The Discovery—Waylao’s Flight—A South Sea Scandal—I fall in with the Fugitive—The Convict Girl—Sorrow and Sympathy—What the Tide brought Back—Waylao’s Second Escape

IHARDLY know how to place the following incidents as they occurred. Perhaps it will be best to give Lydia’s account of what had happened in our absence.

It appeared that Waylao had been feeling sick for several weeks, and had become strangely absent-minded. Night after night the girl had gone off to get her mother’s stores and had completely forgotten them. One night Mrs Benbow went to bed enraged at her daughter’s absence from the domestic domicile. In the morning she got up full of suspicion, went into the misguided girl’s room and found Waylao fast asleep.

“Get up, you lazy hussys; to tink that I, yours old mothers, the descendant of great kinks [kings], should have to feed chicken while my lazy daughters lay in beds!” Saying this, the old woman pulled the bed-clothes right off Waylao—puff! As the girl stood before her irate parent attired in her night attire, trembling with fear, the native woman yelled fiercely: “Where yous go these nights after nights? What yous do? Now then, tell me! Your father is far at sea, so you tink you does as you likes with mees!”

Waylao said nothing. She hung her head and then stared through the little lattice window.

Suddenly the mother said with a startled voice, a voice that was shrill with horror:

“Gods Almighties! What you been doing?” This horrified shout was immediately followed by the frantic woman clutching the Oriental muslin robe from Waylao’s trembling figure.

The unhappy girl still stared, paralysed by the look of astonishment and rage on her mother’s face.

Old Lydia was speechless. Her eyes rolled as though she were in a fit. She opened her mouth wide, then the muscular rigidity of her face relaxed, the jaws met together with a frightful click. It was a convulsive movement, a faint expression of the horror she felt at the discovery of the secret—revealed at last.

For several minutes Benbow’s cottage fairly trembled. It seemed to Waylao that a flash of lightning came out of her mother’s eyes, followed by a mighty crash that split the universe in twain. The old woman clapped her hands together like an idiot, stamped her feet, then poured forth volleys of her fiercest invectives. She went mad, danced and whirled in a kind of heathen frenzy, leaping forward like a puppet, over and over again, to strike that unhappy sinner, the wretched victim of passion and romance.

Finally the demented old woman rushed into the next room, clutched hold of the new tea set that she had given Waylao on her last birthday, lifted each pretty china article above her head, and smashed it to atoms at her feet.

Like a beautiful, sculptured figure, emblematical of the forlorn betrayed, the poor girl still stood, silent, her eyes staring like glassy terror, one foot outstretched as though to help the better to bear the weight of humanity’s pious wrath on her guilty head. Old Lydia forgot her own sins (she admitted this after); she was a Christianised native woman; her daughter had disgraced her. It was terrible. The last thread of self-control snapped in that old barbarian’s brain as with a pious howl she rushed forward and fastened her teeth in the wretched girl’s arm.

“Who did it? Who is it? Tell me, you wicked villains!” she shrieked.

Waylao stood silent as death, as mother and daughter faced each other. Only the old grandfather’s clock broke the silence of those dreadful minutes, ticking off, as though with sorrow, the flight of time.

“If yous don’t tells me the man, I’ll kills you!” shrieked the infuriated woman. With the pluck born of resignation, the true pluck that is found in most women when the supreme moment comes for the test, the girl stared ahead with a look of secret defiance and loyalty to her Indian cut-throat.

Like a big marionette on a stick, the dusky old woman jumped up to the low-roofed ceiling three times, then, with a howl, rushed into the next room and clutched hold of the huge family war-club hanging on the parlour wall. In her flurry she tripped over the matting and fell. Scrambling to her feet, she rushed back into the bedroom—it was empty. In that moment of her mother’s absence Waylao had fled.

The old woman gasped, then rushed out of the cottage door, spurred by mingled feelings of hatred and remorse.

“Wayee! Wayee! Wheres ares you? Come back! Come back! Tells me all,” she shouted.

