Gabrielle of the Lagoon Part 21

As Gabrielle stopped and stared at the dusky horde of raised faces and tossing limbs beneath rows of hanging lamps, she seemed to awaken from her trance-like state. She raised her hands and gave a cry. The whole audience, who thought that cry was an exclamation expressing some ecstasy of the moment, renewed their volleys of applause. Only the Rajah knew the truth, the meaning of that cry. He hurried forward, gripped the girl's hand, breathed hotly in her face and murmured, "Come, Bini, mine!

Wife!" Then the Rajah gave a start. Above the guttural cries of the tambu marriage a.s.sembly one voice had begun to ring out shrill and clear. It was the voice of Maroshe, the Rajah's long-cast-off tribal wife. She had been a beautiful Koiari maid when the Rajah, who was ten years her senior, had first wooed her. But her feminine attractions had been cruelly brief. The girls of the Papuan races leap into full-blown womanhood at fourteen, and at twenty-five, sometimes earlier, have apparently reached old age, their brows and cheeks being seared with wrinkles. But Maroshe still had a remnant of the old fire gleaming in her fine eyes. But it was a fire that boded no good for the amorous Macka as she stood amidst the motley audience and yelled: "_Tao se cowana tumbi!_" (May the G.o.ds send thee twins!)

Macka heard that voice. It was the one voice on earth that could echo into the depths of his soul and awaken a tinge of remorse in him.

Indeed, as he gripped Gabrielle's wrist he looked against his will across the tiers of uplifted dusky faces till his eyes met the magnetic glance of the scorned Maroshe. Again she held her hand mockingly aloft, and once more yelled: "_Tao se cowana tumbi!_" The tambu maidens ceased dancing, and stood with fingers to lips beneath the rows of hanging lamps. They knew Maroshe, and also knew that something in her voice revealed the fact that, after all, she still retained her old love for the Rajah. The huge wooden idol, its big eyes agog, was the only face that did not express the horror that seemed to transfix every heathen countenance.

Suddenly Maroshe waved her skinny hand thrice. Then at the sight of her late husband standing there with a new bride, and a white girl to boot, she lowered her wrinkled but still half-beautiful face and disappeared.

Macka gave a sigh of relief to see her go.

Suddenly the audience seemed to be awakened from their horrified stupor.

"Bang! To woomb!" It was the sound of a monstrous heathen drum banged twice only, somewhere in a mountain village.

Once more the Rajah gripped Gabrielle by the wrist. "Come, my pretty putih bunga!"

According to the ceremonial rites of the creeds of Tumba-Tumba, Gabrielle Everard was now Macka's wife. That orgy of l.u.s.t, toddy and heathen seraglio chanting and dances was a genuine old-time New Guinea marriage ceremony.

Gabrielle hardly realised all that it meant for her. She placed her hand to her brow and stared as though she gazed on some strange sight afar off. The village priests and _darah tiki-tiki_ enchanters and enchantresses beat their skinny b.r.e.a.s.t.s to show their appreciation of the bride's beauty. Such an honour had never been theirs before; for had they not been the means of binding a beautiful white maid in marriage bonds to one of their own race.

Directly the Rajah got Gabrielle outside the tambu house he pressed hot kisses on her face. She struggled in that embrace. Her cries brought hordes of dusky, imp-like girls and mop-headed youths on to the scene.

He desisted in his matrimonial advances. In a moment he had decided to take her to his old _bapa_.

As Gabrielle once more prepared to enter the Rajah's homestead, old _bapa_, and his hideous, baboon-like wife, rushed forth from the palms just behind, and threw wedding gifts of a suggestive nature upon the trembling girl. After they had been in the presence of old _bapa_ for some little time, the Rajah altered his mind, and throwing his body on the sacred mats of his father's home expressed a wish to leave the parental roof and take his bride up to his own private establishment in the mountains (two miles off), a place where he had taken so many victims who had fallen under the lure of his university education and the glory of the Christian apostles.

As the Rajah once more went forth, taking his pretty _putih bini_ up the little village track that led under the feathery palms and ivory-nut trees, he gazed upon Gabrielle's form as only Macka the ex-missionary could gaze. At last they arrived outside a large wooden building (made of thick, rough-hewn mahogany logs) situated on the lower slopes of the Tomba-Tomba Mountains.

