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 WHEN THE RED GODS CALL
 
 WHEN THE RED GODS 
 CALL 
 
 BY 
 
 BEATRICE GRIMSHAW 
 
 AUTHOR OF "FIJI AND ITS POSSIBILITIES," "NEW GUINEA," ETC. 
 
 NEW YORK 
 
 MOFFAT, YARD & COMPANY 
 1911
 
 Copyright 1911, by 
 
 MOFFAT, YARD AND COMPANY 
 
 NEW YORK 
 
 All Rights Reserved 
 Published June, 1911
 
 He must go go go away from here! 
 On the other side the world hes overdue. 
 'Send your road is clear before you when the old 
 
 Spring fret comes oer you, 
 And the Red Gods call for you! 
 
 KIPLING
 
 WHEN THE RED GODS CALL 
 
 PART I 
 HUGH LYNCH'S STORY 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 T AM writing this in prison. 
 
 * I don't know that anyone will ever read it, but if 
 anyone ever should, he need not picture to himself 
 a cell in Portland or Wormwood Scrubbs, with a gas 
 jet, and a Bible, and a spy -hole in the door, and a war- 
 der walking up and down outside. It is a very dif- 
 ferent sort of prison that holds me, Hugh Lynch 
 thirty-one years of age, and good for nothing any more 
 this dead, damp, choking-hot " northwestern " 
 afternoon. The walls are corrugated iron, white- 
 washed, and very clean ; there is a sleeping mat on the 
 floor, and a pillow and a box and a tin basin. The 
 window is an open shutter, looking out to sea. I 
 could break through it, or the floor, with a pen- 
 knife, any night supposing Wilks, the jailer, had 
 not left the door open, as he generally does. Wilks 
 is lazy, and does not much like the bother of having 
 a white prisoner ; he put me on parole the first day I 
 was here, so that he should not be troubled to look 
 after me. A cheap parole, truly! Where could a 
 man escape to, in British New Guinea, as it remains 
 even in this last quarter of the nineteenth century 
 
 i
 
 2 WHEN THE RED GODS CALL 
 
 an unexplored wilderness of cannibal savages, about 
 the last place on the face of God's earth. 
 
 People who are alive some twenty years hence may 
 have a different tale to tell. A man has plenty of 
 time to think in prison, and a pioneer has some right 
 to prophesy. I would stake what have I got to 
 stake? Honor? " He that died o' Wednesday " may 
 have it, not I, who live disgraced. Money? The 
 crash that brought me here carried away that too ; let 
 it go it's the least thing a man can lose. Love? 
 Not safe to think about here, Hugh, while Wilks 
 obligingly leaves you the use of your razor. Well, 
 then, freedom, the only star in my black sky a star 
 a long way off. ... I would stake my freedom 
 that this wild country will be a great colony some 
 day. 
 
 Who knows it as I do ? Who has paid so for what 
 he knows? Half drowned a dozen times on the river 
 bars nearly eaten by alligators oftener than I could 
 remember speared by a black brute in Orangerie 
 Bay caught and tied up for cooking on Ferguson 
 Island starved to a skeleton exploring in the Owen 
 Stanley Range down with fever gold-hunting in the 
 wood-larks, in the Louisiades, up the Mambare River. 
 Well, I'm not writing a boys' adventure book, but 
 I never read one that had half the adventures in it 
 I have had in this out-of-the-way, back-of -God-speed, 
 dark, devilish hole of a British New Guinea. 
 
 . . . Which, in spite of all the names I call it, 
 and all it has done to me, I can't help liking, even 
 yet. That's the way with us in New Guinea we
 
 WHEN THE RED GODS CALL 3 
 
 sow for someone else to reap. What have I reaped 
 out of my six years in the country? Well, that is 
 what I set out to write; I shall come to it by and 
 by. 
 
 The days here are so long, in spite of the odd jobs of 
 whitewashing, gardening, and grooming given me by 
 the jailer, that I have felt obliged to make some oc- 
 cupation for the empty hours. I begged an old 
 ledger, only quarter filled, from Wilks to-day, and 
 in that I am going to write down, day by day, as 
 time may serve, the whole truth about my wretched 
 story partly for my own employment, and partly 
 because . . . 
 
 No, I won't write that second " because." I don't 
 care if she ever does know. I don't care if she is 
 dead. No more about her! I write to please my- 
 self, no one else. 
 
 How quiet the prison is! It is the hottest hour of 
 the afternoon, the parrots have ceased their scream- 
 ing in the bush that lies behind the hill, the leather- 
 heads have not yet begun their evening squawking 
 and scandalizing among the palm-tree tops. All the 
 native prisoners are out working on the roads ; Wilks, 
 I suspect, is taking an afternoon nap after his mid- 
 day " comforter." There is not a sound but the hum- 
 ming of the surf on the coral reef, a long way out at 
 sea, and the little ruffle of the waves breaking on the 
 beach below the jail. The sea is of a blue that hits 
 you like a slap in the face; the white sand scorches 
 your eyes, the tangle of bush and creepers on the 
 shore is poisonously green. One can only say that
 
 4 WHEN THE RED GODS CALL 
 
 the whole landscape screams, in spite of the stillness 
 of the day. 
 
 Port Moresby is out of sight round the corner 
 half a dozen tin bungalows with stilty legs and big 
 verandas, offices, some of them, a store or two, a 
 house or two that is all. And here, on the grass 
 below the " capitol," stands the jail, my home. 
 
 Who and what am I, and why am I here ? A page 
 copied out of Wilks' rough-and-ready prison register 
 will answer. I'm not a young lady in a novel, so I can- 
 not very well describe myself, but I think Wilks has 
 done it accurately enough. 
 
 "LYNCH, Hugh. White. Age 31. National- 
 ity, Irish. Crime, manslaughter. Sentence, two 
 years. 
 
 "Description Height, 5 feet 8^2. Hair, dark 
 red, very thick. Face much tanned. Eyes small, 
 grayish-brown. Clean shaved. Wide mouth, good 
 teeth. Nose short and irregular. Small ears. Ex- 
 ceptional development of muscle all over. Somewhat 
 round-shouldered. 
 
 " Marks Knife scar on left shoulder. Spear 
 mark right thigh. Tattooing Dragon left fore- 
 arm; mermaid, red and blue on back; snake (blue) 
 encircling right upper arm ; " Panchita M." center of 
 chest ; " Armour eternal, 1887," enclosed in circle 
 (red) over left breast; girl's head in a crescent moon 
 (blue) over fourth rib, right side. Device appar- 
 ently erased with acid, just above. 
 
 " Speaks French and Spanish, also Motuan and 
 several other New Guinea dialects."
 
 WHEN THE RED GODS CALL 5 
 
 . . . I had just got so far, when the doctor 
 came in on a visit of inspection. He was a little 
 drunk, as usual, and very pleasant; I think his gram- 
 mar was rather worse than usual (when an Irishman 
 is vulgar be sure he's an Ulsterman, like M'Gonigal)' 
 and he was much inclined to talk. He took Wilks' 
 ledger off the floor, where it lay while I was copy- 
 ing, seated on my mat, and began to read it aloud with 
 shrieks of laughter. Wilks, who had followed, stood 
 sheepishly looking on, his mouth full of afternoon 
 tea. 
 
 "'Nose irregular," read the doctor; "'excep- 
 tional muscular development.' Them two things 
 hangs together, me boy ; you're apt to find an irregular 
 nose with an arm and a chest like yours, and the rid 
 hair that shows the fiery timper. . . ' Round- 
 shouldered ' Ignor-ramus! did j'ever see a Herk- 
 ewls with the carriage of a Ganymede, now?" 
 
 " No, sir, certainly not, sir," says poor Wilks, hope- 
 lessly muddled. 
 
 ' '. . . Speaks Spanish " Panchita " speaks 
 French "Amour eternal " girl in a crescent 
 girl, or something about a girl, burned out knife 
 wound on the left shoulder ' and them hangs to- 
 gether too, ye Lutherian! Why, it's a biography 
 ye've written, here, Wilks . . . Manslaughter 
 . . . hm! hm! Give us a sup of the tea ye have 
 in your quarters, Mr. Jailer, with the flavoring that 
 I perceive ye've been adding to it and we'll let the 
 lad alone; after all, we don't an-natomise a criminal 
 before he's dead, even in British New Guinea."
 
 6 WHEN THE RED GODS CALL 
 
 I was afraid the doctor would begin overhauling 
 my manuscript, but he never even glanced at it 
 he has more refinement of feeling than his grammar 
 might lead one to expect. He walked out of the 
 cell, still laughing, and Wilks followed him, carrying 
 his register with him. It ought never to have been 
 there, but there is not much prison discipline in Port 
 Moresby. 
 
 Alone again in my little whitewashed box, with not - 
 a sound to disturb me but the dry rustle of the palms 
 outside, I sat and thought for a long time, looking 
 out at the flat blue sea. There was a lakatoi on it 
 a little while ago a huge canoe with immense 
 curved bat-like wings, .skimming along towards Paga 
 Hill. There was a thin black streak, far out at sea, 
 followed by a long crystal wake that was an alli- 
 gator, going after the lakatoi. I watched them both 
 out of sight; the sea is empty now, and I have taken 
 up my pen again. 
 
 I think that the doctor spoke the truth. Wilks has 
 written a pretty large slice of my autobiography for 
 me. I'll let it go at that. 
 
 Three years before the mast at sea a year in 
 Ecuador and Bolivia another in Tahiti and New 
 Caledonia another in Australia six in New 
 Guinea. That's the tale, in the rough. A gentleman 
 to begin with, a County Clare lad meant for the 
 army, and. brought home from his tutor's at eighteen 
 to be told that his father was dead, his property 
 muddled away, and himself a beggar that was the 
 beginning of life for Hugh Lynch. I had an uncle on
 
 WHEN THE RED GODS CALL 7 
 
 my mother's side (she had died long before the black 
 days came on us, thank God) and he found a place 
 for me in a Liverpool warehouse as a junior clerk. 
 I kept the place just ten days. The eleventh day 
 found me berthed in the forecastle of a five hundred 
 ton brig, bound for Buenos Aires entered on the 
 books as an able seaman, and well worth my wages, 
 too; I hadn't sailed my father's yacht round Ireland, 
 and up to Stromness, for nothing. As for the senior 
 clerk in Pettigrew's of Water Street, he probably got 
 a couple of new front teeth from the dentist near 
 the Town Hall, next Saturday, and I don't think the 
 split in his lip would bother him for more than a day 
 or two. All things considered, he was lucky. 
 
 Was I? 
 
 Well, for the next few years, " all the kingdoms of 
 the earth, and the glory of them," were mine. If I 
 paid the price one is supposed to pay, I got what I 
 paid for. They say the devil is fond of cheating you 
 out of the goods you've bought. He did not cheat 
 me. 
 
 There's a good deal one does not care to think of 
 in cool blood, about the history of those years. If 
 I told the story of the knife scar that I shall carry 
 to my grave, and the story of the little wooden cross 
 in the big barranco beyond La Paz, that goes with 
 it if I wrote down everything that happened in that 
 mutiny off the Chilian coast, who sunk the Senorita, 
 and why, and what you'd find tied to the main- 
 mast, if you got a diving dress, and went down to 
 look, and why I would not take the governorship of
 
 8 WHEN THE RED GODS CALL 
 
 the island, if it were offered me, to go back and live 
 in Tahiti if I wrote all that, and the rest, that I 
 haven't touched on, there'd be more biography on 
 the paper, and of a queerer kind, than ever M'Gonigal 
 professes to have found on my skin. 
 
 You see, I had the education of a gentleman, and 
 the muscles of a strong man in a circus, and the salt 
 drop in the blood that drives to wandering. Mix 
 those together, and you'll get a stew with pepper in 
 it. There has been nothing mean or dishonest in 
 my life, but I'm afraid that is the very best my very 
 best friend could say for me. And if I have not suc- 
 ceeded in unclassing myself altogether, I have gone 
 a long way toward it. Whether that is an advantage 
 or not, is one of the things I have never been able 
 to decide. At all events it is so, beyond altering. 
 Of no class, no country, no home, and no future 
 that is what I am, and where the " Red Gods " have 
 led me, at the last. 
 
 And now for the story! 
 