The old Marquesan woman stared through the colonnades of bread-fruits, and listened. She heard nothing but the low cry of the katafa bird, bound seaward, breaking the stillness.

All that day and the next day the sad old mother searched and called in vain. She wandered like one demented to the huts of the native villages, calling aloud for Waylao, telling every greedy listener of her sorrow.

The scandal swept with magical rapidity from village to village, from shore to shore. Indeed scandal was as rampant in the South Seas as in the cities of civilisation.

The rumour spread and spread, and took on wondrous shapes and hideous detail. Some pitied the girl, and cried: “What! Waylao? Well, I never! Poor Waylao!”

Others cried: “Shame! Shame! Oh, the sinful wretch to do so! Kill her! Kill her!”

Old Ranjo tucked his shirt-sleeves up and struck fearsome imaginary blows into the air of his saloon bar, blows that his heart yearned to inflict on the girl’s betrayer. Uncle Sam got fearfully drunk.

The Irishman and Scotsman went into wordy rivalry over similar sorrows in their boyhood’s memory. The reformed harlot from Sydney swooned with sheer disgust to think sensuality had existed so near her virtuous homestead.

The day after Waylao’s flight the scandal was raging like a violent epidemic among the native and white settlers, for Waylao’s beauty and sweet disposition had won for her the love of all the genuine men and women of those parts.

So much was whispered and exaggerated over the reputation of the missing girl that the little native children sat by the camp-fires huddled in fright; they would look awestruck around and behind them, gazing into the forest gloom, expecting to see the awful Waylao leap from the shadows like a spirit-woman. Old chiefs lifted their hands as they discussed, in hushed voices, with their Christianised wives the fall of the beautiful half-white woman, and the subsequent shock to the morals of the semi-heathen villages.

The great Christianised chiefess, Manaraoa, wailed out, “O Mita Savoo! The devil allee samee good, ee always get ’is own,” then she too lifted the bottle of gin to her lips and drank, to drown her grief, her disgust, that a girl should fall so low.

Grimes and I had only just returned from Honolulu when we heard of Waylao’s flight. We were sitting in the old grog shanty counting out our hard-earned money. “We shall never make our fortunes at this rate, Grimes,” said I, as I counted out the dollars.

“Never mind, pal,” said Grimes. “We’ll be wealthy by and by.”

“Yes,” said I, “when it’s too late to enjoy life, when we only want to sit over the smouldering bonfire of our shattered dreams and warm our hearts by the pale hearth-fire of the distant stars.”

“Blow the stars and yer shattered dreams! You’re allus finking everfing is too late. We can be gay old men, can’t we?” responded my sensible pal. Then he continued: “Look at the tharsands of giddy old men in London, a-making up for all that didn’t ’appen in their ’appy youth.” Considerably cheered by Grimes’s philosophy, we leaned back on to the old settee and prepared for an afternoon’s siesta.

It was at this moment that Mrs Ranjo dropped a bombshell of surprise on us.

“Hi, Mr Violinist, have you heard the latest?”

“No,” we responded drowsily, hardly looking up, for the latest was generally some old joke from the prehistoric period.

“Waylao, Benbow’s pretty daughter, has got into trouble with some beachcomber, you know, got like that.” And then she added, with her eyebrows raised: “She’s bolted from home, kicked out by her mother.”

“No!” was our simultaneous ejaculation. We sat bolt upright and stared like two idiots. That exclamation expressed the chaos of our thoughts. It was like the erect ears and tail of canine astonishment; we were dumb-struck, alert with surprise.

Grimes went quite ghastly; he looked sallow beneath his bronzed skin. When we had heard all that Mrs Ranjo had to say, we went out into the open.

“Well!” was all I could utter as the fresh breeze revived my thinking power. Grimes for a moment was strangely silent, then suddenly started off at full speed from my side! Away he went, his big feet shuffling and stirring up clouds of sand as he raced.

I looked ahead to see the meaning of it all. There was no apparent reason for his racing off like that. I stared with astonishment as he reached the coco-palms down by the beach, turned right about, and once again, with his elbows raised in racing attitude, came flying back to where I stood.

