Gabrielle of the Lagoon Part 18

There was an intense note of appeal in the girl's voice, such a note as would have touched the heart of the vilest of men, but Macka never moved a muscle. He had stolen so many girls, men and youths, watched their tears, heard their heartrending appeals, and thrown their bodies over the vessel's side when they had died of terror and malaria down in the stinking, hot-fevered hold, that it seemed nothing awful to him to see a girl kneel before him and weep.

He was overjoyed that the girl was awake. He had quite thought that she had been doped too much and that there was a possibility of her never recovering sensibility again. As she stood before him, with the oil lamp swinging to and fro to the heave and roll of the flying ship, Gabrielle's eyes, which had been agleam with fright, suddenly changed, and shone with a new strength. She had realised, with a woman's unerring instinct, the uselessness of appealing to the man before her. As she steadily returned his gaze, the dark man saw the courage of her father's race.

A cowed look leapt into his face. Even in that swift glance he had realised that all would not go as smoothly as he had antic.i.p.ated. To steal helpless Papuans, Samoans, Marquesans, Tahitian maids, to defile them, pitch them overboard when they were dead or dying, and amuse himself by revolver shots at the poor, floating, bobbing bodies was one thing; but to steal a white girl and defile her was quite another. That much he realised most forcibly, for before he could realise anything more than that Gabrielle had rushed out of the cabin and bolted.

She raced along the ship's rolling deck. She looked about her and called loudly in the dark, still hoping that one of the crew might be a white man. When she saw the fierce, mop-headed, dark-faced men rush out of the forecastle at hearing her terrified screams she almost collapsed in her despair. For one moment she stood still and gazed up at the bellying sails as they swayed along beneath the high moon. Nothing but the illimitable sky-lines gleamed around her. She heard the moan of the dark tossing ocean. She did not hesitate, not the slightest indecision preceded her act-splash! she had leapt overboard! It all happened in a few seconds. The Rajah and the mulatto mate at once gave orders for the crew to heave to and lower a boat. It seemed ages to the Rajah as the swarthy crew climbed slowly about like dusky ghosts, as though they had a century in which to fulfil his orders. At this moment the captain of the blackbirder (to give him his correct t.i.tle) revealed his solitary virtue; he could see the girl's struggling form in the dark waters astern. Not a sound came from the girl's lips, only the tossing white hands were visible on the moon-lit waters-then they vanished-she had gone! In a second he had pulled off his coat and boots and plunged into the sea. The men of his race could swim like fish, and dive too, for they took to the water before they could toddle. Even as it was, the Rajah had to dive twice before he could grip hold of Everard's daughter.

He had a tremendous struggle to get the girl back on board, for the sea was a bit heavy that night. When he did get her on deck the half-caste mate and the crew stared on her prostrate figure in astonishment. She had been kept from their sight till then.

Lying there on the hatchway, her white face turned towards the sky, she looked like some angel who had mysteriously fallen from heaven and lay dead before them. They were a superst.i.tious lot, and several of them began to moan some heathen death chant. Even the Rajah was strangely influenced at seeing that pallid face, the drenched, dishevelled hair, the curved, pale lips. The bluish tropical moonlight bathed her form like a wonderful halo. He looked at the watching crew, a fierce light in his eyes. In a moment they had all gone, slinking away. "Awaie!" he said to one who, bolder than the rest, looked back over his shoulder. And then, as the crew obeyed the mulatto mate's orders to get the vessel under way once more, the Rajah lifted Gabrielle's prostrate form and carrying her into the cuddy laid her down on the low saloon table.

Grabbing a decanter, he poured a small drop of spirit between her lips.

Then he closed the door so softly that only the sudden disappearance of the stream of light on the deck from the lamp inside told that the door _had_ been closed.

They were alone, he and she-the frail, helpless girl in the vile power of pa.s.sion and hypocrisy. For a second the Papuan Rajah gazed around the saloon. Even he was startled by the look on the swarthy face that gazed back on him from the long mirror-his own reflection. Stooping over the rec.u.mbent form, he gently rubbed her hands. They were cold and very limp. He began to think that it was too late, that she was dead. Gently pulling the wet bodice open, he slowly unfastened the blue strings of her underclothing. He gazed in silence on the curves of her b.r.e.a.s.t.s, which were faintly revealed to his eyes by the dim, swaying oil lamp.

That fragile whiteness seemed to appeal even to him; the mute lips, the closed eyelids, the helpless att.i.tude paralysed the dark cruelty of his natural self. And it is only, we must think, because G.o.d made all men, be they black or white, that he was loyal to the great trust that the irony of inscrutable Fate had placed in his hands-he of all men on earth.