 It begins three years ago, when I came into Port 
 Moresby to look for a wife. I had taken up the 
 prettiest little group of islands a man ever saw, ten 
 or fifteen miles from the mainland of the northeast 
 coast, and had planted them with cocoanuts. There 
 was pearl-shell in the center lagoon, and fine Turkey 
 sponge near the outer reef, and hawksbill turtle all 
 over the place. I had had a house built of native 
 materials, a little brown home like a bird's nest, set 
 among the big palms that had been growing on the 
 island for half a century, with my new young trees
 
 WHEN THE RED GODS CALL 9 
 
 behind it, and the beach and the lagoon before. After 
 a long day overseeing the work of the boys, I used 
 to light my pipe, and sit on the veranda, watching the 
 sun go down over the barrier reef, in a blaze of colors 
 that no one would believe, if I could describe it, and 
 listening to the jumping of the fish in the still water 
 below. The head boy would be busy making curry 
 and tea for me in the cookhouse; when he had done, 
 he would lay my table, and go off to his own little 
 hut at the back of the island, where his Motuan wife 
 would be waiting for him, with the sago hot from the 
 fire in a wooden bowl, and the white cocoanut cream 
 in another, set out on the floor mat. And there was 
 a fat little brown baby, that used to roll about at 
 the foot of the veranda ladder, and shriek, when it 
 saw its father coming down the avenue of palms. 
 I've heard it, many an evening, when I had finished 
 early, and -gone out for a walk round the island. It 
 used to put me into the blues, that, and the look of 
 Bogi sitting cooking on the floor, with the light of 
 the hurricane lamp behind her. Some of the other 
 boys had wives with them too I never prevented 
 their bringing their girls along, it helped to keep them 
 contented and, what with one thing and another, 
 my smart little house used to look solitary and empty 
 to me, of evenings. It was the first real home I had 
 had since I was a child, that island plantation; but it 
 did not seem homelike. 
 
 Well, the end of it was that one day I provisioned 
 my cutter for a long trip, told my head boy I shouldn't 
 be back for some weeks, gave him a fathom of in-
 
 to WHEN THE RED GODS CALL 
 
 structions, and the keys of the store, and set sail out 
 of the lagoon for Port Moresby. What with calms 
 and head winds, it took me near three weeks to get 
 there, being the northwest season, but I did arrive at 
 last, and tied up the Bird of Paradise to the new 
 jetty, intending to live in her cabin till I had bought 
 my stores, and had a look round the township, and 
 found a pretty little girl from Hanuabada or Elivara 
 to take back to Clare Island so I had called my 
 small property, after my native country at home. 
 
 I did the straight thing from the beginning. I 
 didn't want a wild little savage, but a girl who could 
 speak a bit of English, and was handy about a white 
 man's house, and that meant a mission girl, and that 
 meant marrying her. It did not seem to me that a 
 man could honestly ask any white woman to share such 
 a life as mine had to be, on that Robinson Crusoe 
 island, surrounded at a distance of only a few miles 
 by untamed cannibal tribes, and without any of the 
 comforts of civilization and in any case, there were 
 practically no white women in the country. A na- 
 tive wife, it seemed to me, was good enough for 
 such a ne'er do weel as myself, and I thought I'd be 
 good enough for her. So I went up to the mission 
 house that very same afternoon, and told Chalmers, 
 who was a very important person in New Guinea in 
 those days (and still is), exactly what I wanted. 
 
 Chalmers is a good man, and a plucky, but he has 
 a bit of the " turbulent priest " about him, and he 
 lectured me more than I liked, considering the errand 
 on which I had come. He said I was a godless trader ;
 
 WHEN THE RED GODS CALL n 
 
 I told him that was true, but I didn't see what it had 
 to do with the case; there were neither gods nor 
 trading in this deal, only matrimony, and that was his 
 job, if anything was. He said then that he didn't 
 approve of these mixed marriages. I said I didn't 
 ask for his approval; he wasn't my father, or my 
 uncle, and I was of age, and able to answer for my- 
 self. If he did not see his way to doing any matri- 
 monial agency business, why, I would just nip up 
 the first girl I fancied, whether she belonged to any- 
 one else or not, put her on board my cutter, and 
 make sail for Clare Island without any parsons in 
 the business at all. And I had no doubt, I added, 
 that if there was anything to score up in heaven 
 against such a proceeding, it would go down to Mr. 
 Chalmers' account, not mine. 
 
 Well, considering that I was fairly rude to him, 
 he took it rather well. He said that of two evils 
 one must choose the less, and that in any case, I was 
 acting honestly. One of his teachers would take me 
 over the mission school, and if I saw any girl that 
 I liked, of suitable age, he would marry us under 
 protest, he took care to add. Such marriages never 
 turned out well, in his experience. 
 
 I did not trouble to hear any of his experience, but 
 went off up to the hotel (as they called it; it was, 
 and is, only a tin shanty where they keep a half- 
 rotten billiard table, and sell vile liquor), spent as 
 cheerful an evening as I could, with two or three 
 schooner captains, and the dozen or so residents of the 
 town and put all thoughts of my matrimonial in-
 
 12 WHEN THE RED GODS CALL 
 
 tentions out of my head, as is my way when I have 
 a job in front of me that wants taking seriously. 
 Never cross a bridge till you come to it, is my motto. 
 
 . . . And after all, it was fate, or chance, or 
 whatever one may choose to call the blind " divinity 
 that shapes our ends," that arranged the whole mat- 
 ter. 
 
 I had turned out of my hot little bunk rather early, 
 while the sun was still low among the shiny leaves 
 of the mangroves round the shore, and had dived 
 overboard into twenty feet of sapphire-blue water, 
 as warm as your hand, for my morning dip. I had 
 put myself into a clean white shirt and trousers, and 
 stuck a Canario knife, with an ivory and silver inlaid 
 handle, into the red Spanish sash I'd unearthed from 
 my old stores, to enhance the beauty that Nature 
 hadn't given me. I knew I was an ugly brute, but 
 I fancied myself a bit all the same, knowing that I 
 was the kind of brute that generally gets a good deal 
 more than it deserves. 
 
 . . . Curious, how I write all this in the past 
 tense, as if I were old, or dead I, just over thirty, 
 and as full of life as one of those darting seabirds, 
 glancing about the inner reef. Can Eliso or any 
 woman on earth have hit me as hard as that, no 
 matter what she has done? I don't want to believe 
 it ... yet there's some spring broken in these 
 last few months something that leaves just a little 
 hollow, sick feeling where a swelling buoyancy of self- 
 conceit used to float me up. I do not think, if I live 
 to be a hundred, I shall ever swagger again, mentally
 
 .WHEN THE RED GODS CALL 13 
 
 or physically, as I swaggered in my fine clothes down 
 Hanuabada village that morning, proud as a peacock 
 of my youth and strength, and feeling that I was 
 coming among these savages like a fairy prince 
 from another world, his hands full of gifts and 
 honors. . . 
 
 Among all the sea villages of New Guinea, there is 
 none prettier than Hanuabada. It stands up in the 
 clear, green water on long, stilt-like piles, ten or fifteen 
 feet high, the seaweed end of each house well out among 
 the waves, the landward end just touching the white 
 coral gravel of the village street. Every house has 
 its quaint, native-style veranda, decorated with white 
 shells, and streamers of brown fiber, and all the deep 
 thatch roofs are finished off with long, lobster-like 
 horns, making the place look, at a little distance, like 
 a school of weird sea-monsters just climbing out of 
 the water to invade the land. It was early as I came 
 down the street, and the colonnade of palms that 
 fronts the houses was shot through with green and gold 
 lights from the climbing sun. Tall, naked, brown men, 
 with immense mops of hair, and gay haloes of parrot 
 plumes, were strolling or squatting about the veran- 
 das, some getting ready nets and spears for fishing, 
 others finishing up the bowls of gluey sago, and the 
 fat roasted yams, that their wives had been cooking 
 for them. Blue smoke from the breakfast fires filled 
 the village; the dogs were running eagerly about, the 
 children tumbling in heaps, like windfalls of shiny 
 brown fruit, at the foot of the veranda ladders. I 
 can see the picture as if it were yesterday and the
 
 i 4 WHEN THE RED GODS CALL 
 
 native girls flitting in and out through it all, their 
 full ballet skirts of colored grasses swinging like the 
 costume of a premiere danseuse, their necks loaded 
 down with clattering beads and strings of white dogs' 
 teeth, handfuls of blood-red hibiscus glowing in their 
 huge soft mats of hair. They are pretty, these Han- 
 uabada women, and well they know how to use those 
 soft black eyes of theirs, on white or colored male hu- 
 manity ! 
 
 But with the men about, the looks that they cast 
 at the " taubada " were necessarily few and veiled. 
 One girl only of the whole crowd came forward 
 openly, as I walked down the village, and, to my sur- 
 prise, spoke my name. I halted, and took a look at 
 her. She was about fourteen which means a fully 
 developed woman, among these tribes and was the 
 prettiest little thing I had seen for a long time. 
 Small, dainty, with tiny, pretty hands and feet, and 
 graceful limbs, her color clear bronze brown, her eyes 
 as big and soft as a seal's, she took my fancy mightily. 
 I was almost certain, somehow, that I had seen her 
 before, but I could not place her. I stood looking 
 at her for a minute, admiring the picture she made 
 with the early sun dancing on her beads and shell neck- 
 laces, and outlining in gold the becoming lines of the 
 blue tattoo upon her slender, unclad body. Her hands 
 were joined together at arms' length over the gay 
 red and yellow stripes of her topmost ballet-skirt ; she 
 looked shyly up at me from under the overhanging 
 mass of her black hair. 
 
 " Me here ! " was what she said. And immediately
 
 WHEN THE RED GODS CALL 15 
 
 put one of her necklaces into her mouth, and bit it 
 coyly. 
 
 " Why, Kari ! " I exclaimed, " so it's you, grown 
 up!" 
 
 I was better pleased than if I'd found a hundred 
 pounds. Kari was a little lass I had discovered wan- 
 dering by herself in the bush, deserted by her tribe, 
 several years before, when I had been out prospecting 
 for sapphires about the Astrolabe country. I had 
 brought her down to Port Moresby, and handed her 
 over to the mission. They put her in a teacher's 
 family, and started in to instruct her about Noah 
 and the ark, and Jonah's whale, and all the rest of 
 it. I suppose it didn't do her any harm; you must 
 fill a native's mind up with something or other, if 
 you want to keep him or her out of mischief and 
 some of the other things they taught her not to eat 
 dogs or cats or human beings ; not to buy charms from 
 sorcerers to kill her enemies ; what to do with a piece 
 of soap; how to make bread, and sew clothes were 
 really useful. 
 
 I had not heard much about her after she went to 
 the mission; I believe I was not considered fit so- 
 ciety for a promising young convert, and when I sent 
 to ask how she was getting on, as I did once or twice, 
 the answers were rather curt. I had given the mis- 
 sion a bolt of calico for my little protegee every 
 time I came to Port Moresby (which was seldom) 
 and that seemed to me as much as the circumstances 
 demanded. It is a fact that I had never thought of 
 Kari as a wife, when I made up my mind to get
 
 16 WHEN THE RED GODS CALL 
 
 married she was in my memory as a child only, 
 and I did not realize how quickly a native girl grows 
 up. 
 
 But the thought was there now. I remembered well 
 what a brave, bright little companion the child had 
 been, during those weeks of rough journeying through 
 the Astrolabe how she had picked up bits of the 
 quaintest pigeon English, and talked to me after an 
 odd fashion of her own Kari was not in the least 
 like any other child I had ever come across how 
 she had tried to help me with the work of my camp, 
 fetching water, hanging my mosquito net, tending 
 fires; whatever her tiny hands could find to do, in 
 fact and how really fond the small creature had 
 been of myself. And here she was, a full-grown 
 woman according to native ideas, a pretty one too, 
 and just the same bright little bird of a Kari as ever. 
 I wondered whether I could do better, if I overhauled 
 the whole of the mission school. 
 
 But first I wanted to find out what she was doing 
 alone in the village, in native dress, or rather undress, 
 and without any of the mission teachers. Could she 
 be married already? I felt astonishingly vexed at the 
 idea more or less. I had always felt a sort of pro- 
 prietary interest in my small foundling. 
 
 She was still standing in the sun, looking shyly up 
 under her fuzz-bush of hair, and biting her necklace. 
 
 ' You here ! " she added to her original remark by- 
 and-by. 
 
 ' Yes, Kari, I'm here, undoubtedly. What you 
 make alonga village, eh ? "
 
 WHEN THE RED GODS CALL 17 
 
 Kari's face clouded over, and the necklace dropped. 
 The brown bosom began to heave under its elaborate 
 embroidery of tattoo. The full Papuan under-lip 
 rolled outwards. 
 
 " Too-morrow," she got out with difficulty, " I 
 marry this my 'usband, Pona." She pointed to a big 
 ugly fellow in a pink shirt and his own dark legs, who 
 was chewing betel, and spitting gory mouthfuls on the 
 ground, at a little distance. 
 
 "Who's Pona?" I demanded. 
 
 " He good man. He studen' 'long school, pleach 
 Sunday. Too-morrow, marry me 'long miss'n." 
 
 " You like marry him, Kari ? " 
 
 Kari's eyes overflowed, and she gave a little sniff 
 for answer. I began to blaze. What right had 
 anyone to marry the little creature against her 
 will? 
 
 " No like," she sniffed out at last. 
 
 "Why?" 
 