“What’s the matter, pal?” I said. He did not reply at first, then he said hoarsely: “Blimey! fancy ’er a-going wrong—that hangel!”

For a moment he stared in front of him, then continued: “Cawn’t we foind ’er? I’m in love with ’er, that’s where it is!”

It was then that I saw that Grimes had run just as an animal in pain runs—to relieve his feelings.

I did not wonder, or take much notice of his wild remarks; for Grimes and I had had many adventures together, so that his peculiarities had become quite commonplace to me. He was all of a-tremble when I left him.

That night I went up to see old Lydia, and found the poor native woman half demented. She knew me well. I was truly sorry for her and all concerned. She wrung her hands with grief, cried like a child, reiterating the full account of the terrible discovery. With frequent sobs of remorse she related each incident, hiding nothing, behaving as though it relieved her feelings to unburden her mind. “Mees old heathen bitch!” she wailed, as she beat her flanks with her hands. “My pretty Wayee, I send ’er way to the forest. Benbow kill mees when he comes ’ome.” So did the old girl ramble on, uttering a multitude of original phrases that expressed genuine grief and despair.

I took the grieving mother’s hand and swore that I would do my best to find her daughter and persuade her to return home.

Ere I left that little cottage the old woman flung her tawny arms about me, kissed me hysterically, and said: “You bewtifool white mans, you no say much, allee samee good Clistian man.”

Then I went away under the coco-palms to do as I had promised, and see Father O’Leary, and tell him all that the poor mother had confided to me.

I found the old priest at prayers, “My son, I have heard all,” he said, as he lifted his hands to the sky. I felt sorry for him as he lifted his old eyes and said: “My lost sheep, my little Waylao.” Then to my astonishment he said: “Damn!”

This mild oath from the earnest ecclesiastic made me feel more sorry than ever; I saw how intense was his sorrow.

Though I was a Protestant, if anything at all, he took my hand and blessed me. To tell the truth, I loved that old priest. Though I did not agree with half that he said, I admired and respected his sincerity. I feel sure that he liked me, notwithstanding that I shocked him so much at times that he lifted his hands to the skies and asked God to forgive me. But we were pally, that old priest and I, and he was so upset that night that he forgot to toll the mission bell.

I am not going to tell all that I did after I left that priest, or all I felt. No one confesses their innermost thoughts—so why should I?

After seeing the priest and old Lydia I went to fulfil an engagement, at a high-toned job, to appear at a great social gathering as violinist at the Bishop of —— residence. But when I was about half-a-mile from Tai-o-hae I made up my mind to let the concert go and hang itself as far as I was concerned. I was feeling too sad about everything, as I walked along with my violin.

No pages of romance could outvie what I experienced that night in the silence of that tropical loneliness of heathen-land. It must have been Fate which drew my footsteps to the solitude by the mountains near Tai-o-hae, for I met not only Waylao, but another victim of life’s drama.

I was passing down the track that ran beside the mountains, a lonely spot, from where one could see the distant ocean twinkling in the moonlight and the moth-grey sails of the outbound schooners fading out to sea. Not far from where I stood was a chasm where the giant bread-fruits still sheltered the ancient ruins of the heathen temple Marea, a solemn reminder of the great old days. As I stood there alone, drinking in the atmosphere of far-off years, a figure suddenly emerged from a thicket of bamboos.

For a moment I could hardly believe my eyes. I had inquired and searched at every likely place to find that sad fugitive, and lo! there stood Waylao.

I will not dwell on all that happened, the girl’s despair and my own feelings as I grasped the clammy hand of that sad enigma, that homeless girl of mystery, passion and romance.

I led her into the shadows of the forest, and she cried bitterly as I gave the sympathy she needed so much.

It seems like a dream in the recalling, the memory of that trembling form, the wild look of terror in her eyes as at last she realised the true character of the man whom she had worshipped. She did not divulge the name of her betrayer, nor was it my wish to seek the information. It was all beyond recall. One thing was very obvious to me—that she had been to her betrayer for protection and found that he had flown directly he had heard of her plight. I tried my best to persuade the misguided girl to return home.

