his grief. In the morning he helped Everard to get the breakfast. The old man spoke kindly to him and repeatedly muttered to himself about his foolishness in thinking the youth was such a villain because he happened to be stranded in Bougainville and hadn’t a cent to bless himself with.

“What did old Ingrova say?” suddenly asked the old man, as he swallowed some hot tea.

“Oh, he had never even heard of Gabrielle.”

“Never heard of her! The old liar!” almost yelled the old man.

Hillary turned beetroot-red. He swallowed some hot tea and nearly fell on the floor. “You don’t mean to say Ingrova’s fooling us?”

“Don’t worry, boy, Ingrova’s all right. I know ’im!” said Everard.

“Thank God!” muttered Hillary. For he had suddenly called up terrible visions of ferocious head-hunters dancing round Gabrielle’s dying form.

Anyway, his fears were quite dispelled by Everard’s manner and all that he proceeded to tell him. As the ex-sailor and the apprentice talked and then lapsed into silence over their own thoughts, the visitors began to arrive. It appeared that the grief-stricken father had been about telling all his friends that Gabrielle was missing from home. The first one to arrive at the bungalow after breakfast was Mango Pango. When Hillary opened the bungalow door she pretended to faint. Then she lifted her hands above her head and went on in a most dramatic fashion as Hillary explained to her that Gabrielle was still missing.

“Whater you do ’ere?” said the pretty Polynesian girl, as she looked out of the corner of her eye as only a Polynesian maid can look without squinting. “I never knew that you knew Misser Gaberlielle,” she added, as Hillary smiled. Then she went on in a terrible style, for she had known Gabrielle since she was a child. “O Master Hill-e-aire, she kill! Some one fiercer head-hunter gotter her and cutter her head off!” she wailed, as she rolled her pretty eyes and then looked at Hillary in a swift flash that said “No gooder you loving girler without head—eh?” Giving this parting shot, Mango Pango ran off home to follow her domestic duties. And then a batch of native women and two white men arrived outside the bungalow to inquire if Gabrielle had returned. After a deal of jabbering and unheard-of ideas as to the cause of the girl’s absence, they put the coins in their pockets and went off mumbling. And still the old man gabbled on, saying: “How kind people are when folk are in trouble.”

Hillary at last put on his hat and went off to make further inquiries. As he stood shaving himself before the mirror in the bungalow parlour, he thought of all that Gabrielle had told him about the haunting shadow-woman. He was half-inclined to tell the father of the girl’s strange talk on the derelict ship out in the bay. Then he decided not to do so, thinking that the old sailor had quite enough trouble on his shoulders. Somehow the thought of all that Gabrielle had told him about that shadow-woman eased Hillary’s mind. It gave him greater faith in the girl. He remembered the look in her eyes when she had sung the weird songs to him by the lagoon, and also in the forest once when they were parting. “Perhaps she’s a bit eccentric, and that accounts for her strange absence,” he thought. And the thought eased his mind and was more pleasant than the thoughts that had begun to haunt him. He recalled Rajah Koo Macka’s handsome face. He also recalled how he had read that dark men had strange and terrible influence over romantic girls. He knew very well that Gabrielle was terribly impressionable. Hillary gave himself a gash with his razor as he thought of this, and his hands began to tremble. Then he hastily dressed himself and told Everard that he was off to make inquiries about Macka. “We don’t knowwhohe is; he might be anyone, and villainous enough to lure your daughter deliberately away, after all,” said the apprentice, as he lit his pipe, said good-bye to the old man and went off to search and make inquiries.

It was nearly dusk when Hillary returned from the villages and going down to the beach by the grog bar came across a Papuan sailor who, he had been told, was an old deck-hand off one of the Rajah’s ships.

The artful Papuan at first swore that he did not know Macka, shook his head and said: “Me no savee!”