 More sniffs answered. " He fool my hair. He 
 give me stick. He tell me I go 'long hell, suppose I 
 no marry him. He good man, flenty he savvy flenty 
 fray, all same I no like." 
 
 "Why don't you tell the missionaries, Kari?" I 
 fumed. " I don't suppose they know what Pona is. 
 A first class hypocrite, no doubt! What are you 
 afraid of? Afraid of going to hell?" 
 
 " I no fright along hell," confessed the little bride. 
 " I think more better I go to hell, Pona he no stop. 
 Pona good man, Kari bad girl. You going hell some- 
 time, Lineti. Flenty white man he go hell, flenty
 
 18 WHEN THE RED GODS CALL 
 
 white man bad, all same me, all same you. All bad 
 feofle, we stop long other. I like." 
 
 This candid confession of faith would have made 
 me laugh another time, but I was too angry to be 
 amused. I blurted straight out what was in my mind, 
 without thought of care or consequence. 
 
 " Kari, you shan't marry him," I said. " You shall 
 marry me, and come with me to my island. I want a 
 little wife like you. You come right up to the mis- 
 sion, and I'll settle it to-day." 
 
 I had forgotten to talk pigeon English, but Kari 
 understood. Up went the necklace into her mouth 
 again, the shy bright eyes looked at me kindly, but 
 with a touch of doubt. 
 
 ' You good along me ? " asked the small brown 
 woman. 
 
 " Yes, Kari, I good along you." 
 
 ' You no fool my hair, no giving stick, making me 
 cly?" 
 
 " I'll not ' fool ' your hair or beat you, Kari." 
 
 ' You talk good along me, you give ani-ani (food) 
 all same white man tea, soo-gar, flenty?" 
 
 " Yes, plenty." 
 
 " You got some other wife belong you? " 
 
 " No got, Kari, no want. Kari she stop all her- 
 self." 
 
 Then, very shyly, and looking up and down 
 "You like Kari, flenty?" 
 
 "Plenty!" I said, and kissed her. Then I swung 
 round on my heel, and dodged the ebony wood spear
 
 WHEN THE RED GODS CALL 19 
 
 that Pona threw at my back. I had seen it in his 
 hand, and knew very well it would come. 
 
 " You black brute," I said, walking up to him 
 " You're not going to get this little girl, if I know 
 it, to-morrow or any other day. You're coming to 
 your precious mission now to be shown up and dis- 
 graced dismissed, I should hope and Kari's going 
 to marry me." 
 
 There was some little trouble about getting what I 
 wanted, but it ended all right. Pona was dismissed, 
 and sent back in disgrace to his village. Chalmers 
 married Kari and me, after making considerable pro- 
 test. He told me, indeed, that he would not have 
 consented to perform the ceremony, had he not been 
 convinced that Kari would come to no good in Port 
 Moresby, she having already attracted more attention 
 from the whites than was desirable. I thought him 
 the most prejudiced person I had ever met, and I fear, 
 had not much scruple about showing him my feelings. 
 Perhaps I have changed my mind a bit since then. 
 
 The missionary would not take the five sovereigns 
 I flung down on his table, at the end of the short cere- 
 mony. He gathered them up and handed them back 
 to me, with what I called, in my own mind, a vinegar 
 face. 
 
 " You'll probably be sorry for this some day," he 
 said. And that was all our nuptial blessing. 
 
 Kari, in a magenta cotton frock that was hideously 
 unbecoming, and a wreath of some red flower that
 
 20 WHEN THE RED GODS CALL 
 
 didn't go with the dress, enjoyed the whole thing in- 
 describably. Motuan girls are not very keen on mar- 
 rying a white as a rule; they would rather have their 
 own village life, than 
 
 "The burden of an honor unto which they were not 
 born," 
 
 and they really admire their dark suitors most. But 
 there are exceptions. I was popular with the na- 
 tives all round if I said unusually popular I should 
 not be beside the mark and Kari, as a foundling 
 for whom no price in arm-shells, pigs, or dog's teeth 
 could be demanded, would have had rather a poor 
 place among the native matrons of the village, who 
 rank very much by the price that their parents or rela- 
 tives have been able to extract from the bridegroom. 
 
 It was a lift, therefore, for Kari in every sense, 
 and she collected and enjoyed the envious glances of 
 the other mission girls, who stood round the door of 
 the box-like little church, peeping in. They followed 
 us down to the jetty below the mission house, to see 
 us embark. My cutter had been brought over from 
 the town, and the boy who had sailed her from Clare 
 Island with me (a time-expired plantation hand, now 
 going home) stood on the quay, all smiles and flowers 
 and cocoanut oil, as we came down the winding path. 
 The Bird of Paradise was decked out with stream- 
 ers of colored trade calicoes, the wind was getting up, 
 and fluttered all her gay pennons cheerfully, against 
 the amazing blues and greens of the bay. Kari
 
 WHEN THE RED GODS CALL 21 
 
 dumped the little Chinese cedarwood box that con- 
 tained her trousseau (grass skirts, cocoanut oil, arm- 
 shells, fan-shaped combs, tortoise shell earrings, pearl 
 shell necklaces) over the bulwarks, and sprang in. I 
 jumped after her, shoved off, and gave the tiller into 
 the little brown hand of my bride. In another minute 
 I had the sails hoisted, the nor'wester caught them 
 almost full, and the Bird of Paradise was away on 
 her long flight to Clare Island.
 
 CHAPTER II 
 
 T HAVE begun this task of writing down my un- 
 * lucky story, and I am not going to " give it best," 
 since that is a thing I've yet to learn how to do. But 
 there is no denying that some of it hurts. 
 
 If I could burn out the memory of that year on 
 Clare Island with a red-hot iron, I would do it gladly, 
 and never wince. Most of us, I suspect, could say 
 the same about some sore place in our lives, and 
 that sore place is much more often a folly than a sin. 
 Repentance! Remorse! I have repented the good 
 deeds of my life, such as they were, rather oftener 
 than I have repented the bad ones. But with me, as 
 I suppose with other people, it's the sillinesses that 
 plant the real sting. There is no use repenting those, 
 no use thinking, if you're religious, that they'll be for- 
 given, and if you are not, like me, that you will get 
 paid out for them by Providence somewhere or some- 
 how, and that anyhow you don't care. There is noth- 
 ing wrong in a piece of utter condemned foolishness, 
 and that's just why you can never shake loose from it, 
 but have to carry it and its consequences round the 
 rest of your life. If I were a good Christian, I sup- 
 pose I should believe that God forgives sins. But I 
 shouldn't believe nor does anyone that He for- 
 gives want of common sense. Nothing, and nobody, 
 yourself last of all, forgives that. 
 
 22
 
 WHEN THE RED GODS CALL 23 
 
 When a white man marries a native woman, he 
 commits the unforgivable sin folly. With the best 
 of motives, and in quite an agreeable and enjoyable 
 way, I wrecked my life that day that I threw down 
 the five sovereigns on the missionary's table, and had 
 them handed back to me. And it was none the less a 
 wreck, because, during a long time, I thought I had 
 acted with the most consummate wisdom. 
 
 For there is no denying that I was happy. I was 
 getting on towards thirty years of age, I had knocked 
 about half the world, seen good times and bad times, 
 and had as much pleasure as most. One thing I had 
 not had a home. And I liked it surprisingly well. 
 It seemed to me, in those first few months, that I 
 should never want to leave Clare Island again, never 
 care for any other place in the world but my own little 
 sunny, palmy kingdom with its white coral shores, and 
 the brown thatched house where Kari and I had made 
 our nest. 
 
 She was a fascinating little creature I said in 
 those days, and I say even yet, that I never knew a 
 colored girl to match her. If there is any truth in 
 the theory of the transmigration of souls, Kari had cer- 
 tainly been a charming Parisienne in a former state of 
 existence a pretty, perhaps a naughty, little woman 
 who had been condemned to expiate a too great devo- 
 tion to her " toilette " in one life, by passing another 
 in the person of a small brown lady who had practi- 
 cally no " toilette " at all ! No one who knows the 
 extraordinary variety of the New Guinea races, and 
 the astonishing likenesses to white types that one finds
 
 24 WHEN THE RED GODS CALL 
 
 among them (I myself know a black Kiwai overseer 
 who is a Jew Money-lender to a hair, a brown old 
 Trobriand heathen who is simply a Presbyterian par- 
 son badly sunburned, and dressed for bathing, and a 
 feathered cannibal from Mekeo who might easily pass 
 
 for a bronze statue of the famous General , 
 
 plumed headpiece and all) no one I say, who knows 
 the different types of this amazing country, would 
 have been astonished at Kari's Frenchness, odd though 
 it was. 
 
 She was the daintiest little person conceivable in 
 her attire, such as it was, and very choice indeed of 
 her striped grass kilts, and her bead necklaces, and 
 the plaited armlets for her arms. 
 
 She had a way of wearing those innumerable ballet 
 skirts of hers, and swinging them from the hips as she 
 walked, that was of the very essence of the boule- 
 vards. The make-up of her brown little face (which 
 she carried out quite openly, sitting on the veranda 
 floor with a trade looking-glass set up in front of her) 
 was just as cunningly designed, in its lines of blue 
 paint following the soft bronze curves of nose and 
 brow, and the naive little dabs of vermilion on cheek 
 and chin, as the touches of kohl and rouge that un- 
 derline the good points of pretty Lianes and Celestines, 
 at the other side of the world. Her huge New Guinea 
 mop of hair, decked out as it generally was with flow- 
 ers and feathers, and carefully dressed and oiled, was 
 a very fair copy of a fashionable white woman's tor- 
 tured head. And there never was Parisienne, or white 
 woman of any nation, since time began, so full of
 
 25 
 
 the natural original coquetteries of womankind, as 
 Kari. 
 
 She had been a bit of a belle at the mission, and 
 more than Pona had wanted her and wooed her. This 
 made her, as it always makes a girl, mischievous and 
 capricious, fond to-day, elusive to-morrow, teasing, 
 yet charming. There were days when she would make 
 me beg for everything I got my breakfast, a kiss, 
 a clean shirt, a little native song to pass the time after 
 dusk, a drink of water from the clay cooler in the 
 corner, a cocoanut, a game of cards giving each and 
 all with a mischievous smile and a lip of utter silence. 
 There were days when she chattered like a leather- 
 head from dawn to dusk, ran after me like a little dog, 
 and served me like a slave. I have known her to keep 
 up the most dignified manners, copied and evidently 
 improved upon, from the white women of the mis- 
 sion, for a whole day, singing " Shall we gather at 
 the River," and other serious ditties, as she went about 
 her work and at sunset I would find her in the yard 
 at the back of the house, springing and swaying, ad- 
 vancing and retreating, and flinging her limbs wildly 
 about, while she sang in a high metallic scream the 
 native welcome of the women to the warriors coming 
 home with food for a cannibal feast. A performance, 
 it may be added, that I did not encourage, since Satan 
 himself alone knew what effect it might have on some 
 of my half -broken " boys " from the man-eating dis- 
 tricts of the mainland. 
 
 However, there were weeks at a time when Kari 
 would be just the little Kari that I knew and liked best,
 
 26 
 
 and it was wonderful to see how she brightened up 
 the place. When the mopokes began to moan in the 
 bush of evenings, and the great lagoon grew first 
 blood-red, then rusty silver, and then black, and the 
 cooking fires began to shine out from the native lines 
 where the boys were boiling their rice, it wasn't the 
 lonely beach in the twilight for Hugh any more, and 
 the solitary restless tramp past the happy little cot- 
 tages of the married quarters. No, Hugh had a pretty 
 girl waiting for him on his own veranda, a little laugh- 
 ing, piquant person who talked the quaintest pigeon 
 English, and liked to sit proudly and uncomfortably on 
 a chair at the head of his table, pouring out tea " all 
 same white woman." .When I came in from the plan- 
 tation in the middle of the day, there used to be a rush 
 of small bare feet across the yard, and a high drawling 
 voice singing out Kari's watchword " Me here ! " 
 When I wanted someone to sail the cutter with me, or 
 to take a hand with a bit of gardening, or to go out 
 in a canoe and dive for shell-fish on the reef, Kari 
 was always ready. " Me here," she would say, and 
 skip lightly into the boat, or pick up the spade. A 
 native woman expects to work, and they are all the 
 better for not being spoiled. I did not spoil Kari. 
 
 In truth, I was happy enough. And I loved my 
 wife? Well, yes, as one loves a native woman. But 
 without reserve, or change, or thoughts of past or 
 future, I did love, with all that was in me, my planta- 
 tion. 
 
