Gabrielle of the Lagoon. W. H. Myddleton
glance, but that glimpse was enough to strike a wild feeling of terror into her heart, reminding her that she was connected by blood to the dark races.
At that thought her heart trembled: to her it was as though God had suddenly thumped it in some inscrutable spite. In a moment she had recovered. The strange dread of she knew not what vanished. Once more she gave a peal of silvery laughter, and even went so far as to wave her hand to the crowd of dark, handsome native men who were hurrying by on their way back from the plantations.
As she meandered along she began to think over all that had happened on the festival night when she had suddenly felt that strange impulse and astonished the natives by jumping on to the festival pae pae and dancing before them all. She rubbed her eyes. “I can’t think that I really did such a thing; I feel sure it must have been a dream.” Then she remembered that her gown was torn and one of her slippers lost when she had arrived home in her father’s bungalow. “It must have been true. Fancy me doing such a thing! I wonder what he would have thought.” So she reflected over all she had done. Then she began to reassure herself by recalling how she had often, when only ten years of age, danced on the pae pae with the pretty tambu maidens. And, as she remembered it all, she gave an instinctive high kick and burst into a fit of laughter; then she said to herself: “I’m a woman now and really must not do such things!” She started running down the forest track, and as she passed by the native village the handsome emigrant Polynesian youths waved their hands and cried: “Talofa Madimselle!” One handsome young Polynesian, gifted with superb effrontery, ran forward and stuck a frangipani blossom in her hair. This by-play made the tawny maids who were squatting on their mats by the village huts jump to their feet and give a hop, skip and a jump through sheer jealousy.
Once more Gabrielle had passed on and entered the depths of the forest. Passing along by the banyan groves on the outskirts of the villages she suddenly came across a cleared space surrounded by giant mahogany-trees—a kind of natural amphitheatre. Between the tree trunks stood several huge wooden idols with glass boss eyes and hideous carved mouths. They seemed to grin with extreme delight at the adoration they were receiving from the twelve skinny hags and three chiefs who knelt and chanted at their wooden feet. Gabrielle stood still, fascinated by the weirdness of that pagan scene. Again and again the hags and chiefs jumped to their feet and prostrated themselves before the carved deities. “Tan woomba! Te woomba, tarabaran, woomba woomba!” they seemed to moan and mumble as the stalwart chieftains jumped to their feet, wagged their feathered head-dresses, thrust forth their arms and chanted into the idols’ wooden ears. The largest centre idol seemed actually to grin with delight as it listened to the mumbling of the chiefs. Gabrielle stared, awestruck, as she listened, and the hags, leaping to their feet, danced wildly and shook their shell-ornamented ramis (loin chemises), making a weird, jingling music as the shells tinkled. Then they lifted their skinny arms and bony chins to the forest height and mumbled weird chants of death. Gabrielle had seen many similar sights in Bougainville, but never before had she quite realised the full meaning of that strange chanting, or of the sorrow that impels heathens to fashion an effigy with a fate-like grin on its curved wooden lips so that it could stand before them as some material symbol of the Unknown Power! As Gabrielle watched, two of the chiefs turned their heads, recognised her, and gave their sombre salutation: “Maino tepiake!” And still the hags chanted on.