Then Hillary took a handful of silver from his pocket and shook it before the Papuan’s eyes and hinted that if he could tell him of anyone whodidknow about Macka’s social position he would get well rewarded. In a moment the native’s manner changed. He took Hillary under the palms and told him a tale that fairly made the young apprentice gasp. And it was a story that would make anyone gasp.

It was from this native’s lips that Hillary heard for the first time that Macka was an ex-missionary from Honolulu, and that he was a native from one of the coastal tribal villages of New Guinea, a tribal race who were the most ferocious and god-forsaken heathens in the Pacific world. The half-caste native sailor turned out to be a rather intelligent man. Indeed it appeared that he too was a converted heathen and had first got acquainted with Macka while attending mission-rooms in New Britain.

“Do you mean to tell me that the Rajah Koo Macka is a member of a religious society?” gasped Hillary, as the native took a nip of his tobacco plug and then grinned from ear to ear.

“It am so, boss!” said the man. Then the native continued: “’E am Rajah Makee and belonger misselinaries everywheres. ’E kidnapper too, and often taker Papuan girls, boys, men and women by nighter when no one looker!”

“What do you mean?” said the apprentice with astonishment, only vaguely realising what “kidnapper” meant. Then the native calmly proceeded to enlighten him, and in a few moments Hillary had heard enough to convince him that the noble Rajah would not only be likely to abduct Gabrielle from her home, but old Everard and himself too if he thought they’d fetch a few dollars in the slave markets of the Bismarck Archipelago or elsewhere.

So did Hillary discover that Rajah Macka was an inveterate cannibal, living on the flesh and weakness of people of his own race. For it appeared that he had sailed the Pacific for years, creeping into the bays of remote isles and kidnapping girls, boys, men and women till his schooner’s hold was crammed up to the hatchways with a terrified human merchandise. He usually sold the girls to chiefs in the Bismarck Archipelago and New Guinea; the boys and men he disposed of in New Guinea for plantation work or to be fattened up for sacrificial festivals, thepièce de résistanceof some mighty chief’s cannibalistic orgy. Macka was not the only one who dealt in the terrible blackbirding trade; Germans, Dutchmen and even English skippers made it their prime stock-in-trade.

Hillary could hardly believe his ears as he listened to the character of the man who had been Everard’s welcome guest. He took the native sailor into Parsons’s grog bar, primed him well with drink and finally got all the information necessary to follow on the Rajah’s track. He discovered that he was a native of New Guinea, that he possessed a tambu temple there and was known as the “great Rajah” for hundreds of miles in Dutch New Guinea because he had been well educated by his heathen parents, who had sent him to Honolulu to be initiated into the virtues of Christianity.

Though the sun was blazing down with terrific vigour from the cloudless sky, Hillary half ran as he stumbled across the tangled jungle growth on his way back to tell Everard all that he had heard about the Rajah. The native girls ran out of the little doors of the huts and begged him to give them one brass button from his apprenticeship suit. Crowds of native children, quite nude but for the hibiscus blossoms in their mop-heads and a wisp of a loin-cloth, rushed by the palms with loaded calabashes, crammed with fish caught in the shore lagoons. They were flying onward to the market village, the Billingsgate of the Solomon Isles; a place where shaggy-headed, sun-browned women exchanged shells for the fresh, shining fish. But Hillary had no eye for the scenes around him. He steamed like a wet shirt stuck out in the tropic sunlight as he hurried on; and the constellations of jungle mosquitoes and fat yellow sand-flies made their presence felt, driving their proboscis spears deep into his flesh, buzzing their musical appreciation to find he ate so well. The apprentice’s heart was beating like a drum; already the tale that he had heard had upset his ideas over the cause of Gabrielle’s absence. “Did she go off voluntarily with the Rajah, or had he kidnapped her?” That thought haunted him, tortured him. He stared towards the summits of the distant smoking volcanic ranges to the north-west and thought how they resembled his own heart, that was near to bursting with emotion, and how he too would like suddenly to shout his passionate desires to the sky. He sighed as he cut across the silver sands by the beach. He was going the long way round, for he dare not pass by the lagoon where Gabrielle had once sung to him.