 It may have been those years of seafaring that gave 
 me the longing for a little bit of land of my own, and
 
 WHEN THE RED GODS CALL 27 
 
 the pleasure in all the commonplace plantation round, 
 weeding and gathering, lining, hoeing, and planting, 
 cutting and drying the nuts, bagging the finished copra. 
 Even three years of the bitter, salty life of the fore- 
 mast hand is enough to plant deep in a man's heart 
 the love of the kind, green earth and its generous, un- 
 counted gifts. Made for a civilized life I never was, 
 in spite of my birth and education there's no city 
 berth I could have had that I would not have broken 
 out of at any cost, in a month but idleness was never 
 one of my faults, though I know well that's the first 
 stone cast at one of us by the smug Pharisee of the 
 top-hat and frock-coat. We whom the Red Gods call 
 as that new writer, Kipling, puts it are not the 
 idlers. Following that call, we come to grief in a 
 hundred ways, we live with danger and hardship for 
 our daily mates, we work our hearts out for the barest 
 of livings, we die in our boots as often as not, and 
 no one knows or cares when or how we ended but 
 we don't idle, friend of the pasty cheek and bulbous 
 waistcoat. It is not in our breed. And don't forget, 
 when you stop to take breath after abusing those of 
 us who have stepped outside the class and occupation 
 lines, that we are making the world just that 
 for you. 
 
 I used to work all day on Clare Island, and the days 
 were never long enough. What with overseeing the 
 boys, taking a hand myself with some tough bit of 
 clearing, trying the properties of dyewoods and gum- 
 woods, and drug plants, that we used to run across in 
 the bush, keeping the cutter ship-shape and Bristol
 
 28 WHEN THE RED GODS CALL 
 
 fashion, as a sailor-man should do, and sailing her 
 about the lagoon to hunt for sponges, or beche-de-mer 
 (both " side lines " in my little business), adding to and 
 improving the cottage and the cookhouse, knocking up 
 a bit of furniture now and then, and half a hundred 
 other odd jobs, I never had more than time to eat my 
 meals and sleep. You can't buy anything to speak 
 of in New Guinea, and I did not want to spend any 
 of my slowly-growing hoard, if it had been possible. 
 So Kari and I made everything we wanted, or did 
 without it. Shall I ever forget the day the big bed 
 was finished? A fine fourposter with a double mat- 
 tress stuffed with kapok silk-cotton off my own trees, 
 the frame laced across with sinnet cord spun from co- 
 coanut husk by Kari's clever fingers, the uprights for 
 hanging the mosquito net shaped and carved by the 
 carpenter that's Hugh and the whole gorgeous 
 piece of furniture varnished with gums out of the 
 bush, melted down in over-proof spirit distilled from 
 our own yams ! 
 
 I could never hope to describe the pleasure that I 
 came to take in all my little tasks and contrivances, 
 or the sweetness of everything that I won at the cost 
 of my own toil, and no more, from the rich storehouse 
 of the tropic forest. I'm not enough of a philosopher 
 to talk about those things scientifically though, in- 
 deed, in my years at sea, in that quiet " middle watch " 
 when the sailor does most of his thinking, I had 
 racked my brains a good deal over the ends and be- 
 ginnings and reason of the things that man was not 
 meant to understand. I should guess, perhaps, that
 
 WHEN THE RED GODS CALL 29 
 
 we all feel the good old earth has a right to keep her 
 children, whether she does or not, and when one does 
 manage to snatch something from her direct, without 
 having to pay a middleman even if it's only cocoa- 
 nut cream for your tea, instead of tinned milk from 
 a store, or wild pepper for your parrot stew one 
 feels, somehow or other, that one has managed to col- 
 lect a bit of something that was always due to you. 
 
 The big trees that had been on the island when I 
 came were bearing well, and I got a fair price for my 
 copra when I sailed down to Samarai with it. The 
 bit of money (gathered trading in New Caledonia) 
 which I had brought with me, had been enough for 
 the clearing and planting of near a hundred acres 
 it only cost the food of the boys, and trade stuff to 
 pay them at the rate of a pound or two a year, and a 
 stock of tools. Two years the nuts had been planted; 
 the third was passing by. In three more, there would 
 be four or five hundred a year to me out of my little 
 estate, and in five or six after that, it would be worth 
 half as much again. I could hardly believe that I had 
 been so prudent, so sensible, so worldly wise. 
 
 It seemed as if, for the first time in his life, the 
 ne'er do well was losing the right to his title. 
 
 And I did not get tired of my home. It was six 
 months now since I had carried off Kari in the Bird 
 of Paradise, and never a white face had I seen in all 
 that time except my own tanned leather countenance, 
 looking at me out of my shaving glass. (Yes, I used 
 to shave, and got Kari to cut my hair, and she washed 
 seven clean shirts a week for me, and I wore a tie, and
 
 30 WHEN THE RED GODS CALL 
 
 shoes and socks, too. I hadn't knocked about the 
 South Seas for nothing, and I knew what's the end of 
 dressing in pyjamas, and going uncombed and bare- 
 foot. Yes, you might think a white man cannot lose 
 his race, but some of us know he can or what 
 amounts to it.) 
 
 I had not, as I say, seen a white man for half a 
 year, and the truth is I was not missing any. There 
 is something immensely flattering in the deference 
 paid to a solitary white by a crowd of dark skins, all 
 the world over. My boys were a decent crowd, al- 
 though they were of a cannibal tribe there's no bet- 
 ter plantation hand than one of the real, skull-hunting, 
 roast-'em-alive-O cannibal fellows, once you've tamed 
 and handled him a bit, and they seemed to think a lot 
 of bad, untrustworthy, uncivilized Hugh Lynch. My 
 overseer a Fly River chap, with a good headpiece 
 on him used to gather my words like gold, and copy 
 everything I did, down to my shellback roll in walking, 
 and the " bucko, mate " language I'd use to smarten 
 up the boys. Kari treated me like God Almighty 
 most of the time; it was true, she began to show the 
 native savagery a bit, and was more a little wild cat 
 than a woman, at intervals; but I liked her none the 
 worse for it. Nobody questioned what I said. No- 
 body gave me advice. Nobody ever " wanted to 
 know " anything about anything. And the island 
 was as lovely as a Kew gardener's dream of what 
 Heaven would be, if he'd the making of it. And, with 
 the hard work, and the pure sea air, and the quiet 
 mind I carried, I was so strong and light that I could
 
 WHEN THE RED GODS CALL: 31 
 
 not rest in bed once the first shimmer of the dawn 
 crept up out of the lagoon, but would reach the center 
 of my room in one spring like a rock wallaby, and 
 make just ten steps of it down on to the shore, lying flat 
 and cool and ivory-gray in the early light. I have 
 run for half an hour there in the dawning, singing as 
 I ran, and sending the sand flying right and left under 
 my bare feet scarce more conscious of my own ex- 
 istence than the swooping sea-hawks that circled out 
 beyond the reef just happy because it was another 
 day, and because I was alive, and young, and very 
 strong. ... 
 
 At the end of six months, Sanderson's schooner 
 came. 
 
 I had been expecting her for some time. My stores 
 were running low, and the trader I dealt with in 
 Samarai had promised to send up a fresh lot by the 
 first opportunity. The Orokolo would be going up 
 to Buna Bay about the time I should be wanting sup- 
 plies, and I might rely on getting the goods by her. 
 
 She was late, as I say a schooner always is 
 but my storehouse was not empty when the tall, white 
 sail showed out in the fierce blue of the sky beyond 
 the barrier reef, one hot, still morning in February 
 I had never seen the Orokolo or her owner, and I 
 didn't know that I was very anxious to, though I 
 wanted those cases of meat and bags of rice badly 
 enough to make me welcome the sight of the pearly 
 triangle in the sky, and to chafe at the light winds that 
 brought the ship so slowly into the lagoon. It may 
 have been what old wives call a " warning," or it may
 
 32 WHEN THE RED GODS CALL 
 
 have been a mere dislike to having my sovereign roy- 
 alty of sole white man disturbed I cannot say 
 but I swore at Sanderson in my heart, as I went down 
 to my little coral jetty, and hoped fervently that he 
 was badly wanted at Buna Bay, and would have to 
 make sail again before sundown. I didn't want 
 him. 
 
 The ship's boat was out by this time, and skimming 
 across the water. She was at the jetty in a minute or 
 two, and in another minute I was shaking hands with 
 a tall, rather well-dressed man of about thirty, whom 
 I thought at the moment, and still think, to have been 
 the very best-looking piece of male humanity that ever 
 I set eyes on. 
 
 Sanderson could have gone nowhere without as 
 many eyes turning to look at him as if he had been a 
 traveling prince. He was one of those chromo-col- 
 oring men, all eyes and hair, with a skin as white as 
 a girl's, in spite of the New Guinea sun, and a mat of 
 gold curls on his head like an actress's wig. I don't 
 care for those large blue eyes in a man myself, but I 
 must say there was nothing soft or effeminate about 
 his they were like hard, blue stones set tight in his 
 head, and I am sure nine men out of ten, and nine 
 hundred and ninety-nine women out of a thousand, 
 would have called him splendidly handsome. He was 
 tall, as I have said, and very well set up not that 
 I couldn't have broken his neck for him, if I had 
 wanted, but then, I am said to be the strongest man 
 in the western Pacific. And I would not have ex- 
 changed an eighth part of my strength for the half,
 
 WHEN THE RED GODS CALL 33 
 
 or the whole, of his poisonous good looks ugly red- 
 haired brute though I am. 
 
 Bert Sanderson, big, handsome, black-hearted Aus- 
 tralian, lying in your lonely New Guinea grave under 
 the sobbing casuarina trees, I have no hard feeling 
 against you in my heart to-day. You are gone where 
 all things are made even (so the good people tell us) 
 and you have got your wages, whatever they may be. 
 I make no guess at that, as I make none at what may 
 be due to myself, by-and-by, if there is really anything 
 that lies, at the last, beyond the Great Silence. But 
 I took no chances, Bert Sanderson. I gave you your 
 dues in this life, and the Devil, or the angels or the 
 dark of utter annihilation, may have you now, for all 
 that it matters to me. 
 
 Sometimes, sitting here through the long days of 
 idleness that eat into one's very heart, watching the 
 curl of the breakers far out on Basilisk reef the 
 breakers that beat in from the free, wide, wandering 
 sea I wonder what my life would have been if the 
 Orokolo had never sailed into the lagoon of Clare 
 Island. I should have missed the worst troubles of 
 all my troubled history; Kari would be sitting on my 
 palm-thatched veranda still, not so bright or so pretty, 
 but quaint, and lovable yet; Siri, the Kiwai overseer, 
 would be speeding up the boys to their work with 
 shouts of mangled sailor-English, in the lazy hours of 
 late afternoon, instead of lying as he lies to-day, dead 
 and eaten by the burrowing land-crabs, underneath the 
 sand of the island shore. Bert Sanderson would be
 
 34 WHEN THE RED GODS CALL 
 
 trading about the Louisiades as he used to do, there'd 
 be no white man gnawing his soul out in Port Moresby 
 jail . . . and She Stephanie 
 
 No, I can't write about her now. I shall have to, 
 by-and-by. Time enough when it can't be helped. 
 But this much I will say I would not even wipe out 
 the black, burning history of the last two years, that 
 has set a brand upon me till I die, if it were to be at 
 the cost of never having seen, never loved, never suf- 
 fered by her. 
 
 A host can hardly be rude to a guest because he 
 thinks the latter too good-looking. I greeted Sander- 
 son civilly, and asked him to come up to the house. 
 
 The little place was looking well that day, and I 
 was proud to show it off. I never was much of a 
 hand at describing, but I'd like to picture, if I could, 
 how all those new, bright avenues of young palms, 
 with the grass walks between them, and a bit of blue 
 sea set like a stone in a ring at the end of every ave- 
 nue, looked in the afternoon as we crossed the island 
 to the house. I had spared a few of the big forest 
 trees when clearing, and some of them the kind that 
 has the immense buttressed roots standing out like 
 plank partitions were half covered with pink and 
 white and purple orchids, and masses of bird's-nest fern. 
 And the coral trees on the shore, though they were 
 as bare of leaves as a mountain tribesman of clothes, 
 had bunches on bunches of flowers like scarlet fingers 
 all over them. Some of the flowers had dropped into 
 the lagoon, and were sailing about in the bright green
 
 WHEN THE RED GODS CALL 35 
 
 water. And there were huge, white, frilly shells, as 
 big as a soup tureen, and crimson shells lined with 
 mother-o' -pearl, and branches of coral like confec- 
 tioners' work in sugar, lying about on the sand among 
 more of the red flowers, and a lot of fallen hibiscus 
 blossoms, just like gold bells with ruby clappers inside. 
 There was a hot, aromatic sort of smell from the trees, 
 and you could hear the chip-chipping noise of the 
 boys at work clearing on the far end of the island, 
 soft and monotonous enough to put you to sleep. 
 We had some little way to go to the house, and you 
 may be sure I added on to it so as to take the visitor 
 round by my walk of six-foot yellow and scarlet 
 crotons set in a hedge, as gorgeous as a double slice 
 of sunset slid down out of the sky, and along my 
 avenue of paw-paws, each twice the height of a man, 
 and all loaded with green and yellow fruit bigger than 
 vegetable marrows. I must confess the perfume of 
 the flowers in a paw-paw avenue (you get the flower 
 and the fruit at the same time, but on different trees) 
 is powerful enough to make a sensitive person sick 
 and giddy, but there aren't many sensitive people in 
 British New Guinea. My granadillas had grown as 
 large as melons, and filled the air with a rich, fruity 
 scent, as we passed the trellised arbor over which I 
 had trained the vine; and you might have thought a 
 hundred people had been hanging out Christmas-tree 
 decorations, if you had come unawares on the plot 
 of lime trees covered with their own round, golden 
 balls, and dangling all over with the purple eggs of the 
 passion- fruit, that has run wild through half the bush
 
 36 WHEN THE RED GODS CALL 
 
 of the island. The approach ended up with a coral 
 pathway and if there is a better bordering to a neat 
 walk of white coral gravel than a double row of 
 large pineapples, all in full bearing, I do not know it. 
 