The Rajah at once took Gabrielle within. Heaven only knows what the white girl went through before the Rajah realised that it was no brown woman he had in his vile power. There had been considerable trouble before he was finally vanquished and sent about his business; he had done his best before leaving to become friendly with the girl again. He knew by her desperate act in jumping overboard on the _Bird of Paradise_ that she was quite likely to attempt to take her life again. The look in her eyes spoke volumes to him. He told off two of the old ki-ki chiefs, ordering them to keep strict watch over that wooden building where she was imprisoned. So the two barbarian sentinels grunted and smoked by the door and Gabrielle lay down on the thick sleeping mats and tried to rest.

On the second night the Rajah once more crept into her chamber. He fell on his knees. He swore she was his beloved spouse in the eyes of G.o.d and the heathen apostles of his own heathen land. He began chanting and making weird pa.s.ses, swearing all the while that the idols of the tambu temple had been placed in the glow of the moonbeams and had spoken.

"They have teller me to come to thee. They say that you must giver yourself up to me and to my G.o.ds. You understand?"

Gabrielle looked in wonder at the man as he fell at her feet, groaning and wailing. He even wept. She saw the tears in his eyes.

"Gabri-e-arle. I lover th-ee. Thou art my own, my putih bunga," he repeated over and over again. He pressed hot kisses on her face. But the girl struggled and overcame him. Then he diverted her attention and swiftly placed his old ki-ki drugs in her water goblet. Drugging was, and is, the highest art in New Guinea, and so he had little fear of the results not being according to his requirements. Then he went away. He had not been gone an hour before Gabrielle was startled by hearing the sound of jabbering outside the tambu door. She could distinctly hear a pleading voice, as though some native woman wailed and talked to the sentinels. Then the silence returned, but to her surprise the tappa curtains of her little chamber were suddenly thrown aside, and a strange-looking native woman stood before her. It was Maroshe, the late divorced! She held no stiletto in her hand. No malignant gleam of hatred shone in her eyes; only a weary look of sorrow as she stood before Gabrielle. The unexpected visitor fell on her knees and at once began to chant and mumble mysteriously, as though she thought Gabrielle understood all the magic of her land.

Gabrielle noticed the note of appeal in her voice. She at once took heart and bade her rise.

"What's the matter? What you want?" said Gabrielle, as she tried to speak to the wailing woman in pidgin-English and made many gesticulations. At last the white girl seemed to understand.

It was wonderful how swiftly the souls of two women of different races fathomed each other's secrets, peered into each other's eyes and read all that they wanted to read.

Gabrielle's sorrow had probably brought to the fore the old instincts with which Nature originally endowed the human races so that they might scent danger before it was actually upon them.

Maroshe it seemed could speak a little pidgin-English, and so the two women were able before long to understand the exact position of things.

Then the native girl, for she was not much more than a girl, kissed Gabrielle's hands, fell p.r.o.ne and touched her feet in grovelling subjection. Tears came into Gabrielle's eyes as she realised the woman's sorrow and observed the swift glance of delight in her eyes as she heard that she, the white girl, was a most unwilling prisoner in the tambu marriage chamber. "I comer gain. Me goer now, nicer, whi ladi. You no putih bunga. Ah!" she said.

Before Gabrielle had realised that the woman was going, Maroshe had slipped out of the door. But she came again, and under circ.u.mstances that Gabrielle never cared to recall.

The next night the Rajah returned again to the solitary building by the mountains of Tomba-Tomba. He sent his chieftain sentinels away to their huts. He stooped his turbaned head as he entered the low doorway, and approached the girl with the old fascinating look in his fiery eyes.

With the almighty deceit of his race he told her he had relented, and would take her back to Bougainville. He made her heart leap with hidden delight as he talked. His voice seemed tender as a woman's as he poured forth his semi-Mohammedanistic _vers libre_. Again he knelt before her, as a bigot heathen might kneel before an idol, and stared into her blue, frightened eyes.