He was nearly dead with fatigue when he arrived at the bungalow. “Found ’er, boy?” came the dismal query that always smote his ears when he returned to Gabrielle’s home. Hillary simply shook his head and stared into the glassy eyes of the old man. Then he sat down and told the ex-sailor every word he had heard about Macka’s schooner and his reputation as a clever kidnapper of native girls and men in the Pacific isles.

Old Everard jumped to his feet and hopped about on his wooden leg like a raving madman. Hillary tried to hold him down.

Crash! The old man had stabbed the screen four times with his wooden member. Crash! He had picked up his spare, best Sunday wooden leg and smashed all the crockery off the shelf.

“Don’t be a fool! Everard! Everard! Don’t go mad!” yelled Hillary at the top of his voice, as the demented sailor still smashed away.

“I’ll save your daughter! I know where she is!” yelled the apprentice, as he endeavoured to stop the ex-sailor’s demented yells.

The furniture of the bungalow and all the crockery were smashed before the mad old man calmed down. Then he took a pull at the rum bottle, sat down on the settee and recovering his breath stood up again and shouted: “Where’s theBird of Paradise, ’is ship? ’Is ship—has it sailed?” yelled the old man. Then he shouted: “He’s got her on theParadise! He’s got ’er, my Gabby! I see it all now! He’s an old blackbirder. Not a Rajah! Not a godly missionary! By the holy Virgin, forgive me, forgive me for being a damned fool!” the old fellow moaned, as he recalled Rajah Macka’s sombre voice and his exhortations when he had hesitated as to whether he’d give up drinking rum or no.

Then the ex-sailor looked at Hillary and yelled: “Go, you blamed fool! Go and see if theBird of Paradisehas sailed from the harbour.”

In a moment Hillary rushed away over the hills. In an hour he returned to the bungalow and told Everard that theBird of Paradisehad not been seen in the bay of Bougainville since the night when Gabrielle had been first missing.

“She’s sailed in the night! ’E’s got ’er! ’E’s got ’er! She’s gone! She wasn’t willing! ’E stole ’er, just like ’e steals native girls! Boy, don’t worry. She’s a good girl, she is—one of the best,” said the distracted father, his voice lowering to a wailing monotone as he steadily beat his wooden leg on the floor in despair and hope.

“Of course she’s a good girl,” said Hillary. His heart nearly stopped beating atthat, a thought he would not allow to haunt him.

“There’s no time to lose, Mr. Everard. I’ll get a berth on some ship that’s bound to New Guinea. I’ll find a ship. I’ll stow away, I’ll do anything to get there and find his tambu house and rescue Gabrielle from his grasp. I’ll steal, I’ll rob anyone if it is necessary.” And as the apprentice said those things his eyes flashed fire, his face flushed with all the hope and the emotion that was in him.

“I’ve got money, I’ve been saving for years, saving for ’er, but she didn’t know!” Everard suddenly exclaimed. Then he looked at Hillary and continued: “Get a schooner; hire one; I’ll pay! I’ll spend a thousand to get Gabby back and smash Macka up!” As he finished he brought his spare wooden leg down crash on the table. Then he gripped the apprentice by the hand. “Don’t leave me yet, boy, I’m nervous. In the morning you can go out into the bay and see if you can ’ire a schooner. It’s three weeks’ sail to the New Guinea coast. Find out exactly where his blasted coastal village is. Get all perticulars about ’im.”

“Do you really think he’s kidnapped Gabrielle? It seems extraordinary in these enlightened times!” gasped the young apprentice, as he thought of Gabrielle on a three weeks’ voyage with Rajah Macka, the ex-missionary.