 As for the little brown house, with its sheltering 
 veil of way-flowered stephanotis on the sunny side 
 of the veranda, and the bright blue Lady's Mantle 
 looking in at the windows, and the yellow trumpets 
 of the alamanda, and white stars of jasmine, and 
 scarlet trailers of D'Alberti creeper, hiding almost 
 every bit of the thatch, I promise you it was worth 
 looking at all the more so, as the pretty brown 
 bird that lived in this pretty nest, had come out on 
 the veranda to greet us as we turned up the pineapple 
 walk, and was standing in the full light of trie wester- 
 ing sun, her face newly painted with lines of annatto 
 red and washing blue, her brown skin satiny with 
 the scented cocoanut oil that she had rubbed in, a 
 row of snowy frangipanni flowers set like stars in 
 the black cloud of her hair. She had put on every 
 necklace she owned bead, dog's tooth, shell, shell- 
 money, mother-o'-pearl and she had added so many 
 extra ballet skirts to her usual equipment that she 
 looked more like an animated pen-wiper than anything 
 else. But nothing could disfigure her unique wild 
 prettiness, nor the grace of her beautiful, half-naked 
 figure, every flowing curve underlined and brought 
 out by the cunning tattoo, as a white woman under- 
 lines with skillful pencil the brightness of her eyes, 
 that he who runs may read them. 
 
 Sanderson and I had been talking business, briefly
 
 WHEN THE RED GODS CALL 37 
 
 and curtly, all the way up from the boat so much 
 weight of stores to be delivered, so much freight to 
 pay, so much copra to be taken down to Samarai 
 but when we came in sight of the house he broke off, 
 began twirling his curly yellow mustache in a patron- 
 izing way, and remarked : 
 
 " You've got a nice little humpy here all right ! " 
 
 " I've taken some trouble with it," I said. 
 
 " And a nice little girl to keep you company," he 
 went on, adding a coarse joke. 
 
 " She's my wife," I said instantly. 
 
 " I didn't suppose she was your grandmother," 
 laughed Sanderson, suggestively. 
 
 " I don't think you understand," I said, rather 
 slowly and distinctly, stopping under the arch of 
 climbing pink convolvulus that ended the coral path. 
 " I married Kari at the L. M. S. mission in Port 
 Moresby, six months ago." 
 
 " Oh, you did! " was Sanderson's only comment, 
 barbed with a sneer of contempt. And he turned and 
 looked me over, as much as to say, " What sort of a 
 fool is this ? " 
 
 Straightway I began to excuse myself for hav- 
 ing acted decently, if foolishly. 
 
 " I didn't want a raw little savage brought up on 
 human flesh," I said. " I wanted a tidy girl who 
 could be of use about the house. Of course that had 
 to be a mission girl." 
 
 "Of course," said Sanderson. I never knew a man 
 in my life who had such a knack of making a harm- 
 less remark sound like an insult.
 
 38 WHEN THE RED GODS CALL 
 
 Neither of us spoke again till we reached the house. 
 I presented Kari to Sanderson with as much formality 
 as if she had been a white woman, and the little 
 Papuan who had stolen the soul of a Parisienne, rose 
 to the situation instantly, holding out her small brown 
 hand with quite a society air, and smiling a smile that 
 was pure Faubourg St. Antoine. " Q," she under- 
 stood (that was Kari's best attempt at my Christian 
 name) did not care for the stranger. Well, she would 
 treat him with reserve, but one must do the house 
 credit perhaps all the more so, if the newcomer 
 were of the carping kind. 
 
 So the small brown Martha went off to busy her- 
 self with household cares, and Sanderson and I sat 
 on the veranda to smoke, and drink a whisky or two, 
 and talk copra, while tea was getting ready. 
 
 I don't think I shall ever forget a moment of that 
 evening, if I live till I am a hundred. The rain-like 
 patter of the restless palms, growing dark against the 
 scarlet sky the immemorial sighing of the reef far 
 out at sea the stealthy scuffle of some creeping 
 thing, land-crab, snake, or iguana, edging up to the 
 house under cover of the growing dusk filled in 
 long spaces of silence, during which we looked at 
 one another, and our eyes said many things that had 
 nothing at all to do with the commonplace talk lag- 
 ging so heavily on our lips. The eye talk of men 
 to women has been written about many hundred thou- 
 sand times; every futile scribbler thinks himself an 
 authority on that pretty subject. But of the silent 
 speech that passes between two men when the devils
 
 WHEN THE RED GODS CALL 39 
 
 of rivalry and envy are prompting in each ear, and 
 the poisonous fungus of sudden hate is cracking the 
 ground beneath their feet of that, the hack har- 
 nessed to the ink-pot knows nothing. How should 
 he? He has ink for blood, and the black-sepia-squirt- 
 ing cuttle-fish of the seas is not colder than he. 
 
 I had seen the look that Sanderson cast at my wife 
 the greedy smile parting his lips as she moved 
 about the veranda. I knew just now his ear was set 
 to catch each sound from within the house, while 
 we sat and talked outside. I read the fits of musing 
 into which he sank the quick, appraising glance that 
 flashed over my muscles, and dropped to his own big 
 knotted hands, the knitting of the brow, the fatuous 
 twirling of the yellow mustache. I could have killed 
 him as he sat there, for the dreams that I saw in 
 his eyes, as the light waned low, and the birds grew 
 silent in their nests, and always that unseen creeping 
 thing crept closer to the house, under cover of the 
 fallen palm-leaves that were shivering harshly now, 
 beneath the cold night wind that blew from the home- 
 less sea. 
 
 . . . It takes but a small thing to jar a man's 
 nerves, when they are strained almost to breaking. 
 The noise of that creeping creature became suddenly 
 unbearable. I broke away from the veranda, and 
 jumped down onto the shore, without waiting to go 
 round by the steps. It was a big fall, but I lighted 
 easily, and picked up a stone a good deal bigger 
 than the occasion demanded. Perhaps you might call 
 it a bowlder, more accurately. I had won many a
 
 40 WHEN THE RED GODS CALL 
 
 bet in South America by handling smaller pebbles than 
 that. 
 
 " What the infernal regions are you doing? " asked 
 Sanderson's voice pettishly. He leaned over the rail, 
 and saw me. 
 
 " My word ! " the exclamation, though choked 
 back under his breath, floated down to me in the dusk. 
 
 " Going to kill a snake," I said, with what I think 
 must have been a nasty look. I kicked the dried 
 palm-leaves, and out it came not a crab, or an 
 iguana, but a snake indeed, and one of a bad kind, so 
 far as the light allowed me to see. It didn't try to 
 defend itself, but began a rapid retreat towards the 
 bush. . . . 
 
 Well, if any man perhaps I might say any two 
 men who visits Clare Island cares to heave up a 
 round coral bowlder on the shore by the big chestnut 
 tree, he will find the smashed skeleton of a " tiger " 
 about five feet long. It was some yards away from 
 me when I threw, but that didn't save it. 
 
 "Did you kill him?" asked Sanderson rather su- 
 perfluously, as I came up on the veranda again. His 
 eyes met mine in the light of the hurricane lamp from 
 the room. 
 
 " I always do," I said. 
 
 "Always do what?" 
 
 " Kill snakes. Will you come in to tea? " 
 
 Kari had done her best for us, and it was a very 
 good meal that we sat down to, under the light of 
 the swinging hurricane lamp, with the little brown 
 lady, proud yet serious, seated at the top of the table
 
 WHEN THE RED GODS CALL 41 
 
 in the midst of a Catherine-wheel of ballet skirts. 
 Sanderson ate heartily, and praised Kari's cooking to 
 her in Motuan, her own language, watching to see 
 if I understood. I suppose it was rather boyish of 
 me to address my guest pointedly in Motuan, by way 
 of showing that I did, but the truth is that Sanderson 
 made me more inclined to boast of everything I had, 
 was, and knew, than anyone I had ever met. I 
 really do not know what the reason of this was, I 
 only give the fact. There are certain coarse natures 
 who do have this effect on almost everyone they meet, 
 I've noticed, and assuredly a good deal of the dis- 
 like one feels for them is due to the way they have 
 of dragging you down from your own ideals of de- 
 cent conduct. I had spent the first half hour of San- 
 derson's visit showing off my possessions, the next 
 displaying my strength, and now I was trying to make 
 a display of my knack of picking up languages. It 
 fairly sickened me, and I fell silent, picking the bits 
 of cocoanut out of my fruit salad to chew them ab- 
 sent-mindedly, while I stared at the captain of the 
 schooner. 
 
 The talk sustained entirely by the visitor 
 dropped into English again, and Sanderson began re- 
 citing all the latest news. The Greek's lugger had 
 been lost in the Trobriands. There was a new par- 
 son at the Port Moresby mission and then some 
 remarks on missions which it would do no good to 
 anyone to repeat. Two Australian prospectors had 
 been eaten in the Louisiades, and the natives were 
 going about wearing their jawbones slung as lockets.
 
 42 WHEN THE RED GODS CALL 
 
 The new governor was expected any time now, in 
 Port Moresby. 
 
 " He's a retired naval captain, isn't he? " I asked. 
 
 Sanderson sailed on without answering, as his way 
 was. 
 
 " Got a daughter, I believe, and he's bringing her 
 up with him the condemned idiot! They've built 
 him a decent house all right, but I shouldn't think 
 a la-di-da fine London lady would find much to her 
 taste in Port Moresby. I hear she's full of airs and 
 graces. If there's anything on earth I can't stand, 
 it's those conceited people out from ' Home/ think- 
 ing they can teach us everything." 
 
 He knew, of course, that I was English or rather, 
 Irish myself, but it did not suit him to remember 
 the fact. 
 
 " I'll see his Excellency before very long," I put 
 in, trying to keep my temper. " I want to take up a 
 few acres opposite here on the mainland it's sago 
 swamp, and will feed the boys and of course I'll 
 have to run down to port about it." 
 
 "What did that woman of yours put in the curry? 
 It's better than my boy makes it," was the guest's 
 polite reply. 
 
 His mat of gold curls was shining wonderfully 
 under the lamp, and I could think of nothing, for a 
 moment, but the delight it would be to twist one's 
 fingers into that close mop, and knock the head that 
 grew it hard on the veranda floor. But I controlled 
 myself, and replied that my wife emphasizing the
 
 WHEN THE RED GODS CALL 43 
 
 word used fresh turmerice out of the bush, I be- 
 lieved. 
 
 The meal ended soon after; there was little more 
 talk. Sanderson had grown suddenly silent, and 
 seemed to be pondering over something. We smoked 
 without talking on the veranda while Kari cleared 
 away, and I wondered if I had dreamed all the odd 
 things I had been fancying earlier in the evening, for 
 neither then nor later, when my wife was busy about 
 the living room putting up a rough cot for the visitor, 
 and hanging a new mosquito net from the rafters by 
 cords, did Sanderson take the least notice of her. 
 
 " I must be going a bit dotty," I said to myself. 
 " Most people do, in these out-of-the-way places. 
 That trip to port will do me all the good in the world ; 
 I'm glad I've planned it." 
 
 Next morning Sanderson and I were both hard at 
 work overseeing the boys as they landed my goods 
 from the schooner, and took the copra sacks down 
 the jetty to the boat. We tallied the things as they 
 came and went, and got through the job early. By 
 dinner time twelve o'clock my little tin store was 
 full, and the copra-house was empty. We went back 
 to dinner on better terms with each other. I was 
 satisfied with Sanderson's smart and accurate way 
 of doing business and overseeing boys, and he seemed 
 much more inclined to make himself civil, indeed, he 
 was apparently laying himself out to that end. 
 
 And again I wondered, as we tramped along the 
 croton walk, and through the paw-paw avenue, more
 
 44 WHEN THE RED GODS CALL 
 
 oppressively sweet than ever in the full blaze of the 
 mid-day sun had I been mad the night before ? 
 