“Waylao,” I said, “I have seen your mother and she has begged me to try and find you.” But it seemed that either she was half demented or that her fear of Benbow and her mother made her prefer to roam homeless rather than consent.

“I do not want to live, or if I must live, I do not wish to see those I have disgraced again,” she murmured between her tears.

I took her hand and tried by the softest words to reassure the girl, but it seemed hopeless. Indeed it was only when my persuasion brought a terrified look into her eyes, and she was on the point of taking to flight, that I led her away into the forest.

By the hollows where grew enormous banyans was a little deserted hut, and there I led her.

“Waylao,” I said, “you cannot roam about like this; and if you are determined not to return to your people, you had better stop here where I can find you.”

Though I was about Waylao’s age, I felt considerably older. Indeed my experience of the world made me look upon her as a child.

“Waylao,” I said, “I wish to be your friend. Will you let me help you?”

The girl only looked at me earnestly and burst into tears.

The night was perfectly still. The moon was shining brilliantly over the mountains, revealing the distant shore and ocean for miles and miles. Like some half-wild creature, the stricken girl crouched beside me. But after a while she calmed down and even promised to try and listen to my advice the next day, for I had arranged to come to that hut, to bring food and blankets.

It was more like some Byronic romance than reality as I thought of our strange position and looked at the girl beside me. She was robed in a picturesque multi-coloured kimono, that she had hastily snatched up, I suppose, in her flight. A few flowers were in her hair, that crown of rich, glossy splendour, and made her appear wildly beautiful as the dishevelled tresses fell about her throat, gleaming white in the moonlight. I tried to cheer her up. Taking the violin out of the case, I was lifting the bow to play a song that I had heard her sing in the shanty when we heard a voice. For a moment I wondered what on earth it could mean, for I distinctly heard the strains of sweet singing coming nearer and nearer.

Waylao clung to me with fright. I immediately reassured her, for, looking out through the thickets of wild feis, I saw a faery-like being in the distance. I stared in astonishment at that sight. I rubbed my eyes to convince myself that I did not dream it all; for there, coming down the forest track on weary feet, outlined in the moonlight, came the figure of a girl. Even Waylao half forgot her own sorrows as she too peeped out of the thickets, watched and listened to that wraith of the forest singing the saddest, sweetest strain I ever heard. It is some phantom girl of the mountains, thought I, for in those days I was mad enough to believe anything.

“What can it be, Waylao?” I whispered as we both watched and the melody grew clearer, for the figure was coming towards us. As the form approached, it seemed to be swaying to the tremulous song that the lips were singing in a strange language. It were impossible to describe the pathos of it all. It seemed that the poor, weary feet of that castaway, that the dilapidated shoes that she wore, were shuffling out some terribly sad accompaniment to that French song—for that wandering girl of the night was an escapee, a convict girl from New Caledonia, a poor fugitive who had stowed away on some schooner at the convict settlements, risking the horrors of a homeless life in those wild South Seas rather than live on linked with criminals. She was still clad in her ragged convict clothes, the misery of God knows what thoughts shining in her eyes, as she tramped the night track by Tai-o-hae.

Ere I could recover from the wonder that thrilled me the convict girl was right opposite our hiding-place. I distinctly saw the beautiful outline of her face as the moonlight streamed through the branches of the bread-fruits that sheltered the track.

So intensely sad was her face that I instinctively leaned forward and stared. In a moment the song ceased. The girl had observed me; she half turned, as if to fly. It must have been some expression of my face that made her stay, look again and respond half fearfully to my beckoning.

I think the memory, the pathos of that scene will remain with me till I die.

The escapee’s eyes filled with tears as Waylao threw her arms about that frail, possibly lately lashed form, for Waylao understood more than I did the plight of those wretched derelicts who escaped and drifted as stowaways across the Pacific from Noumea. Either they came to those parts, hunted men—seldom women—or their skeletons were discovered in the hold of some ship wherein they had hidden their trembling frames too well.

