Gabrielle of the Lagoon Part 20

She gazed to the southward. Her heart gave a tremendous thump as she sighted, a long, low line of dark coast to the starboard. Then she knew that at last the _Bird of Paradise_ lay off the dreaded coast of wild New Guinea.

Words cannot describe the misery of Gabrielle's heart as she saw the coast-line of that strange, rugged land and realised that when once she was ash.o.r.e there she would be completely in the Rajah's power. It seemed to her that a great shadow from that mountainous world swept across the sea and struck her soul with despair as a solitary cloud, like a castaway's raft, crept under the moon. Her hair fluttered to the cool night breeze, her fingers clutched the rim of the port-hole as she still stared towards that desolate, terrible coast-line. But had Gabrielle Everard been able to look astern and see across half-a-thousand miles what a sight would have cheered her despairing heart. She would have seen the _Sea Foam_ dipping gracefully, bounding onward, travelling south-south-west across the coral sea beneath the tropic moon with all sail set, and Mango Pango dancing on deck, while the great Ulysses, with hand placed sentimentally on his heart, thundered out:

"Oh, I went down South for to see my Sal, Singing Polly-wolly-doodle all the way!"

and Hillary, still full of romance and hope, playing the violin like some pagan G.o.d, accompanying each song the big man sang.

CHAPTER XII-IN NEW GUINEA

It was close on midnight when the _Bird of Paradise_ dropped anchor off the coastal towns.h.i.+p of Tumba-Tumba. It was the Papuan kidnapper's native home on the coast of New Guinea, north-west of Astrolabe mountains.

"Keep near me, dear Tombo," whispered Gabrielle, as the little cabin-boy ran into the cuddy full of excitement at hearing the anchor go. Before the little fellow could make any response to Gabrielle the Rajah lifted his foot and with a straight kick impelled the boy forcibly out on deck again. Then he went away forward to give orders to the bustling crew.

Two or three Herculean Dyaks stood with revolvers in their hands by the main hatchway. They had apparently thrown over all the dead bodies of the victims who had died in the hold. Gabrielle looked through the port-hole and saw half-a-dozen terror-stricken brown faces peep over the rim of the hatchway. She saw the clutching brown fingers of old men, girls and youths curled on the hatchway rim as the slaves struggled to get a purchase and stare up at the blue, star-lit sky before the hatch was slammed down again.

She ran out on deck and stared sh.o.r.eward in her despair. They were anch.o.r.ed about a quarter of a mile from the line of coral reefs that loomed afar, looking like grim, gnarled monsters of the sea, where the ridges lifted their wave-washed backs for miles and miles. There, before Gabrielle's eyes, were the wild coastal forests and mountains of a strange land. Away to sea on the starboard side she saw strange figures with mop-haired heads; some had curly, dishevelled hair, and their heads sticking out of the moon-lit water made them look like dusky mermaids, distinctly visible, as they crawled about searching for pearls on the reefs. They were not mermaids. They were simply Papuan women and girls and men searching for beche-de-mer in the shallow waters.

"Solo bungo ma.s.s!" ("My flower of life!") whispered the Papuan skipper into her ear. He had approached her silently. She looked up into his face. The pallor of her own face, the despair in her blue eyes as they shone with intense beauty of sorrow, had no effect on the man before her. Indeed, her despair only increased his desire to get her completely in his power.

"Cannot I stay here? Must I go?" she said in a voice the appeal of which cannot be described. The swarthy man was staring sh.o.r.eward at his native land, a half-wild look in his fiery eyes as he thought of the helplessness of the trembling victim who stood beside him. He only shook his head in reply, then gazed into her eyes in a way that struck terror to her soul. She knew that she must obey. She had no belongings to pack, and so in a few moments she was ready, standing like some helpless _cond.a.m.ne_ awaiting the fall of the guillotine.

It was almost a relief to the girl's mind to hear the sudden clamouring just over the vessel's side. And as she looked over she saw dozens of strangely ornamented canoes and outriggers crammed with mop-headed, tattooed savages.