 Sanderson left in the afternoon, he was in a hurry 
 to get to Buna Bay, he said, and the wind was nearly 
 fair. I cannot say I regretted his departure, or that 
 I felt any liking whatever for him but somehow, 
 I felt rather ashamed of myself to-day, not being sure 
 that I had behaved quite decently to my guest. I 
 saw him down to his boat, and shook his hand as he 
 got in. ... That was one of the things I re- 
 membered afterwards. 
 
 When I got back to the house, Kari was standing on 
 the veranda, watching the schooner clear through the 
 break in the reef. As the white sails swept into the 
 open sea, she turned away, and spat violently on the 
 ground. 
 
 I felt self-righteous at having got over my fit of 
 rudeness, and of course had to reprove her. She 
 was a white man's wife, I told her, and white men's 
 wives did not express dislike in such an uncivilized 
 way. 
 
 Kari made a wicked little face, and picked up her 
 fishing basket. " Plenty no good, that fellow cap'n," 
 she observed, going down on to the shore. " Q he 
 good man, all same God. I go catsing trab for tea 
 belong Q." 
 
 Then, most unaccountably, she burst into tears.
 
 CHAPTER III 
 
 / I ^HINGS were not quite the same on the island 
 after the Orokolo's call. 
 
 Of course, it was not her fault that the rainy sea- 
 son, which ought to have been over, suddenly re- 
 turned upon us with an untimely burst of fierce 
 squalls, and turned the island into a sopping sponge 
 of wet bush, for several dreary weeks. Neither had 
 the schooner's call anything to do with the trouble that 
 the boys began to give just then that was due to 
 the fact that one-half of them accused the other half 
 of practicing sorcery against them, and endeavored 
 to exorcise the unholy influence with spades and 
 clearing-knives. I stopped the mischief before it had 
 gone very far, but it worried me for the time, and 
 may have made my temper uncertain. Everyone who 
 has lived long in New Guinea knows that it has a 
 peculiar effect, and not the best, upon tempers. I do 
 not think Kari can have found me as indulgent as 
 usual, during those weeks of wet and worry. 
 
 Then Kari took ill, and I forgot everything else. 
 She was very near to dying for the best part of a 
 week and took some time to pull round. It was then 
 that I knew for the first time there had been hope of a 
 child to share our island exile a hope that was not 
 to be fulfilled. 
 
 45
 
 46 WHEN THE RED GODS CALL 
 
 It made me fonder than usual of poor little Kari, 
 and as gentle with her in her weakness as a rough 
 man could contrive to be. I brought another woman 
 in to do the work of the house, so that I could spend 
 half the day hunting over the island for dainty birds 
 and fish to tempt Kari's appetite, and the other half 
 sitting beside the great bed we had carved and car- 
 pentered together, fanning the mosquitoes away, and 
 telling stories to my wife. Hard driven for some- 
 thing to amuse her, I had tried a nursery tale one day, 
 and after that we had to go through the whole round 
 Cinderella, Jack and the Beanstalk, Red Riding 
 Hood, Puss in Boots, and as many more as I could 
 think of. Kari loved them; she would lie for hours 
 at a time listening, in the dim brown twilight of the 
 inner room, her great mop of hair making a dark 
 circle on the pillow, her little bronze hands and thin 
 arms with their clanking pearl-shell bracelets, stretched 
 outside the gay patchwork quilt. As the sun grew 
 low, the westering rays used to creep under the eaves 
 of the thatch, and slant across the bed in long spears 
 of dusty gold, then the light would fade, swiftly as 
 it fades in equatorial countries, and Kari would give 
 a little shiver, and creep nearer to me. There could 
 be no stories of giants and dragons after sundown; 
 they made my wife tremble 'with fright, eagerly 
 though she demanded them in the gay blaze of noon. 
 I must tell her then about the missionary's daughter 
 with the glass shoes, who had to be back at the mis- 
 sion house by eight, but nevertheless married the son 
 of the captain of a man-of-war or about the great
 
 WHEN THE RED GODS CALL 47 
 
 puri-puri man (sorcerer) who made himself look like 
 a Pusi, and walked about in miner's boots but the 
 story about the great black dugong that came up out 
 of the sea and married a chiefs daughter, and after- 
 wards took off his dugong hide and told her that 
 he was a man after all that she would hear when the 
 morning came, it would make her " flenty flighten " 
 now. 
 
 Nursery tales, and yarns from the Arabian Nights, 
 locally colored to make them comprehensible, passed 
 away the days of my wife's convalescence pleasantly 
 enough, and she was soon strong enough to get up 
 and go about again. Everything was as it had been 
 before, to all seeming, and yet 
 
 I found myself glad that the child had not lived, 
 and unpleasantly anxious for the future. The real- 
 ization of what this marriage meant was beginning 
 to come home, though I did not understand it at 
 the time. The thought of a little half-caste boy or 
 girl a child with woolly hair and flat nose, that 
 would nevertheless bear my own likeness worse, 
 might even look like my dear dead mother, or my 
 father was almost revolting to me. 
 
 Still, I remained fond of Kari, and she seemed 
 attached to me. She was not so bright or so merry 
 now-a-days, and she used to have inexplicable fits of 
 sulks, or bursts of crying, like the fit of tears she had 
 given way to on the day the Orokolo went. But 
 her recent illness furnished a ready excuse, and I 
 was not hard on the poor little girl, even when she 
 tried my patience a good deal. After all, a woman
 
 48 WHEN THE RED GODS CALL 
 
 is just a woman and one need not expect too 
 much. 
 
 And when Kari was quite strong again, I began to 
 get ready for my trip to Port Moresby. I was really 
 anxious to get a grant of that piece of sago country : 
 it would be invaluable to my plantation, and save 
 me no end of expense. The boys preferred a slimy 
 mess of native sago to flour or biscuit any day, and 
 I saw no reason why I should go on spending money 
 uselessly on expensive store goods, when over there 
 on the mainland there were many square miles of 
 good sago swamp, which no one needed. Of course, 
 if I wanted to avoid a raid on my island that would 
 not leave a nut on a tree, or a soul alive, I should 
 have to buy the country from the native tribes, after 
 getting the grant; but that would only mean a few 
 boxes of tobacco, and half a dozen bolts of calico, at 
 most. 
 
 Certainly, the land hunger so well known to pioneers 
 was beginning to get hold of me. 
 
 Blue and green and gold and snow, the beach and 
 the island shone in the sun like a handful of jewels, 
 the day I went away. The full splendor of the equa- 
 torial noon beat on the brown thatch of my little 
 home, turning it almost white, as I stood to wave 
 a last good-by to Kari at the bend of the pineapple 
 walk. A crowd of Mambare boys, decked out with 
 feathers and leaves, were beating loudly on their 
 iguana skin drums, as they waited for their mid- 
 day meal, in the shade of a clump of palms. Some-
 
 WHEN THE RED 'GODS CALL) 49 
 
 thing in the whole scene, perhaps, as superstitious 
 folk might say, something in myself that made me 
 " fey " that day impelled me to sing as I went down 
 between the perfumed paw-paw trees to the jetty, and 
 qf all songs, it was " The Old Kentucky Home " that 
 came to my lips. I shouted it out at the top of my 
 voice, swinging my arms as I walked 
 
 " The sun shines bright on the old Kentucky home, 
 'Tis summer, the darkies are gay, 
 The corntop's ripe, and the meadow's in the bloom, 
 And the birds make music all the day." 
 
 What was the next verse? I could not remember, 
 so I went on with the chorus, and then stopped for 
 a moment to think; it worried me that I had for- 
 gotten. I was out of the paw-paws and the crotons 
 now, and passing through a bit of ground that we 
 had not yet cleared. The reed-grass, tall and thick 
 and close on ten feet high, rose like a wall on either 
 side of the track; the heat, here in this canyon of 
 vegetation, away from the fresh breath of the sea, was 
 overpowering. I stood where I was, and took out 
 my handkerchief to mop my face, while I tried again 
 to remember the song worrying myself, as men 
 who live in lonely places do, over a trifle that was 
 scarce worth it. 
 
 Then, from some unseen retreat in the depths of the 
 reed-grass stems, came a thin, harsh voice, singing 
 
 " Dey hunt no more for de possum and de coon 
 By de meadow, de hill, an' de shore, 
 Dey sing no more by de grimmy of de moon 
 On de bent by de ole cabin door.
 
 50 WHEN THE RED GODS CALL 
 
 " De day go by like a s'adow on de heart, 
 All sorrow, where all was deright, 
 For de time has come when de darkies has to part, 
 Den, my ole Kanucka 'ome, good-night ! " 
 
 I could not say, as people do in novels, that in spite 
 of the heat the words sent a shiver through me, for 
 they didn't, but they made me feel suddenly and un- 
 accountably enraged. 
 
 " Siri ! " I yelled. I knew it must be Siri, for none 
 of the other hands had been long enough with white 
 people to pick up their songs as the Kiwai had done. 
 " Siri! Why the devil aren't you at work? " 
 
 " By-'n'-by, I eating dinner, Taubada ! " came a re- 
 proachful reply, followed by a rustling in the grass. 
 
 " Well, go and eat it, and be hanged to you! " was 
 my good-by to the faithful darky. When Siri and 
 I met next, there was five feet of solid cold coral 
 sand between us, and if he was singing songs at all, 
 it must have been Moody and Sankey hymns, in a 
 white nightshirt and a wreath of palm. (I'd seen 
 him in both, walking about the plantation, often 
 enough to be reasonably certain that he would be at 
 home in the rig-out; and as for harps, if you gave 
 Siri a Jew's harp, and plenty of leisure to lie in the 
 sun and play it, he'd ask no more of time or eter- 
 nity.) 
 
 Well, well! One may make fun, as the Irishman 
 must do, when he knows it's a choice most of the time 
 between laughing and crying. But I have often 
 wished since then, that I had said good-by more kindly 
 to my decent big black Kiwai overseer.
 
 WHEN THE RED GODS CALL 51 
 
 The lad who was to go with me was ready waiting 
 on the deck of the cutter, and nothing remained but 
 to loose the painter and hoist the sail. I looked back 
 to see if Kari had followed, but there was not a sign 
 of my little brown bird. She had been crying half the 
 night and all the morning, and had hardly been able 
 to stand when I left the house, so I scarcely ex- 
 pected to see her. Yet I'm not sure, if she had by 
 any chance come down to the jetty, that I would not 
 have picked her up and dropped her then and there 
 over the gunwale of the Bird of Paradise in spite 
 of my resolution against taking her down to Port 
 Moresby, which was not the best of places for a 
 pretty native girl, respectably married. In Clare 
 Island, the other women would take care of Kari as 
 native women of the East End do take care of " grass 
 widows," in their husbands' absence ; in port, I should 
 have had to leave her alone half the time, with brutes 
 like Sanderson always on the prowl but still 
 
 Still, something that was not reason, not fore- 
 thought, something that burrowed like a blind mole 
 in unseen depths of the mind and never faced the 
 light kept tugging at my heart as the Bird of Para- 
 dise spread her white wings and flitted out to the 
 open sea. Now that I was fairly away, I wished I 
 had taken Kari with me. 
 
 I had time to forget about presentiments and 
 fancies before I reached the end of my voyage. The 
 southeast trades had set in by this time, but they 
 knocked off for a holiday before I had got through 
 China Straits, and the rest of my voyage was a mad-
 
 52 WHEN THE RED GODS CALL 
 
 dening succession of calms and head winds, with just 
 an occasional slant from the faithless southeaster. I 
 called at Samarai for provisions, and it was well I did, 
 for the southeaster did not spring up until I was 
 nearly a month out from Clare Island, and just making 
 port. I had never known anything like it at that time 
 of year, and it worried me a bit I should have been 
 ready to start home by that time. 
 
 Still, in the out-of-the-way countries one learns 
 patience one has to and I put Clare Island out 
 of my mind for the present. Siri could be depended 
 on to keep the weeding up, and I was doing no plant- 
 ing just then. There were plenty of provisions in the 
 store, Kari was well and hearty, and I hadn't any 
 need to worry. I told myself that several times. 
 
 Sanderson was not in port after all; they said he 
 had gone down to Cooktown to have his boat new 
 coppered. I was glad, I hated the sight of him and 
 his girlish curls. Men generally do dislike the curly- 
 headed male; I don't know why. 
 
 My application, I found, could not be considered 
 until the Governor arrived, so there was another de- 
 lay. Captain Hammond might come in a day or two, 
 might not be heard of for a month there was no 
 telling. The new Government steam yacht had gone 
 down to Cairns to fetch him, but it was not known 
 whether he was yet in Sydney. 
 
 His daughter, I heard, was certainly with him, in- 
 credible though it seemed. He was a widower with 
 only that one child, and no doubt he wished to have 
 her company. It seemed a selfish thing to bring a
 
 WHEN THE RED GODS CALL 53 
 
 fashionable London girl, delicately reared, to such a 
 savage spot as British New Guinea she would al- 
 most certainly be invalided with fever, we thought, 
 and the wild surroundings of her home would terrify 
 her half out of her life. 
 