The seas were beating against the vessel's side as she lay there. The vessel pitched and rolled as once more it started on its course, and as it rolled the girl's rec.u.mbent form moved and swayed to the lurch of the table. Her drenched bronze-gold hair fell in a ma.s.s to the cuddy floor, the brown-stockinged ankles fully revealed through the disarrangement of the soaking skirt.

Could anyone have peeped from the deck through the cuddy port-hole they would have seen the Rajah bending over the helpless girl. A strange fire flashed in his eyes as he gazed and gazed and gently rubbed where her heart lay. The gleam in his eyes died away, but still he watched, waiting anxiously. His face was set and wild looking. "Ar-a va loo!"

("She's gone!") he muttered. He tried to feel the pulse of the wrist, but he dropped it with a sigh. At last it came! His hand visibly trembled as he lifted her arms up and gently spread them away from her body. Then he put his ear to her heart and listened-there was a sound like a tiny echo coming from the remotest distance. Throb! throb! it came-Gabrielle's soul was hovering between heaven and earth-in more senses than one. Then the throb ceased as though for an eternity of time, but once more it came-throb! throb! throb! And before the Rajah was prepared for it Gabrielle's eyes were staring at him!

Instinctually the girl's helpless fingers half clutched the wet fringe of her loosened bodice. And, strange as it may seem, the heathen Papuan even _helped_ her cold fingers to close the delicate folds.

The instinctive action of the girl told him more of her true character than a thousand dissertations on racial codes, morals and inherent virtue could have done. In a flash he had realised that if he wanted to gain her respect it had to be gained by astute cunning based on strict emotional principles. Recovering his embarra.s.sment, he rolled his eyes and blinked-which is the equivalent of a blush in New Guinea folk. He was really pleased to see that she was recovering. Immediately flinging himself on his knees, he sobbed out: "Oh Gabriel-ar-le, Marsoo cowan, nicer beauty voumna!" In his excitement he had lapsed into execrable pidgin-English. He heard her sigh. He fondled her hand. "'Tis I who saved you," he murmured. He fancied that he was a hero. In his perverted ignorance he saw Gabrielle no longer a kidnapped girl on his ship, but a maiden whom he had saved from the cruel seas. He was bold enough to press her hand to his lips.

Gabrielle watched him. She was terribly ill, too dazed to protest. She was alone on the seas with this man and what could she do? Her final response to his miserable hypocrisy was to burst into a violent fit of weeping.

For three or four days she was quite unable to move. It was only through the careful nursing of the Malayan cabin-boy, a frizzly headed, bright-eyed little fellow, that she was at last encouraged to take food.

He was a child, and so he appealed to Gabrielle. The very innocence of his eyes as he stared in delightful curiosity at her golden hair and white arms when he crept in with the food to her bunk cheered her as much as she _could_ be cheered under such circ.u.mstances.

Sometimes she would lie there helpless and think that she was mad, strange fancies floating through her brain. And sometimes Macka would step softly into the dingy saloon and play on the melancholy organ that he had once used in his tribal mission-rooms. His voice would tremble with pa.s.sionate appeal and subtle seductiveness as he breathed forth Malayan melodies that haunted Gabrielle's ears. Those melodies had a terrible influence over the girl, and one night when the vessel was rolling wildly, being buffeted along before a typhoon, the girl screamed out from her bunk: "Stop! Stop! I'll go mad if you sing that strange thing again!"

Then the Rajah ceased as obediently as a scolded child and softly crept away. He knew the potent magic of those heathen Malayan melodies! He knew! He knew! And when he had pa.s.sed out on to the vessel's deck Gabrielle called out: "Tombo! Tombo!" In a moment the little Papuan boy rushed into her cabin.

"Whater you wanter? Whater matter, nicer vovams?"

"Tombo, what's that shadow-thing that runs about the deck at night? I saw it through the port-hole last night." Then she said: "And I heard faint cries, wails. What was it? What does it all mean, Tombo?"

Tombo made no reply with his lips, but he softly nestled up against the girl and looked up into her eyes with terrible earnestness. Then he shook his head and said: "I looker after you, Misser Gaberlelle."

Suddenly the boy rushed from the girl's side and out of the cuddy in fright.

Gabrielle listened and heard a scream: the Rajah had called the boy and, meeting him on the deck, had kicked him. The Papuan skipper had noticed that the kid was a bit too communicative with his kidnapped prisoner.

Possibly he thought that the boy might let out the truth about the ship and give Gabrielle some hint as to why it sailed by night with all lights out, as it tacked on its course far off the beaten track of trading ships.