"Sowan! Tiki, soo, Rajah!" shouted the barbarian horde, as the Rajah looked down upon them, bowing grandiloquently in response to their savage salutations. For the Rajah was the one "quite civilised" man of their primitive heathen coastal towns.h.i.+p, and so looked upon with almighty respect by his fellows. It was a momentous event in the life of the population of the coastal village when the _Bird of Paradise_ came in. The Rajah usually dropped anchor leagues away to the north, near the Bismarck Archipelago. It was there that he usually got the biggest prices for his freightage of trembling captives, destined for the slave markets of German and Dutch New Guinea. But the Rajah on the present occasion was in a mighty hurry to get ash.o.r.e, so he had decided to take Gabrielle with him and leave his mulatto mate to sail the _Bird of Paradise_ to the next port and dispose of his terrified human cargo.

When Gabrielle arrived under the cover of night on the sh.o.r.es of that barbarian hut city, and saw the savage-looking women and men staring at her, as tattooed _ridi_-clad chiefs shouted, "Cowan! to mita putih purumpuan! ('Welcome to the white girl!') she trembled in her terror, and even felt glad of the Rajah's presence as they mobbed her and pinched her white flesh deliciously. The population rushed out of their huts by hundreds. Hideous old tattooed chiefs (bare as eggs down to the loins, bone ornaments in their ears) moaned and blew with their blubbery lips as they spotted her whiteness. The deep-bosomed tawny women who stood beneath the sheltering ivory-nut palms by their huts stopped their unintelligible hubbub as the Rajah hurried her past.

"Cowan! The Rajah! The Soo Rajaaah!" they shouted, as they recognised that cultured heathen in civilised attire, the great squire, the lord of the manor in Tumba-Tumba. The news spread like wildfire. "Cowan!"

("Friend!") gabbled the girls, women and youths, as they rushed out of their small thatched homesteads to see the great Rajah and the beautiful _putih purumpuan_. The thick-haired half-caste Malayan girls, dancing beneath the festival palms, jingling their leglets and sh.e.l.l-threaded armlets, stopped chanting to see so unusual a sight. They laid their hands in a romantic way on their hearts and sighed out, "O wean soo loo," as a white girl with wondrous golden hair tossing to the breezes was hurried along a prisoner in the Rajah's loving grip.

On, on he hurried. The tropic moon cast a weird light over the barbarian world that was framed by distant mountains. Nothing but mighty brooding forest haunted with mystery and uncouth sounds came into view for miles and miles as Gabrielle was hustled along. And still she heard the low chanting salutations of "Cowan le soo!" floating to her ears. Then came the weird sounds of the tribal bone flutes and beating drums, and the sudden hush as she pa.s.sed beneath the rows of hanging coco-nut-oil lamps of some festival ceremony. Those wild people had often seen the Rajah arrive from his blackbirding schooner with many a trembling victim looking up into his eyes for mercy, but never had they seen such a one as they saw that night. They marvelled at the glory of her eyes, the cataract of dishevelled hair, like the sunset on their mountains off Tumba-Tumba (so they said). Besides, all the previous victims were tawny-hued like themselves and had dark eyes, eyes that shone, delightedly sometimes, to hear the acclamations of admiring chiefs in the slave markets. But the girl before them looked wildly beautiful with some fright that they knew nothing of.

As Gabrielle Everard saw their repulsive, blubbery lips, the yellowish, hot-looking eyes, the animalistic bodies of the huge, pendulous-breasted, over-fed chiefesses, she felt a tremendous pang strike her heart, in the thought that somewhere back in the past she had kins.h.i.+p with them. As she heard the distant drums in the mountains a strange feeling came over her. She even clutched the man's hand beside her: she half fancied that those beating drums were the drums that she had heard in the bungalow away in Bougainville when the shadow crept into her bedroom.