 They are beginning to study the causes of malaria 
 in these days I hear, and it is even prophesied that 
 whoever lives into the twentieth century will see that 
 scourge of the tropics fairly under control. One may; 
 believe as much or as little of that as one likes. It is 
 certain, at all events, that New Guinea of to-day is an 
 excellent place to " catch your death in," and all of 
 us the few whites of Port Moresby and the dis- 
 trict beyond were agreed that it was a scandalous 
 thing of the Governor to bring a delicate young Eng- 
 lish girl into such a country. We were also agreed, 
 however, that it was an ill wind that blew nobody 
 good and that the sight of a petticoat in Port Moresby 
 would be as refreshing as a trip to Cooktown, to us 
 half -savage, white-womanless creatures. 
 
 Indeed, we were all awaiting the Merfie England's 
 arrival with a keenness of interest surely never 
 aroused by the advent of a mere official in New Guinea 
 before. 
 
 I was putting up with Worboise, an elderly man 
 who had been into as many odd corners, and seen as 
 many strange things, as any white in New Guinea 
 and that was saying a good deal. He lived in a little 
 tin shanty down on the beach, and had a Chinese cook- 
 boy who fed us rather well. Worboise himself was 
 badly touched with the weakness of the pioneer and
 
 54 
 
 the lonely man interminable " yarning " he never 
 cared whom he talked to, or rather at; myself, the 
 nearest native, the Chinese cook-boy, it was all the 
 same when he got started on a coil of his endless 
 autobiography, he'd unwind it to the last thread or 
 perish. 
 
 I did not much mind it after supper in the evening, 
 when one was sitting on the sand outside the veranda- 
 less door, smoking trade tobacco, and watching the 
 palm-tree tops draw themselves out in Indian ink 
 against the immense scarlet sweep of the sunset. But 
 early in the morning well, no man ought to be ex- 
 pected to listen to a yarn ten fathom long about head- 
 hunting and pearl-shell thieves, before he's had his 
 breakfast. 
 
 That was why I found myself one morning at half- 
 past six, on the top of the craggy little hill that over- 
 hangs the township, looking out to sea. It was the 
 only place one could be safe from Worboise's unend- 
 ing to-be-continued-in-our-next. 
 
 I wish I could describe how the great Pacific looked 
 that day in the glassy calm of early morning, while 
 the boisterous " trades " were still asleep how far, 
 far out the shining silver swept beneath the blue, to 
 that utmost curving rim of the world where the out- 
 bound ships go down. I sat on the rocks that top 
 the hill, for an hour or more, looking across the bay, 
 and thinking " long, long thoughts." ... It 
 came to me then, somehow, that if I had a true home 
 or country in the world, it was that far sea-line 
 that and nothing else. That's the spot of earth's
 
 WHEN THE RED GODS CALL 55 
 
 surface that we vagabonds know and love best of all 
 the promised land towards which we always 
 turn. . . . 
 
 When I was a child, they used to tell me that if I 
 could only follow up the rainbow to its foot, I should 
 certainly find a crock of gold there fairy gold. 
 . . . If one of us wanderers with the salt drop 
 in the blood, and the foot that never rests till it's 
 pointed straight and stiff beneath the daisies, or the 
 black leaf-mold of the jungle, or the desert sand, 
 were to find himself some day on the very horizon 
 verge that no man ever wins to, would he meet the 
 master of us all, the Red God of roaming, face to 
 face? 
 
 Tennyson knew a little about these things I have 
 often wondered how he did know, that smooth, not 
 to say smug, singer of " May Queens " and " Walks 
 to the Mail." There must have been a corner some- 
 where in his mind that was kin to Us a very small 
 corner, O bard of the Respectable and Nice ! " The 
 Voyage " and " Ulysses " were all you could spare 
 for us, though you'd hundreds of pages for the tea- 
 party guests on the vicarage lawn, and the walks by 
 the " woid " (that sounded quite wild and uncivilized 
 to you, didn't it?) and the pearls, and the curls, and 
 the faintly-smiling Adelines. Well, as for us, 
 
 " 111 or well, or sick or sound, 
 We follow that which flies before." 
 
 because we know that,
 
 56 WHEN THE RED GODS CALL 
 
 ' All experience is an arch where through 
 Gleams the untraveled world, whose margin fades 
 For ever and for ever as we move." 
 
 And we are grateful for those few lines, since they, 
 and what goes before and after them, are to us the 
 song of life. 
 
 . . . I started out, I think, to say that by and 
 by I saw the Merrie England from the top of the 
 hill. 
 
 When I caught the tiny smear of smoke on the edge 
 of the sea, I knew that it would not be visible to 
 anyone in the township for another quarter of an 
 hour; so I sat there rather gloatingly enjoying my 
 " private view," as the little smear became a big one, 
 and a black speck showed out underneath it, and two 
 needle-points of masts, with a pin-point of funnel be- 
 tween them, became visible to my sea-trained eyes, a 
 long way off yet. At this point, they saw the vessel 
 down below, and instantly the wild yell of " Sail-O ! " 
 that always attends the incoming of a ship in an 
 oceanic colony, burst out all down the coast, spread- 
 ing along the mile-and-a-half from Port Moresby to 
 the native village a good deal quicker than a forest 
 fire. In half a minute, the village, the next village, 
 the one after that, Port Moresby itself, and the 
 isolated hills around the town (where a surprising 
 number of natives are usually wandering about un- 
 seen), were answering back yell after yell as if a 
 besieging army had suddenly overwhelmed the valley. 
 The excitement died down, as usual, in a few minutes,
 
 WHEN THE RED GODS CALL 57 
 
 and then from my eyrie on the hill, I could see the 
 whites beginning to buzz in and out of their houses 
 like ants when you poke a stick into a nest. They 
 ran out with flags, and decorated the half-dozen stores 
 and offices of the " town," they hung lengths of red 
 and white trade calico on their veranda rails, they 
 sent boys up the palms to cut big twenty-foot leaves, 
 and tie them round the doorway of the Government 
 office. Every little vessel in the bay ransacked its 
 flag locker, and made itself as gay as was possible at 
 a few minutes' notice. It was astonishing to see how 
 much was done in the three-quarters of an hour 
 that passed before the leisurely little steamer slid 
 alongside the jetty, and made fast; indeed, the little 
 town looked quite festive. 
 
 By this time, the southeaster had waked up, as if 
 roused out by the stirring " Sail-O ! " and now all the 
 palm-tree heads were tossing and streaming in the 
 strong, cool river of wind, and the wonderful pea- 
 green and peacock-blue paintings of mountains and 
 valleys and groves that had covered all the wide 
 glassy reaches of the great harbor half an hour be- 
 fore, were broken up into cheerful little dancing 
 waves. The " trade " had found out the two Union 
 Jacks on the Merrie England one on the main-mast, 
 and one at the stern and was fluttering them gayly, 
 as the ship rounded the harbor point. No mistake 
 about it, our new Governor was on board. I made 
 haste to get down now, and take my place on the 
 jetty. 
 
 The last Governor had been an amiable nobody,
 
 58 WHEN THE RED GODS CALL 
 
 scarcely strong enough for the place, and he had left 
 us unregretted. There were rumors, however, to 
 the effect that we might find our sailor Governor 
 something of a King Stork, after the King Log of 
 whom we had been relieved, and we all strained our 
 eyes eagerly towards the smart, slim white figure 
 standing on the forward deck, surrounded by a little 
 group of officials, and accompanied by yes, she 
 had come! It was a girl a young girl a girl in 
 a blue dress a girl " beautiful like an angel," as 
 the susceptible little French recruiter, Leon Cruchet, 
 declared, while the Merrie England was still so far 
 off that you could not have told whether the object of 
 his admiration was black or white. 
 
 It would be hard to say which of the two was the 
 more stared at when the gangway was up, and the 
 Government Secretary was tripping across it, a com- 
 pany smile on his face, and an address of welcome in 
 his hand, and the populace of Port Moresby, amount- 
 ing to about twenty, was making as much of a loyal 
 crowd as it could, spread out over the jetty. I think, 
 in spite of the strong interest we all felt in the plucky 
 daughter, the father received most of our attention 
 at first. Afterwards there was another story to tell! 
 
 Captain Hammond certainly looked the typical 
 naval officer all over, seeming as much in place on 
 the smart white deck of the yacht as a palm seems at 
 home on a coral beach. It was rather difficult to 
 fancy him administering a shore " command," but that 
 was not because His Excellency didn't look as if he 
 could administer anything or anybody, so far as dis-
 
 WHEN THE RED GODS CALL 59 
 
 cipline went. Rather small, very thin, very much 
 dried up with salt and sun, a face like a hatchet 
 cased in leather, a figure like a bit of watch-spring, 
 steel-rivet eyes and a granite chin this was our new 
 ruler in outward appearance. 
 
 " A hard case, Hughie," commented old Worboise, 
 who had been amazingly silent for him. 
 
 " He'll make some of the blackbirding lot sit up, I 
 dare say," I answered. " Look at the daughter, Wor- 
 boise isn't it criminal to bring a bit of china like 
 that out here?" 
 
 She was standing by her father while he read the 
 address of welcome and made a lengthy reply that 
 nobody could hear. She was rather taller than the 
 little Governor, but hardly showed it, being slight and 
 very graceful in figure. As far as we could see from 
 the jetty, she was fair-complexioned, with dark hair, 
 and (I thought) blue eyes. She held herself exceed- 
 ingly well, and her slight, well-bred hands and feet 
 were charmingly gloved and shod. Her dress was 
 full of fashionable complications, but it was all so lacy 
 and frilly and dainty, and so smartly worn (there's a 
 wonderful difference in the way women wear their 
 clothes) that she did not look or move at all awk- 
 wardly in it. Her curly fringe, and those deep blue 
 eyes of hers (I had decided now that they were un- 
 mistakably blue) were shaded by the shell-curved brim 
 of a little blue bonnet tied on with strings, and she 
 carried a parasol that looked as if it were made of 
 froth and spiders' webs. 
 
 I got nearer to the edge of the jetty, and looked at
 
 6o 
 
 her looked at her. She made me think of Christ- 
 mas annuals and colored pictures of primroses com- 
 ing out in green lanes under a soft, cool, milky sun 
 of wet streets with shop lights shining on the pave- 
 ment at four o'clock, and pretty boots, and furs, and 
 rosy faces beaten with the wind flashing by out of 
 the shadows of lilac smelling fresh in the rain on 
 heavenly spring mornings, of rose-shaded lamps 
 shining on crystal and silver, and the even, pleasant 
 murmur of the talk of well-bred people about a civ- 
 ilized dinner-table of many things that were no 
 longer in my life, and never would be again, since I 
 had paid them all away . . . 
 For what? 
 
 They were coming ashore now, and I drew back 
 I, the rough, uncivilized planter and trader, who lived 
 in a hut, and was married to a black wife, must not 
 press too closely upon the path of His Excellency's 
 daughter ... a white lady, delicate and dainty 
 as one of the pale sweet flowers of her own far North. 
 No tropical hibiscus or flame-flower this, but a snow- 
 drop, a spring anemone. . . . How white she 
 was! Her neck, under the low ruffle of snowy lace 
 that she wore, was just the color of the lace itself ; her 
 ear, half hidden in the mass of curls that all girls wear 
 in these days, was like a little pearly shell just off the 
 reef. And the curls well, the probability that she 
 had put them up in paper at night made them all the 
 more admirable to us, who had seen nothing but friz- 
 zled wool for so long.
 
 WHEN THE RED GODS CALL 61 
 
 She followed her father closely through the little 
 group of residents and the crowd of natives behind 
 turning her small, well-dressed head to right and left, 
 and smiling in acknowledgment of the thin but hearty 
 cheer that greeted the party. She did not look a day 
 over nineteen, but she was as perfectly self-possessed 
 as any dowager of fifty. No bread-and-butter miss 
 from the country was this ; a London belle, finished in 
 the ways of the world, and used to admiration as to 
 daily bread, was our Governor's daughter, or I was 
 much mistaken. And yet, how unspoiled and sweet ! 
 
 The foolish, monstrous draperies that she carried so 
 gracefully, rustled past me, leaving behind the very 
 faintest suggestion of perfume as if a fresh hill- 
 wind had somewhere blown over a bank of wild white 
 roses, and carried away a memory of the delicate 
 scent in its heart. Then the reek of cocoanut oil from 
 the native crowd rose up and blotted it out. 
 
 She was gone. 
 