So did romance come to me in its saddest, most terrible form. Nothing, not even the sorrow of Calvary, could outdo that tragedy, that picture of man’s inhumanity and mighty injustice to those in his power.

With all the impulsiveness of a boy’s wild desire to help the stricken, to plead for the beauty of romance in woman, I knelt at that altar of misery.

It may sound like a page from a drama that never saw the light of day. I only wish it were a fevered dream of the brain. But it was real enough, though it certainly sounds sufficiently mad to be untrue in this world of inscrutable mockery, where man lifts his eyes piously, and where all his prayers begin or end with “God have mercy upon me!”

God! I’ve done glorious mission work in my time.

We took the poor escapee into the forest depth so that she might be safe from the eyes of the gendarmes, the hunters, the officials of the calaboose near Tai-o-hae, and she stood trembling beside us, beneath those giant bread-fruits. Even those old, insensate trees seemed to bend tenderly over that hunted convict girl.

After she had discovered that we were friends and had listened to our sympathy, a beautiful expression, an almost indescribable splendour lit up her tearful face. She looked like some fallen angel: the earnest stars seemed to shine in her eyes as she stood before us, the dirty strip of blue ribbon fluttering at her beautiful throat as she wept, and told us all—yes, even the crime of passion which had caused her to be exiled from her La Belle France.

As we listened to her story, we three huddled together in that forest, the scents of the damp glooms were stirred by the creeping zephyrs, as though the mighty brooding heart of Nature was in sympathy with all we heard and with unseen fingers touched us, and sighed the breath from her dead forest flowers upon us, as I sat there with those two beautiful castaways, one a child of the South, and one from far-away civilisation.

I can still hear the terribly sad music of that voice, as in pathetic, broken English she almost sang her sorrow into our ears.

She told us how justice was meted out to her, how fierce, relentless men came in the disguise of outraged righteousness, seized her and shut her with her remorse in that coffin whereon no flowers are placed: nailing a young girl down with all her shattered dreams—alive, inside.

As Waylao and I listened to her story, I imagined that girl to be some terrible symbol, some sad, beautiful personification of all the castaways of the earth. The very winds seemed to shriek triumphantly, as though they still roared out the hate of pious men, and coming from the far-off cities across the seas, rushed up that shore and shook the forest trees violently with pursuing hands. I felt as though the world of reality had long since been shattered back into its hell by the final cataclysm, the crash of the spheres; that I sat there with the remnant, two beings it had failed to crush, but had left behind, gloriously beautiful with sorrow, in a new, divine form. As for me, it seemed as though I were some great mistake, some man, by a sad mischance, still left behind on earth, and I sat between them listening and hung my head for shame.

Out of another’s sorrow balm came to Waylao: she wept not for herself, but for the ragged figure, the blistered feet of the derelict beside us.

O heart of mine! Is it true that the forest trees brightened with ethereal light—that an angel stood weeping in those woods—that a stricken phantom girl seemed to step from the confessional box of that almighty cathedral of giant trees and the domed starlit night, her soul renewed with glory, her shattered dreams restored by our sympathy?

Was it a fallen angel, a phantom of the imagination, that came down to us in the forest by Tai-o-hae, sang that French hymn to beauty, and, with the stars shining in her flying mass of hair,

Yes, danced, as the mad shadow played and played the songs of romance and the waves beat out their warning monotones on the beach below.

Early the next day I hurried back to my two sad fugitives in their hut by the sea. Ere I had left them the night before I had made them promise not to stray away from that spot.

It would have been better if I had broken my promise and gone straight to old Lydia and told her of Waylao’s whereabouts. But as usual in this funny world, I managed to do the wrong thing at exactly the right moment.

So strange and sad had been the happenings of the previous night that I half fancied I had dreamed of Waylao and that hut in the forest and the convict girl. That morning I went to Mrs Ranjo and got her to lend me two blankets. “I’ve got an awful chill on the lungs,” I wailed plaintively, in order to satisfy the bar-woman’s curiosity, and departed for the forest with a parcel of dainty things.