It was quite a week before Gabrielle ventured out of the small cuddy's berth and entered the saloon. Even when she did so she was apparently so weak that she was obliged to secure the a.s.sistance of little Tombo, who held her hand as she wandered about. The Rajah immediately began his sinuous overtures and muttered violent protestations of love into her ears. At times the Papuan could hardly conceal his temper when the girl persistently pestered him with questions, asking him where the _Bird of Paradise_ was bound for.

"You noa worry. You are all right. I take you across the seas and some days you go back to your peoples-when you lover me!" he would say, as he gave a look of deep meaning that the girl persistently pretended not to understand. He would not allow her to walk out on deck unless he were close by. His hungry eyes seemed ever on the alert. Probably he had a fixed idea in his brain that the girl would make another attempt to take her life. And still he swore most earnestly by the virtue of the Christian apostles that he had only kidnapped her from her father's homestead because of his overpowering love for her.

"You know not what men of my race love like, what we would do for a white girl such as you, Gabri-ar-le," he muttered, as he glanced sideways at her.

Gabrielle saw the look in those flashing eyes of his. She trembled as she realised how completely she was in his power, and how once she had been fascinated by his voice and his handsome mien. Even then, at times, she half believed that he had repented the wrong he had done her. And the girl was hardly to blame for her credulity, for he never tired of pouring his flamboyant rhetoric in Malayan _vers libre_ into her ears.

He had some mighty faith in his maudlin Mohammedanistic babblings over love, winds, seas, stars, night, G.o.d and death. He was as crammed with pretended artlessness as he was of villainy.

Sometimes the girl felt strangely calm. The religious element that brings faith and comfort to men and women in the direst moments of life was part of her special birthright. She became more resigned to her lot and even went so far as to read some of the old books that she had discovered in the cuddy locker. So did she endeavour to stifle her thoughts. Many, many times she thought of the apprentice. What did he think of her sudden absence from Bougainville, of her not turning up at the trysting-place by the lagoon? She thought of his impulsive nature.

She guessed that he must have gone straight to her home to see what had become of her. She thought of a thousand things that he would do in his attempt to discover her whereabouts. She imagined how her father raved, and must still be raving, perhaps grieving over her disappearance. But she never dreamed of all that really happened after she had left Bougainville in the blackbirding ship. When she recalled the incidents of the old derelict lying on the rocks off Bougainville and of Hillary's boyish but earnest declaration of love she trembled in her anguish. She remembered the look in his eyes, the wild, fond sayings that had come spontaneously to his lips. Then she laid her head down on the cuddy table and wept bitterly.

One night when the _Bird of Paradise_ had been at sea about two weeks the heat was so terrific that she implored the Rajah to let her sit out on deck. He was obdurate and would not hear of such a thing. "No, no, _putih bunga_ (white flower)" was his only reply, as he lapsed into the Malayan tongue, speaking as though to himself. Then he walked away and disappeared forward. In a moment Gabrielle made up her mind and had slipped out of the cuddy, determined to go on deck and breathe the cool night air. She almost cried out as she rushed, plomp! into the arms of the half-caste mate. "Savo, maro, Cowan, bunga," whispered the burly mulatto, as he lost his mental balance at seeing the beauty of the girl.

He caught her in his arms, clutched her flesh like some fierce animal, put his vile lips to her white throat and breathed hotly on her face. He tried to press his blubbery lips against her own. In a moment the girl had managed to release herself from that hateful clasp.

"What's the matter, my pretty putih bunga, marva awaya?" said Koo Macka, suddenly coming up, as the mulatto mate slipped hastily along the deck out of sight.

"Nothing is the matter; I simply felt ill, faint; I'm better now," said Gabrielle fearfully, as she swiftly realised that it would not do to make an enemy of the mulatto mate. For a moment the Rajah looked suspiciously around him, then he sternly ordered her to go back at once into the saloon.

And so it was that Gabrielle sat in her bunk that night and stared through the port-hole so that she might get a breath of the cool midnight breeze that drifted at intervals across the hot tropic seas.