Then Gabriello heard a faint mumbling coming from the belt of mangroves that grew by the lagoons near by. She was astonished to see six tambu maids appear, attired in full festival costume, which consisted of a kind of sarong fashioned from the thinnest tappa cloth. The girls had large red and black feathers stuck in their head-mops and Gabrielle knew by this that someone had died in the village and was being borne to the grave. They were walking slowly, carrying their mournful burden between them. It was an old-time tribal funeral. As the coffin-bearers arrived in front of the idols they laid their burden down. Gabrielle instinctively crossed herself when she saw the wan face of the dead mahogany-hued Broka girl. It was a sad, curiously beautiful face, for death had toned down the old wildness of the living features. The reddish, coral-dyed hair had fallen forward on to the pallid brown brow and gave a pathetic touch to that silent figure. On the forehead was the plastered scarlet mud cross, a sign that the girl had died in maidenhood. She was stretched out on a long, narrow death-mat that had handles, something after the style of an ambulance stretcher, but fashioned in such a way that when the primitive hearse of dusky arms moved forward the corpse regained a sitting posture. The effect was gruesome in the extreme, for the head of the corpse, being limp, fell forward or wobbled as the mourners passed along the narrow mossy track. Through entering into the spirit of the proceedings Gabrielle at once gained the sympathy of those pagan mourners. For she too crept behind the procession as it moved along among the pillars of the vast primitive cathedral. The thick foliage of the giant bread-fruits, the buttressed banyans and towering vines, that ran here and there like symphonies of green, scented the forest depth. And when the wind sighed it seemed to be some moan from infinity, as though that moving procession and the forest itself stood on the deep inward slopes of some vast sea. Only the remote wide window, through which the stars shone by night and the sunsets marked the close of each tropic day, was visible between the colonnades of tree trunks, as there it shone—the far-away western horizon. Suddenly the procession stopped. The six tambu maidens had begun to chant an eerie but beautiful pagan psalm as they approached the grave-side; then they laid their burden gently down. The weeping hags and chiefs stood looking up into the branches of the tall coco-palm. It was there that the girl’s body was to rest till her bones whitened to the hot tropic winds. Along one of the lower branches they had fashioned a grave-mattress of twigs and leaves, jungle grass and tough seaweed, the whole being fastened on to the branch by strong sennet. It was a weirdly fascinating sight as they stood there voiceless and began hurriedly to perform the last sacred rites over the dead girl. The tallest of the mourners, an aged chief, who had a naturally melancholy aspect, besides both his ears being missing, took a bone flute from his lava-lava and began to blow a weird Te Deum. Gabrielle could hardly believe her eyes as the tambu maidens started to whirl their bodies in perfect silence to the sound of the wild man’s piping. Only the jingle of the rami shells, tinkling in exact tempo to the wailing fife (made out of the thigh-bone of some dead high priest), told her that those girls were whirling rapidly in the forest shadows. The hags and chiefs had already fallen prone on their stomachs, so that they could perform the lost mysterious rite. This rite necessitated them rising repeatedly to their knees so that they might take in a deep breath and blow their stomachs out, balloon-like, to enormous proportions. The contrast was weird in the extreme when their bodies receded and subsided into a mass of wrinkles. This strange rite took about five minutes to perform. It was a rite that was supposed to blow the sins of the dead away ere the spirit entered shadow-land.
As soon as this ritual was completed two of the chiefs climbed the grave-palm and then, hanging in a marvellous way by their feet, they leaned earthwards and gripped the dead girl’s coffin-mat by the sennet handles. One old woman (the mother probably) rushed hastily forward, and lifting the corpse’s hand kissed it. Then the living limbs of the weird grave-elevators went taut as, still with their heads hanging downwards, they clutched the coffin-mat and slowly pulled the dead figure foot by foot off terra firma towards the sky! In a few moments the dead girl lay lashed to the bough of her strange grave, high up in the forest coco-palm. Suddenly the mourners had all vanished! Even Gabrielle felt some of the fright that haunted the souls of those wild people. They had hurried away because it was known that directly the forest wind blew across the new-made grave the soul of the dead departed for shadow-land and must not be tainted by the breath of the living. After seeing that sight Gabrielle hurried away also. She trembled as she stepped at last out of the forest shadows into the glory of the sunlight. She seemed to realise at that moment that the sun was the visible god of the universe, the rolling orb that woos the world, creating the green happiness of the woods and bills. She saw the migrating birds going south as she lifted her eyes. Perhaps she felt the winged poetry of the birds on their flight to the southward, hurrying away like symbols of our own brief days. Her eyes were very concentrated as she sighed and then jumped carelessly on to a springy banyan bough and began to sing one of her peculiar songs. Suddenly she ceased to sing, and a startled look leapt into her eyes as she turned her head. She had even let her swinging legs fall stiff so that the old blue robe might fall and hide her pretty ankles. Then