“Don’t think! She’s gone! Where is she?” Then the old man roared with dreadful vehemence: “Why, damn it all,I’vebeen in the slave-trading line!I’vecrept into the native villages by night and stolen the girls as they slept beneath the palms! Cloryformed ’em! Smothered ’em! Tied ’em hup! Shot the b—— chiefs as they rushed from their dens to save their darters and wives!I’ave!I’ave!”

“No!” That monosyllable expressed all the horror of which Hillary was capable over Everard’s sudden confession and his private thoughts as to Gabrielle’s fate on that schooner with Macka.

“It’s retribution—that’s what it is,” wailed the old man.

Hillary took his hand and did his best to soothe him. Then he lit the oil lamp and sat down by the weeping ex-sailor.

“My Gabby’s like ’er mother, beautiful gal, but she’s ’aunted in ’er ’eart by them spirits of the Papuan race. ’Er mother seed a spirit-woman spring out from under the bed one night afore she died!”

“A spirit-woman!” gasped Hillary. Then he continued: “Do you mean to tell me that there are such things as spirit-women running about Bougainville?”

The old man looked vacantly into the apprentice’s eyes for a second, then said languidly, as though, he was too grieved to talk: “I seed a shadder meself ther other night, ’ere in this very room!”

Hillary looked sideways at the empty rum bottles in the corner of the room, then back again at the old man’s bleary eyes. “He’s got a touch of the D.T.’s,” thought the young apprentice.

Before midnight Everard lay in a drunken sleep. Hillary had made up a bed by the couch, but he couldn’t sleep. The idea of the girl being really abducted nearly sent him mad. Then he thought of Gabrielle’s strange talk on the hulk about shadow-women and of all that Everard had just told him about his wife’s being haunted by similar shadows. The idea of the shadow-woman haunted his mind in an unaccountable way, although he was naturally sceptical about such things as ghosts and enchantments.

He sat by the small open window of the bungalow and, as the scents of the orange-trees drifted in on the cool night zephyrs, thought over all he had read about sorcerers, of the haunting shadow-figures that played such a prominent part in the love affairs of the medieval ages. Then he looked out of the window on to the moon-lit landscape and saw the tall, feathery palms; he even heard the rattling of the derrick of some schooner that was leaving before dawn. He thought of Mango Pango singing her old legendary songs in a chanting voice as she peeled spuds and chopped up the indigestible bread-fruit and tough yams for dinner, and finally summed up his belief in spirits in the one word “Rot!”

And as old Everard lay just by him, snoring with a mighty bass snore, he felt half sorry that he couldn’t bring himself to believe implicitly that a shadowwomanhadlured the girl away from her home and had stopped her from keeping the tryst.

“A shadow leaping about—preposterous! Sounds like Doctor Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Perhaps she’s been reading that book, and told her father about it while he was under the influence of drink,” reflected Hillary. He even brightened up as he persuaded himself that the girl’s wild sayings and her evident terror had all been brought about through reading that book. “She’s under the influence of Jekyll—that’s what’s the matter with this Everard family. Why, bless me, it’s all natural enough. I myself am out here in the Solomon Isles through reading books. I’d never have met Gabrielle, never heard of strangling shadows and that cursed Rajah Macka if it hadn’t been for Captain Marryat, Fenimore Cooper and Stevenson.”

The young apprentice began to brighten up considerably as he reflected over the whole business. Everard’s snores sounded quite musical. He even began to think that if a terrible tragedyhadoccurred and Gabrielle was abducted and he was destined to go off and search for her across the seas, it was not so dreadful as nothing happening at all.

So he thanked God that he was in the Solomon Isles, living amongst tattooed natives and strange old ex-sailormen who saw shadows and evil enchantresses dodging about their bungalow verandahs or racing under the moon-lit palms.

And as he pondered and listened to the faint, far-off thunder of the surf on the coral reefs off Felisi beach he heard the guttural voices of the German sailors singing a chantey as their grey tramp-steamer went out on the tide, bound for the Bismarck Archipelago. Old Everard was still wheezing heavily, and at last Hillary too fell asleep to the sound of that steady snore.

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