Gabrielle, as though in a trance, felt his caressing hands; they seemed shadow hands as his burning words crept into her ears. She heard the winds sigh outside in the mountain palms. She and he were alone.

"Gabri-ar-le! thou art more than life itself; the moon, the stars, thou art; and like unto the stars shall our children be!" he murmured in Biblical tones as he returned to the lingo of the old mission-room. Only the chantings of the cicalas in the ivory-nut palms disturbed the silence. Gabrielle felt the strength of those strong hands, the warm breath of those terrible lips. A mist came before her eyes; she heard the wild tribal drums beating across the centuries! The Papuan's voice sounded far off; a shadowy figure had whipped across the rush-matted floor as the lamps burnt dimly with a magic light. And still the drums were beating as though in impatient haste across the centuries. And still her soul struggled as she fearfully watched for that which her eyes had surely seen; then, once again, the tappa curtains that separated her chamber from the door that led straight to the jungle outside seemed to divide softly. She could not scream as that terrible thing peeped between the divided curtains, its burning eyes staring upon her. Its beautiful woman's head was faintly visible. The eyes gleamed with rapture as the enchantress from the past stared appealingly, beckoned to the white girl, nodded her dusky head and besought Gabrielle to do her bidding! Gabrielle stared wildly round. Only she and the terrible enchantress faced one another whichever way her eyes turned.

She still peeped beneath the uplifted curtains-now she had begun to crawl on her belly like unto a serpent. Tears were in the shadow woman's eyes! And still Gabrielle heard the drums beating across the mountains, coming across the silent hills of sleep. And still the struggle went on.

The phantom woman crawled slowly beneath the tappa curtain as the white girl watched. She noticed the beauty of the smooth, oily, terra-cotta-hued limbs, the curved, sensuous thighs. At last the visitant lifted her beautiful shadowy head, and began slowly to rise to her feet as the tappa curtain fell softly. She had entered Gabrielle's chamber! A shadow fell across the girl's pallid, terror-stricken face, darkening her eyes. She groped in terrible blindness, just for a moment, then pushed it from her. She recognised the terrible presence and recalled in a flash how she had mastered it when it had come to her in the dead of night in her bedroom, at her old home in Bougainville. She fell on her knees and prayed. She wrestled with the evil presence in an indescribable agony of spirit. And then, quite suddenly, the enchantress who had crept out of the jungle of the past gave a wail-and vanished.

Gabrielle stared round her. The perspiration was dropping from her brow; she was trembling from head to foot. She was alone! The Rajah, too, had seen that look in her eyes and had disappeared. In a moment she had recovered her senses. She rushed into the little off-room where she slept, and in two seconds was hastily piling up the mahogany boxes and huge native clubs against the door, so that none could enter without her knowledge. Then she lay on her rush-matted bed and thanked G.o.d.

For now she realised instinctively, with a force amounting to certainty, that never again would she be haunted by this shadow woman-her dark ancestress from the past. Gabrielle knew that that struggle in the tambu house had meant for her a complete spiritual victory. The evil spirit had been exorcised.

Perhaps also it meant something more. Perhaps it symbolised a physical triumph over Rajah Macka and his heathen desires. Strange as it may seem, she no longer felt the same fear of him which had possessed her on board the s.h.i.+p. She was trying to persuade herself that, after all, he was only a grotesque heathen, eaten up with his own conceit. And these thoughts, or something like them, were stirring in her mind when she finally fell asleep.

Gabrielle had been a close prisoner in the private tambu house for just eight days before the Rajah came to her again. The girl had almost recovered from the shock of that terrible visitant from the past and the Rajah's advances. Indeed, she had bribed one of the sentinel chiefs by giving him a tortoise-sh.e.l.l comb from her hair, and so had received valuable information. She had discovered that there were several white settlers residing in the villages by Astrolabe Bay, some twenty-five miles round the coast. And so she had resolved to take flight at the first opportunity, and risk death in the wild coastal forest in a last attempt to secure the help of civilised men.

Sunset had sunk over the mountains as she sat hollow-eyed and miserable in her prison chamber. Gabrielle could hear the terrible tiki priests chanting and beating drums to their great G.o.d Urio Moquru, whose mortal power was represented in monstrous carven wood somewhere near the sacred banyans at the foot of the mountains.