The stars were shining in their thousands as she sat there watching and crying softly to herself. She could plainly see the bluish, ghost-like gleam of the horizon, far away, as she stared out of the cabin port-hole. It was then that she once more heard a mysterious wail coming from somewhere out in the silence of the night. Her lips went dry with fright as she gazed and listened in her terror. She distinctly observed a shadow slip across the deck. Then the wail came again and was followed by a deep, retching moaning and sounds of the hushed voices of men who were speaking in a strange language. "What does it all mean?" she muttered to herself, as once more her ears caught the indistinct utterances of agony. And still she listened and felt quite sure that what she heard was no trick of her imagination, but was some last appeal of helplessness to relentless men ere they strangled their victim. In the terror of all that she felt her overwrought brain became strangely calm. She sat quite still and watched in a dazed way, crouching in her bunk, her eyes peering through the port-hole. She gazed up at the swaying sails as they glided on beneath the stars. The wind had shifted to the south-west, for she saw the canvas veer and darken patches of starry sky as the yards went round and the crew aloft chanted some Malayan chantey. So weirdly bright was the tropic sky that the rigging and the forms of the toiling crew were distinctly outlined with the decks, sails, spars. She could even discern the long cracks of the deck planks as the ethereal light of far-off worlds pulsed in the sky and sent a glimmer down between the masts and sails. A fearful curiosity overcame the fright she first felt as she saw three stalwart, mop-headed men standing by the lifted hatchway amidships. The scene was directly along the deck facing the cuddy's cabin port-hole from which she stared.

The sight that met her astonished eyes made her tremble: the three swarthy, demon-like men were grabbing the bodies of the dead which were being pa.s.sed up from the vessel's fetid hold! Some of the crew were down below busily pushing those limp, pathetic figures up to the outstretched hands of those on deck. Gabrielle knew they were dead bodies, there was no mistaking their limpness as the heads of the silent forms fell first in one direction then in another. And still they pushed up the limp bodies of dead native girls and youths, and one by one pa.s.sed them along to that crew of sea-thugs, who carelessly pushed them over the bulwarks into the sea! Gabrielle distinctly heard the splash as they fell.

She half fancied that she heard long-drawn groans coming from the direction of the sea. Nor was she mistaken, for they pitched the dying overboard too! The crew of slavers were not over-sensitive in such matters.

The girl was still staring, dumbfounded, when the men softly closed the hatchway over that terrible drama of life below. Then she heard the dull thuds of the locks being secured and rammed home. They even placed the thick canvas covering over the hatchway again and so closed the cracks that mercifully had let a breath of fresh air into that breathing ma.s.s of shrieking merchandise-kidnapped native girls, men and women! As soon as Gabrielle saw those demon undertakers steal away into the shadows towards the forecastle she realised that it was no nightmare, no horror of an imaginary world that she had felt and witnessed. It was all real enough. In a flash her brain had realised all that it really meant. She remembered how her own father had talked about the horrors of the blackbirding ships, and how the huddled victims died in the fetid hold.

She recalled how he had even confessed that he too had once dabbled in the slave traffic. And as she remembered she saw herself as a child again, listening in wonder at her father's knees as he proudly told his beachcomber guests of the "glorious good old blackbirding days."

After seeing that sight Gabrielle became seriously ill, mentally as well as physically. She lay sleepless through the night and longed for forgetfulness. The scene she had witnessed as they cast the kidnapped dead into the sea had completely horrified her. In her mind over and over again she found herself counting the dead bodies she had seen thrown overboard. It took her that way. She had often heard the mission men talk about the cruelty of the kidnapping business, but it required such a sight as she had witnessed to make her realise the truth of what she had heard. True enough, it is hard for anyone to realise the horrors of the slave traffic till they see the actual results with their own eyes.

Possibly the great poet will never be born who could write the poem that would adequately describe the Brown Man's Burden so that the Western world could read and realise that the White Man's Burden is not the only one that men have to bear through spreading Western principles among the islands of remote seas.

Gabrielle got out of her bunk that same night and pushed every available article of furniture against her cabin door. She realised what she was in for. It was the first hint she had had that she was not the only wretched victim that trembled in fear on that ship. And as she lay sleepless, thinking of everything and of those trembling, terror-stricken girls and youths that made the cargo in the airless, fevered hold not twenty feet from her bunk, she half envied her own terrible position.

Next day when the Rajah noticed the look of horror in the girl's eyes as he rattled off his _vers libre_ he retired as gracefully as possible and quickly arrayed himself in his most attractive attire of Rajahship.

He placed the rich, scarlet-hued turban on his skull. He tied the yellow waist-sash about him so that the bow fell coquettishly down at his left hip. He even cleaned his teeth with cigar ash and manipulated an artistic curl at the ends of his dark moustache. Then he proceeded to haunt Gabrielle again. He read the Bible aloud; he put such well-simulated sincerity into his melodious voice that Gabrielle rubbed her eyes and half wondered if she had dreamed that terrible sight of the night before. As she sat at the low cuddy table and the dark man sat right opposite her with the knees of his long, thin legs bunched beneath the table, she listened to his splendid lies. He went so far as to tell her how he had a great reputation for good works, of how he roamed the seas searching to redress the wrongs done to helpless girls, men and native women! He swore that his ship roamed the South Seas expressly to attempt to put down slave traffic! He knew! he knew! that the girl had some inkling of the kind of vessel she was on.