As they pa.s.sed under the banyan groves they came to a large group of huts of various shapes and sizes. It was the Rajah's native village.

"Helaka!" murmured the _taubadus_ (chiefs), and when they saw Gabrielle they looked with surprise and said: "Dimdim Wovou!" ("White foreigner!").

Gabrielle's bare feet were bleeding through contact with the sharp s.h.i.+ngle by the sh.o.r.e reefs. But that didn't worry the Rajah, his only response to her appeal that he would go slower was to hurry faster than ever. He crossed the cleared village s.p.a.ce and took the girl straight to his domestic tambu temple. "Tepiake!" grunted the _taubadas_ as he pa.s.sed through the thickly overgrown bamboo stockade. He had now arrived at his parental residence, a kind of palatial heathen hall, where his own people resided and held semi-Malayan fetishes and all that would remind them of their past in the Malay Archipelago. As Gabrielle stood before that big wooden building her heart sank. She was too weary to say much to the man beside her. She hardly noticed the fiendish-looking children about her and the ape-like being who ran out from the palms and danced with glee before her. She trembled as she looked at the Rajah's flushed face and noticed the change in his manner. She saw a look of command in his eyes, that she had only vaguely felt was there before.

His walk had become majestic. The pleading obeisance she had received from him aboard the vessel had disappeared. He behaved like one who had complete authority over all around him and over her also. Her feminine instincts awoke, came to her a.s.sistance immediately. She felt that she was utterly alone in that awful haunt of barbarism.

"I'll die first!" was the secret resolution of her heart. She half hated herself to think she had once had her arms about him and had returned his embrace. He had looked so handsome, so G.o.d-like, as he swore by the Christian apostles and Jesus Christ. The tears started to her eyes as she looked at that sinister heathen homestead as it loomed before her by the light of a hundred tiny hanging coco-nut lamps. She thought of her father, the old bungalow in Bougainville and of Hillary.

The sounds of the barbarian drums seemed to make her realise with terrible vividness the almighty simplicity of the apprentice's love for her. She instinctively felt that, though the stranded apprentice had never mentioned the apostles or Christ's name, or even G.o.d, that he did not do so because G.o.d and Christ spoke for him in the great silence of his own actions. And as she remembered these things she stood still, her thoughts far away across the seas. She forgot the presence of the wild, staring people around her. Her spirit leapt into Hillary's arms, she looked into his eyes and asked him to die with her. The hordes of savages, the pagan huts, the feathery palms and distant moon-lit mountains slowly dissolved, vanis.h.i.+ng like the fabric of a dream. She did not hear the voice of the heathen missionary beside her as he spoke in his own tongue to the clamouring hordes, so intense were her thoughts as she dreamed of Hillary and all that she had lost.

Her despair was so bitter that she hardly cared what might happen as, like one awakening from a dream into the light of miserable reality, she mechanically turned her head as Koo Macka spoke to her.

"Solan putih bunga, my Gabri-ar-le," he muttered. Then he gripped her by the arm and led her under the thatched verandah and into his wooden ancestral halls.

A hideous, baboon-like woman fell on her knees before the Rajah and moaned out: "Solan, soo wa eala!" Then she gazed upon the girl and lifted her claw-like hands as though in approval. It was Macka's old mother. Then a ferocious-looking half-caste (Malayo Papuan) mop-headed old man rose from his stinking squatting-mat, hobbled forward and stared keenly at the girl as she stood beneath the tiny hanging lamps. He made hideous grimaces as he inspected her, touched her smooth arms, smelt her golden hair, put his dirty fingers between the folds of her torn blue blouse and stared at the whiteness revealed to his eyes through the divided material. And all the time that he gazed his mouth emitted betel-nut juice that dropped down on to his tattooed, hairy breast.