Suddenly the Rajah entered her chamber. A fierce, unearthly look gleamed in his eyes. He did not approach her in his usual oblique fas.h.i.+on; he caught her by the arm and began to whisper fierce words in her ears:

"Bini mine! You are mine! I curse your race, curse your apostles, your Christ and all that you d.a.m.nable Christians believe in!"

The girl stood trembling. What had happened, she wondered. A new feeling of hope flashed through her misery as the man continued to blaspheme and rave.

Gabrielle knew nothing about the schooner that had anch.o.r.ed off the village of Tumba-Tumba that afternoon. But the Rajah knew. He had watched the obstinate tacking of the schooner for three hours that afternoon as it persistently hugged the coast. And his apprehensions had been increased when it had finally anch.o.r.ed within a quarter of a mile from the sh.o.r.e where his own vessel the _Bird of Paradise_ lay. For the blackbirding craft had returned the day before from the Bismarck Archipelago, after disposing of its remaining living freight in the various slave markets. There was little doubt in Macka's mind as to _why_ that craft was hugging the coast. He knew what white men were like in their wrath, and what they were likely to do when they discovered that a girl of their own race had been kidnapped in the same manner that they themselves had kidnapped thousands of natives. He knew that old Everard, drunkard though he was, would develop a mighty virtue when he discovered that his own daughter had met a kidnapping fate! He knew also that many of the Papuans and half-castes of the Solomon Isles had sailed with him on his blackbirding voyages, and so knew him for a blackbirder by night and a n.o.ble missionary by day. And, realising that those old s.h.i.+pmates of his would give him away for a bribe, he had come to Gabrielle with the intention of taking her farther along the coast. He was determined not to give her up after all his trouble and scheming.

"Gabri-ar-le, I comer you, for I wanter you to fly away from here. I go forth before dawn, we go together to Arfu where I have many friends and can make you great princess," said he, lapsing in his fright into the old pidgin-English.

A look of horror leapt into the girl's eyes.

"You promised-you know what you've promised about my going home to my father again?" she murmured.

The man turned his face away. Even he seemed ashamed as he turned aside and looked through the door out into the night. He put forth his hands in a pleading way: "Gabri-ar-le, you must, must come, I will--"

He said no more. He turned his head and then rushed to the door. What was that gabbling? A mob of curious natives, all excited and murmuring in a hubbub of expectation, were evidently coming up the track that led to the quiet tambu house.

"What's that noise? Who are you fetching here?" shouted Gabrielle, as she heard the sounds coming nearer and nearer.

Then he heard it again-it was a sound that came to Macka's ears like the trump of doom!-and to the girl's ears like the voice of an angel. It was the sound of a big voice shouting in her own tongue, the English language:

"By the G.o.ds of this b-- cannibal isle, I'll pulverise him to dust!

Macka! Macka! Where art thou, old missionary of the South Seas? I'm yer man!"

The Rajah turned a ghastly yellowish hue. He made a rush but he was too late-Gabrielle caught him by the coat and tripped him up. He fell headlong to the floor.

A mighty wind like the first breath of warning from a tornado seemed to blow as a hoa.r.s.e voice, vibrant with pent-up emotion, said: "In there, say ye! You G.o.d-d.a.m.ned heathen!"

Gabrielle stared, petrified with astonishment; there before her stood the big rude man who had disturbed Hillary and herself when she sat singing on the banyan bough by the lagoon in Bougainville. If she was surprised, it is certain that Rajah Koo Macka was. He thought that the world had tumbled on his turbaned head as he fell. He struggled to his feet, and rushed outside the door of the tambu house.

"Stand up!" said Samuel Bilbao, confronting him quite calmly as he began to tuck up his coat sleeves. Hillary, who had made a rush for Macka, was stayed by Gabrielle's hand. She had rushed forward and leapt into his arms. The att.i.tude of the big Britisher as he stood there, cool as a cuc.u.mber, as calm as though he stood on a village green in England preparing to exchange fisticuffs in a five minutes' contest, made every onlooker step back and form a half-circle behind Ulysses's back.