When I arrived at that little hut by the mountains, there they still were, huddled together, sisters of grief in each other’s arms. It is hard to know, even now, which was the greatest sinner—Mohammed in the South Seas, or “Christianity’s” strange justice in the civilised world.

I still recall the earnest eyes of that grateful convict girl as I crept into that little shelter.

Ah, God! it’s hard to have been a missionary at the altar of romance and beauty, to have reaped so little reward for so much sorrow. The milk of human kindness is indeed diluted and hard to digest. That same night Waylao and I listened to the wretched escapee’s story. She told us why she had been transported for life, but it is too sad a tale to tell here. She was a Parisian girl of superior family, and had suffered for twelve months in the galleys and in the hideous chain gangs of Noumea ere she escaped. She had stowed away in the hold of a small schooner that called with stores at Noumea. Friendly sailors had connived to let her slip ashore unperceived at Nuka Hiva a few days before Waylao and I met her.

As we sat under the trees of that forest near Tai-o-hae, she seemed still to be a being from another world. Our sympathy, which she had probably never thought to find again on earth, inspired her with a new, half-etherealised existence. Strange as it may appear to the marble-like human beings of the great, polite world, she sang to us, swaying like to some faery creature as I played to her on my violin. Ah! What a soloist I’ve been! Who has had such fame, such success as I? What an audience was mine—when I played to immortality, to those earnest eyes, to those sad lips singing magical French songs to us. I think God must have composed the melodies we three sang together in those wide halls before the footlight of the stars, over the seas, years ago.

The native drums had already beaten the last stars in as I sat there in deep thought, pondering over it all, wondering what was the best thing to do for that poor derelict’s sake. As Waylao wept on, the lost escapee rose as though restless, as though she wished to leave us. Her restlessness had already worried me, for it was not the first time she had intimated that she must leave us. Indeed Waylao had almost promised me that she would return home for that derelict girl’s sake. For I must confess that I had traded on the miraculous appearance of that fugitive, and had sought to make her the instrument to serve two purposes.

“Waylao,” I said, “if you return to your mother, we can, with each other’s help, hide this poor castaway till such time as we can help her to get to a safer retreat.” At this Waylao had listened earnestly and, for the sake of the French convict girl, promised to go home. I was delighted at the way things were working, till that French girl rose and intimated that she must go away.

“Why go? We will look after you,” we said appealingly.

I even told her that I would try and get her a passage back to the colonies, so that she could once more get back to France.

She shook her head. She must never, never go back to the West; but must ever wander, lost, exiled, with her face turned to the South, hopeless, forgotten by all.

Waylao threw her arms about the girl, imploring her not to leave her. When they had wept a little while together, the convict girl gave us to understand that she wished to be left alone with her God for a while. We were strangely impressed by the earnestness of her manner. Her eyes had an indescribable look of beauty in them. The smile on her mouth almost brought the tears to my eyes. I no longer sought to look for meanings of anything. I sat there like one in a dream, as though I were doing my part on some unknown stage where some mysterious drama was being enacted.

“Mon dieu! I will come back to you again, sister,” she whispered in broken English as Waylao kissed her. She went down the little track that led to the shore. We saw her turn and wave her hand as she turned round by the buttressed banyans and then disappeared.

Waylao and I waited together. As the wind came in from the sea and wailed in the giant bread-fruits overhead, we felt strangely unhappy. At last I listened to Waylao, whose instincts were stronger than mine in fathoming the ways of her sex. I had already given up any idea of my returning to Tai-o-hae. I determined to stay with Waylao till her new-found comrade returned. We must have walked up and down that track and along the shore for hours searching, and even calling, in hopes that the fugitive would hear us and return. It was only when Waylao was almost dropping with exhaustion that I returned to the hut in the forest. Again we sat and still waited for the return of the girl who had strangely gripped us by the very heart-strings. I made a soft bed of moss and dead weeds for the homeless girl beside me. She lay down, and ere I had spread the blanket over her figure she had fallen into a deep sleep of exhaustion. Then I crept away down to the shore to smoke and with the hope of discovering our lost companion.