"Le putih purumpuan bunga!" ("O flower of beautiful whiteness!") he groaned out in his Malayan lingo. Then he too turned to Macka, and by his gesticulations revealed the enormous pride he felt that the Rajah should return to the palatial homestead with so wonderful a prize. The old Malayan chieftain was the Rajah's esteemed _bapa_ (father). Though he was old and wrinkled, it was evident that he too had been handsome in his day. From that old _bapa_ Macka had inherited the indescribable sensualism that had placed Gabrielle in her awful position.

"Cowan, wanoo, wanoo wooloo!" he seemed to shout, as he gazed with pride on his hopeful son. Even the Rajah recognised the results of his own virtues and swelled his chest, put his arms half up and gaped to hide the embarra.s.sment of an invisible blush. And why shouldn't old _bapa_ be proud of his son? Had he not listened to the pleadings of the German missionary at Astrolabe, who had come over from the isles of the Bismarck Archipelago?

"O great _bapa_," said the missionary, "take thee this little Macka, this small son of thine, teach unto him the Word of G.o.d, rear him up in the path of righteousness, so that he may follow the divine calling and teach thy people the beauty of the Western creed!"

And old _bapa_, listening to that good German missionary's advice, took his hand and said: "O white papalagi from over the _moan ali_ (seas) I have listened. And I say unto thee, that it shall be as thy G.o.dly words have said." Then immediately he called his son, little Macka, from his idol wors.h.i.+p in the tambu temple, and, laying his tawny hand on the boy's head, said: "O my son, the Fates have willed on thy behalf that thou shalt go hence across the big waters to Honolulu and be educated like unto a n.o.ble white man. For, I say, it beseemeth good that thou shalt grow up and be one good missionary, so that thou mayst guide thy people in the path of the new righteousness."

So spake proud old _bapa_, who truly had his son's interest deep in his heart. The result was that soon after the German tramp steamer _Lubeck_ sailed from Aru, up the coast, taking the boy Macka across the seas to Honolulu. And as the boy's years increased the missionaries marvelled that so bright a youth had come amongst them, for he was clever and became as one of them in learning. Soon Macka became head of one of the biggest missionary cla.s.ses at K-- O--. But alas! with the development of manhood the old instincts, the pa.s.sions developed in his race through centuries of tropical desire, burst into flame. They were not to be overthrown by the sad aspirations of a few old missionaries at Honolulu.

Those kind, well-meaning men had endeavoured to change the spots on the leopard's back-in vain! For what was the inevitable result of their life-long pilgrimage away from their native lands? This-there stood Macka once more, after all those years, back in his native village, the personification of the full-blooded heathen attired in Western garb, with a white girl trembling beside him, looking first into the eyes of the son, then into the eyes of the father. And still the drums beat on.

And still far away over the seas old Pa Everard wailed through his delirium, "My Gabby! My Gabby!" till the asylum-keepers at Ysabel soothed his rum-stricken nerves.

"Ah! ah! koola, Cowan! my faithful son! Thou art indeed the joy of old _bapa's_ soul!" And as the old father's eyes filled with tears of pride, and the hideous, bloated mother waved her skinny arms with joy, the Rajah bowed. For the Rajah was a good and faithful son, and had repaid his parents well from the proceeds of his exertions in the dangerous slave traffic.

The civilised blackbirding skipper well knew that the girl was now utterly in his power. He was in no hurry to further his wishes. Indeed he was the first to suggest to his old _bapa_ that Gabrielle should stay with them till the final arrangements could be made that would chime in with his secret desires.

So Gabrielle Everard actually found herself living in the squalor of a Malayo-Papuan homestead on the coast of New Guinea. She was down with fever for the first three days. Then the Rajah came into her thickly matted chamber (mats denoted that the visitor was an honoured guest) and wailed forth his hypocritical vows.

He sobbed to see her lying ill. He said that if anything should happen to her he would fade to a shadow and die. Then he rubbed his eyes with his big coat-sleeve, and opened a little bottle of medicine. The foolish girl, sick and weak, felt that perhaps the man had a heart after all-she drank! Then he whispered soft words into her ears, but she did not listen.