"Gabrielle," said he, "you knower not my troubles, and how when I do capture slave-ship I have to rescue the victims and put them down in the hold of this vessel till sucher time as I can take them to some isle where they can be safe till they are returned to their own people!"

"Could it be true?" was Gabrielle's inward thought, as she watched the man's face and saw nothing but the light of a proud achievement in his eyes. And it must be admitted that there was some truth in all that he told the girl about his reputation. For was it not well known from Apia to Dutch New Guinea that Rajah Koo Macka was a great Christian Rajah?

And was it not true that he had been in receipt of thousands of pounds that had been collected through the kind medium of Christian societies who were interested in the n.o.ble endeavour to put down slave traffic in the South Seas? And who can deny the fact that thousands of men and women in England had unconsciously contributed towards the expenses incurred by the Rajah in fitting out his ship, the _Bird of Paradise_, for the sole purpose of abducting natives and for following his monstrous inclinations.

And there he sat in his cosy cuddy, a splendid example of the civilised, converted Papuan invested with a hideous power by weak-minded charity-givers who saw no just cause for their charity in their own country.

The Rajah was a living libel on true missionary work and on the reputation of the missionaries themselves. With others of his profession, he had often let his helpless merchandise out on hire into the hands of wealthy half-caste and sensual white men. And when native girls gave birth to half-caste children soon after their arrival on the sugar plantations as far away as Brisbane, the innocent missionaries got the blame for what had happened to the girls who had been contaminated after leaving their native isles. But all this is only a detail in the Rajah's life. He was a genius in his way. No man living would have had the patience to talk and talk, and sing and chant as he did to his beautiful, helpless prisoner. G.o.d only knows how he got Gabrielle to believe in him again. Perhaps it wasn't so strange when one thinks of her tender years and the mighty pretence of the astute Rajah. Night after night he came to her and went on his bended knees. Sometimes he held the Bible in his hand, babbled over its pages and said: "O Gabri-ar-le, give thy purest love unto me and I swear on this divine book that I will take thee back unto thy father."

On hearing this Gabrielle's heart leapt with hope. "Perhaps he isn't all bad and has relented," she thought. Then she glanced steadily into the Papuan's eyes and said: "I swear that I will bear no ill-feeling towards you if you will only take me home again." Then with that wonderful instinct that women reveal when in such a grievous pa.s.s, she added: "I can easily say that I was washed out to sea in a canoe that night and that your ship picked me up, and then no blame will be attached to you; you may even be rewarded. Will you take me back to Bougainville?" Saying this, she looked earnestly into the heathen's eyes and continued: "Father was very drunk that night, you know; he heard or guessed nothing of all that happened; he wouldn't dream of the truth."

The man sat there silent, chin on hand, as he gazed steadily upon the girl. It was evident by the look in his eyes that he admired the clever way she had put the whole matter before him. Gabrielle mistook that look. Her heart fluttered. She felt like screaming in the ecstasy of hope that thrilled her in the thought that she might yet get back to Bougainville and see the young apprentice again. The man sat opposite her for a long while in thought, then he shook his head as though in response to his own reflections. He gave a cruel smile as he noticed the expression of delight in the girl's eyes at the thought of getting out of his clutches. He rose to his feet and, giving her one of his lascivious looks, walked slowly out of the cuddy.

Gabrielle's hopes faded. The reaction set in. Her despair was terrible as loneliness came to her heart. She went into her dismal berth. She was now left quite alone, for little sympathetic Tombo had ceased to come near her. She well knew that it wasn't the little cabin-boy's fault; he was ordered to keep out of the way.

"He's a murderer, a cruel villain, a heathen-and once I thought he was a G.o.d among men, an apostle of beauty and truth." So ran Gabrielle's reflections as she sat alone and thought critically about the Rajah. She looked out of the port-hole. It was a brilliant moon-lit night. She saw the dark crew climbing aloft to reef the sails. She knew that the vessel had altered its course. The sight of everything depressed her terribly.

There was something weird in the sight of those dark men toiling aloft as they sang their strange Malayan chanteys. She saw the shining clasp-knives between their teeth as their shadows dropped softly down onto the deck. Once more she heard the whistle blown to call the next watch. Then complete silence reigned. She had nearly gone off to sleep when once more she heard the wails and m.u.f.fled screams. Though terrified at those sounds, she again peeped through the port-hole and watched.