Ah, God! Dawn came stealing in, like hushed grey wings sending the stars home before their wide, silent sweep. Ere the first burnished flame of the sun touched the horizon the blue lagoons of the shores sprang into view. Scarcely a ripple stirred the deep waters of the Pacific as they heaved, dark and immense, like some mighty, troubled tomb, ere it gave up its dead.

Then her body came in on the tide, lifting and falling with the swell. Even the tropic birds seemed to give a low cry of sorrow as they swept away over the hushed waters. Just as the poets might say—her beautiful hair floated like a glinting mass of softest seaweed. It might have been a sleeping mermaid floating shoreward. Not in all the world of romance and reality could one imagine a sight to outrival the pathos, the ineffable sorrow of that castaway returning to the shores of earth—on the incoming tide. I can still see the South Sea chestnut-trees and the leaning bread-fruits as they stretched their tasselled, twining arms over that blue lagoon. The mirroring water shone like purest glass above the multi-coloured corals of the still depths. On she came. The blue strip of ribbon was still at her throat, like some weeping symbol, a tiny flag that had once fluttered on the visionary turrets of the enchanted castle of a girl’s dreams. There it hung, limp as the hands that had tied it there, after all the faeries had flown back to the stars. As she reclined on the surface of those deep, clear waters, her shadow was perfectly outlined, and her sleeping face sideways on her hanging arm distinctly visible beneath her. Even the strip of ribbon was imaged, and fluttered once again as the little starfish sailed right through it.

The light of man’s cruelty, the hopelessness of all the creeds, shone in her dead eyes.

So died the convict girl. Sympathy had made her brave. She had regained belief in the goodness of things, recaptured, out of misery, the lost faith of her childhood; fearlessly risked her all—gone before One who would not judge as men judge, or condemn the clay of His own fashioning.

They buried her by Calaboose Hill, in the hidden cemetery of the forest depth, where lay old Marquesan chiefs and the home-sick white men. And I, irreligious wretch that I am, went to that hallowed spot, leaned over the dead escapee and placed a little cross on the grave.

After that terrible discovery I returned to Waylao, hardly conscious of what I should say. For a while I managed to keep the sorrow of it from her. She saw by my manner that something terrible had occurred; indeed she half guessed the truth before I told her anything. Her grief was terrible. I did my best to console the poor girl.

“Waylao,” I said, “it is no good grieving; she has gone from all the sorrow of this world; and but for this little bit of ribbon we might well imagine that such a being never existed, never drifted out of the stars, and then, leaving these dilapidated shoes behind, escaped from the clutches of the convict officials.”

Taking her hand as tenderly as a brother might take the hand of an erring sister, I said: “Waylao, come away home to your people. I have been to Father O’Leary and he wants to see you.” Then I told her once more of her mother’s grief over her flight, of all the kind things that people had said about her—for I, too, can be a holy liar—and I took her away over the hills. She was strangely silent as she walked beside me.

“I don’t want to go back, I cannot,” she said when we were within sight of the township. I did not dream of the true state of her mind. All that she had gone through, and the sudden loss of her new-made friend in her sorrow, had evidently unhinged her mind, for I never saw any woman run like she did. We were just passing by a clump of bread-fruits that stretched into the deeper forest by Tai-o-hae when I looked up and saw her bolting.

Recovering from my astonishment, I started off in pursuit. She was light of frame and foot, and so easily outpaced me.

I was more upset at this turn of affairs than I would like to confess. When I got back to the old hulk I was sweating and exhausted through my hopeless search. I thought it best to say nothing to anyone except Father O’Leary of what had happened. To tell the truth, I began to wonder what construction might be put on my unconventional interest in Waylao’s plight. I suppose, even now, old Mother Grundy will have her private opinion, but what care I, safe out here in the solitude of Savaii Isles! I wonder what she would think of my next chance meeting with the half-caste girl. Yes, we met again some time later, and in the most miraculous way—far out at sea. But there’s a good deal to tell before I reach that episode.