"Come on, putih bunga!" said he. She rose like one in a dream, and he led her away to the great tambu temple that stood right opposite Macka's ancestral halls. It was a wooden building, sheltered by enormous mahogany-trees.

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

The tambu house in which Gabrielle found herself was a low-roofed apartment about forty feet long and thirty wide, not more than twelve feet in height. Its rows of windows consisted of small circles cut in the wooden walls, something after the style of port-holes in a s.h.i.+p. It was lit by the artificial glimmer of coconut-oil hanging lamps, which seemed only to add to its shadowy mystery. These innumerable oil lamps, hanging from beams over the wide _pae pae_ (stage platform), were for the prime purpose of revealing the attractions of the half-caste girls who regularly performed at the tambu fetishes. These girls were mostly Polynesians, Arafuras, Bugis, Dyaks and a b.a.s.t.a.r.d type of Chinese and Melanesian, mostly girls who had been brought to the coast of New Guinea by the blackbirding s.h.i.+ps when they had been children. Such was the mixed group of feminine frailty that was performing and dancing when Gabrielle entered the tambu temple. The stage walls were richly decorated with scarlet and white hibiscus blossom that hung on woven threads. The floors were thickly covered with ornamental matting. On the walls hung the revered fetish ceremonial implements and sacred taboo remnants, such as-skulls, old men's beards, dead maidens' hair, threaded human teeth and all that was weirdly suggestive of death and orgyism.

The front of the wide stage was adorned by the hideous fetish idols. The middle figure was about eight feet high, had four arms, and seemed to be carved out of one solid lump of wood. It had one mighty yellow tooth issuing from the carven mouth, which leered in an everlasting grin that did not seem out of place when the grotesque dances were in full swing.

A serpent-like thing was twined about its wooden arms and again round the waists of the two somewhat smaller images that stood one on each side of it. A look of agony was wonderfully expressed by the swollen veins on the chest, arms and forehead, as the fanged mouth of the strong embracing reptile gripped the right ear of that symbolical piece of New Guinea sculptural art. It represented some tragic legendary Malayan episode; indeed it was a kind of Laoc.o.o.n of heathen-land; but instead of being clothed with those symbols of beauty that exalt a lump of carven insensate wood to a higher state, it was clothed with symbols of ugliness and l.u.s.t. And the barbarian sculptor who had achieved this revolting but still artistic result had fas.h.i.+oned the idol on the left-hand side with feminine attributes that were physically expressed from the full wooden lips down to the twisted ivory-nailed toes of the delicate feet. Notwithstanding the allegorical hint of s.e.xuality in the huge middle figure (its hideous character was intensified by Nature's artless handiwork, for fat-bodied green palm worms crawled in and out of its stretched wooden lips), it was a truly wonderful bit of work; it stood there telling with an indisputable voice how strong a force man's pa.s.sions often are.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Directly he had finished his weird incantations and hollow-voiced acclamations he made the tribal sign to the handsome Rajah, who thereupon immediately stooped and kissed Gabrielle, first on the mouth, then on her feet, as he fell p.r.o.ne before her. Then he rose, looked into her eyes and began to chant. To his astonishment the girl looked up at him, a half smile on her sad face as she swayed her flower-bedecked form and began to swerve with inimitable grace to the tum-tum of the barbarian orchestra. She lifted her hands to the wooden ceiling, softly chanting an old Malayan melody that neither they nor she had ever heard before. The music of her voice seemed to hold the wild audience spellbound. And when the girl put forth her hands and responded in a wonderful way to the mystical pa.s.ses of the Rajah's small, womanish hands, the whole motley crew waved their dusky arms in delight. The dancing maidens threw their limbs in envious rapture, and tried in vain to imitate the rhythmical grace of Gabrielle's trance-like movements.

For all their wild acts, and the jingle of their bra.s.s and bone leglets and armlets as they made their wretched limb-tossings, their performance was as nothing compared to the white girl's wondrous grace.