 The crowd scattered as quickly as it had collected. 
 The pier grew empty; the steamer backed away to 
 her moorings in mid-harbor. I was left standing by 
 myself in the sun and the tearing, homeless wind that 
 beat in from the empty sea. " By myself " yes 
 the cocoanut oil-smelling crowd was not yet all gone; 
 black woolly heads and brown limbs moved close be- 
 side me. But all the same, the white man was 
 alone.
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 
 TT was nearly another fortnight before I got away. 
 * On the day I sailed out of Port Moresby harbor, 
 I had been nine weeks absent from Clare Island. 
 
 The grant of land had been made, I had had a brief 
 interview with the new Governor, and had been more 
 than confirmed in my first opinion of him in the 
 end. At first, I must confess I thought him some- 
 thing very near a fool. I am not fond of talkative 
 men, and Captain Hammond (who received me in his 
 Port Moresby office) overwhelmed me with a perfect 
 deluge of what I rudely classified as cackle, about 
 anything and nothing, while he searched through the 
 papers on his shelves to find my letters of applica- 
 tion. The weather, the temperature, the wind-shield 
 screen at the back of the office, the distance from the 
 village to the town, the speed of the Merrie England, 
 the thefts of eggs from the Government henhouse 
 by snakes and iguanas, all contributed to the stream of 
 chatter, which issued forth as thickly encumbered with 
 capital " I's "' as a babbling river with stones. I 
 threw in, an answer or a remark here and there care- 
 lessly, though not without the respect due to His Ex- 
 cellency's position. He was just a tiresome official 
 bore, I thought, and in all probability no more of an 
 acquisition to the country than those who had gone 
 before him. 
 
 62
 
 WHEN THE RED GODS CALL 63 
 
 In the midst of these reflections, being quite wearied 
 with His Excellency's cackle about the eggs and the 
 fowls and the depredations of the carpet-snakes 
 for which he seemed to think his Port Moresby offi- 
 cials in some mysterious way responsible I looked 
 up from the watch-chain I was carelessly fingering, 
 and met the Governor's eyes. 
 
 I never thought him a fool again. 
 
 Whatever emotions a fool may excite, fear is not 
 one of them, and there was that in those eyes of 
 flinty gray, that made me understand why Captain 
 Hammond's ship Had formerly been known as the 
 smartest man-of-war on the Australian station. 
 
 I realized, too, that during the somewhat lengthy 
 interview, while I thought I had been listening to a 
 poor and shallow mind revealing itself, that very mind, 
 behind the cloak of a windy wordiness, had been 
 watching me reveal myself with the freedom and 
 carelessness of one who feels himself practically 
 alone. . . 
 
 What was the verdict? I had not the faintest idea, 
 any more than I had an idea why I was so passion- 
 ately anxious, all of a sudden, for this man's good 
 opinion. But that it had been passed, I knew; and 
 that nothing would alter it in a hundred years, I 
 guessed. 
 
 It seemed that I was at all events approved enough 
 to be trusted with the piece of land I had applied for. 
 The grant was made still in a flood of cackle 
 the papers handed over, and I found myself outside 
 the office, feeling pleased, bewildered, and, somehow
 
 64 WHEN THE RED GODS CALL 
 
 or other, at the bottom of all, a little cold at heart. 
 Something had disappointed me, but for the life of 
 me, I could not tell what. 
 
 It was late in the afternoon, and the sun was set- 
 ting, which is to say that the whole western sky and 
 sea resembled, more than anything else, the explosion 
 of some colossal volcano, and the outpoured floods of 
 flame and lava at its feet. The man who can describe 
 a New Guinea sunset of the southeast season has 
 yet to be born. Opposite the amazing splendors of 
 the west, a livid yellow-green light flooded the grassy 
 valley that lay in the lap of the hills, bringing out in 
 wonderful clearness every detail of track and swamp 
 and tree, though all were at least a mile distant. And 
 through the yellow glow, as I stood on the veranda 
 of the Governor's office, I could see very far away, a 
 dark figure flying swiftly towards the sunset. It was 
 the Governor's daughter, out for her evening ride. I 
 had not seen her since she landed. ... It was a 
 stormy sunset, I had known there would be rain; the 
 skies wept heavily as I and the Bird of Paradise put 
 out to sea. 
 
 There should have been only head-winds at that 
 time of year, but New Guinea is too near the equator 
 for its seasons to be absolutely reliable, and we had 
 actually a fair wind the greater part of the way. 
 Eastward and southeastward down the coast we ran 
 that wonderful coast which is, to my mind, un- 
 equaled for sheer beauty by any other in the world. 
 Sometimes we kept far out at sea, to avoid the dan-
 
 WHEN THE RED GODS CALL 65 
 
 gerous reefs of the shallow waters, and then we could 
 see, in the early morning hours, before the mists had 
 gathered, how the green foot-hills of the shore-line 
 sprang back, wave on wave, to the immense blue ram- 
 parts of the high main range. There, as I and per- 
 haps two other white men knew, you could climb and 
 climb thirteen thousand feet, up to where the forget- 
 me-nots and wild strawberries grow as they do in Eng- 
 land, and the mountain rivers run all fringed with 
 ice. Far back, these ranges were painted with the 
 most wonderful hues of Prussian blue and purple, 
 fading on the summits to a pure speedwell shade that 
 seemed more than half transparent. And everywhere, 
 near and far, rounding the limbs of the giant peaks 
 of the Owen Stanley Range, curtaining the mountain 
 precipices that overhung the still blue bays, flowing in 
 and out of the deep dark valleys, and checkering all 
 the country with vivid, velvety lights and shades, 
 spread the unconquered "bush" the mantle of 
 primeval forest under which New Guinea hides her 
 secrets. 
 
 I never experienced such a wind as we had, before 
 or since; just as much as the cutter could safely 
 stand, yet never too much, it carried us as steadily 
 as an auxiliary engine down the Kapa-Kapa coast, 
 past Cloudy Bay and Orangerie Bay, past Fife Bay 
 and round South Cape, and into Samarai, not fair 
 all the way, of course, but fair enough to keep us 
 steadily going. And when we were through China 
 and East Cape Straits, and heading back northwest- 
 ward up the coast, the southeaster that should have
 
 66 WHEN THE RED GODS CALL 
 
 been blowing all the time took on duty again, and 
 swept us finely through the D'Entrecasteaux. We 
 ran past Normanby, gunwale under, all afternoon, 
 with the water jabbering along the keel, and the sails 
 humming above our heads. Four thousand feet the 
 big island towered above us, laced with ribbons of 
 white waterfall all down its mighty flanks ; the cocoa- 
 palms stood thick as rushes on its white coral shores, 
 and bent like rushes to the steady streaming of the 
 gale. Good Enough, a fairy castle of hyacinth blues 
 and ivories, nine thousand feet high, swung away to 
 our starboard side, miles and miles distant, as we 
 headed in for the northern mainland, towards Cape 
 Endiadere. And still the wind kept up, and the sun 
 shone all day, and the shouting seas raced behind us, 
 flinging fire-spangled spume and snow. It was a 
 breathless voyage, with little sleep or rest for either 
 the boy or myself, every stitch of canvas set day and 
 night, the cutter lying over all the time so that one 
 could not get footing on her deck, the log heaved 
 every hour or so to see how the knots were piling up 
 . . . a killing trip, yet what sailor could have 
 resisted taking full advantage of such splendid 
 luck? 
 
 We made Clare Island early one forenoon, the wind 
 beginning to drop a little, and the sky growing brassy 
 with heat. I remember I was glad to see the long low 
 streak of blue creeping up out of the sea again, and I 
 swung my arms about (the boy being at the tiller) 
 and sang " White Wings " for my own welcome 
 home. I haven't the heart to write down the words
 
 WHEN THE RED GODS CALL 67 
 
 of the song; I have wished ever since I could forget 
 them. 
 
 The cutter ran slowly up to the land, the wind fall- 
 ing more and more as we came in. We were under 
 the lee of the island now, and every moment I ex- 
 pected to hear the cry of " Sail-O ! " starting out of 
 the bush. The plantation hands never missed signal- 
 ing the approach of a boat, and Kari was seldom many 
 seconds behind them. 
 
 But Clare Island, as we ran up to the jetty, and 
 lowered the sails, was silent as the grave. 
 
 There was no one on the shore. Two melancholy, 
 mop-headed pandanus trees, drooping gloomily on 
 their long wooden stilts, were the only objects that 
 broke the bare expanse of sand. The coral-rock jetty 
 stood up stark and unoccupied in the smiting glare of 
 the mid-day sun. The bolt of uncleared bush behind 
 was black and still as some primeval forest of the 
 unknown mainland ranges. 
 
 I got out of the boat and stood on the blazing jetty. 
 It seemed to beat up in waves beneath my feet. I 
 told Garia I was feeling ill, and sat down on a stone. 
 
 " Masser, what for no one he come? " asked Garia. 
 
 I jumped up to my feet, and answered ; but it wasn't 
 Garia I spoke to, and I should not care to write down 
 what I said. I think I was mad for the moment, be- 
 cause then I don't know how the truth hit me, 
 and hit me hard. I knew. 
 
 When I began to run down the bush track, Garia 
 did not follow. He squatted down on the shore be- 
 yond the jetty, and began to cry. I believe the poor
 
 68 WHEN THE RED GODS CALL 
 
 ignorant savage had read my mind like a book 
 and what he read had terrified his childish soul. I 
 heard his voice as I ran down the track, between the 
 reed-grass walls " Masser, no more, no more ! " 
 
 In the pigeon English of Papua, " no more " means 
 simply " stop," but I had forgotten that, and the cry 
 followed me like the voice of some creature of ill 
 omen, prophesying disaster. 
 
 I broke from the forest like a hunted brute, and 
 headed for the paw-paw walk. There, in full speed, 
 running as I had never run in my life, I suddenly 
 stopped short so short that I had to catch at the 
 nearest thing to keep myself from falling. 
 
 It was a black and broken paw-paw stem. 
 
 There was no paw-paw walk; only a double row of 
 burned stumps. There were no young cocoanuts ; the 
 ground was covered with charred leaf -ribs and ashy 
 boles, where they had been. The site of the house 
 marked simply by a black oblong, blurred with half- 
 consumed palm-leaves. 
 
 The next thing that I can remember is the look of a 
 pair of miserable filthy hands mine scraping 
 among the ashes of the house for something, anything 
 that was not destroyed, while somebody whose name 
 was Hugh Lynch kept saying to himself over and over 
 again " God, God, God ! " Hugh didn't believe in 
 God very much, which made it strange that he should 
 say this thing. 
 
 There were bits of broken china in the rubbish 
 and stumps of what had been furniture and a 
 string of green beads. I picked that up and put it in
 
 WHEN THE RED GODS CALL 69 
 
 my pocket. I knew it well. It had caught the rays 
 of the rising sun from the pillow next to mine, many 
 and many a morning, before . . . 
 
 O God, before what? 
 
 There are some thoughts that stab you worse than 
 any pain of the body. I have stood Red Indian tor- 
 tures, in the South American days, without opening 
 my lips. But that string of shining beads, and what I 
 found under another heap of rubbish a briar-root 
 pipe with silver bands on it; none of mine smashed 
 my self -restraint like glass, and I cried out with rage 
 and pain. He had done this! He had only waited 
 till the gossip of Samarai assured him I was safely 
 away at the other end of the country, to sneak up here 
 into my land, my home, that I had made out of noth- 
 ing, and destroy it to burn my little nest, and carry 
 away the sweet brown bird that had sung in it . . . 
 to take my wife. . . 
 
 Kari was gone carried away by the brute whose 
 face I had loathed from the moment I first saw it. 
 She would never again run to meet me in the evening, 
 down the paw-paw walk we had planted together. I 
 should never hear her high sweet little voice calling 
 out, " Me here ! " from the living-room or the veranda, 
 when I came home at noon. . . . Home ! I had 
 no home now. I had no plantation. I had no future. 
 Was it a man or a devil who had .acted thus to a 
 harmless fellow who wished no human creature ill ? 
 
 . . . I think if I had not found someone or 
 something to vent my feelings on at that moment, I 
 should have gone mad. As it was . . .
 
 70 WHEN THE RED GODS CALL 
 
 I threw the pipe on a coral bowlder, and lifted up 
 another the twin in size and weight of the great 
 stone that was lying on the skeleton of the snake I had 
 killed, months before. I beat the great lump of coral 
 down on the pipe, and smashed it to powder, and 
 kicked the powder to all the winds of the trades. 
 And in the midst of this crazy work, my eye caught a 
 movement in the bush. 
 
 I had not time to wonder, until now, where all the 
 boys were. But the shaking of the trees, and the 
 glimpse of a black head, evidently in full flight, turned 
 my mind from the ruins of the cottage, as a mad dog 
 is turned from his prey by the sight of another vic- 
 tim. I burst into the fire-blackened forest it was 
 burned only at the outer edge and in a moment had 
 Boromai, one of my head boys, struggling and shriek- 
 ing in my hands. It took many minutes to quiet him 
 I think, perhaps, because I could not command 
 myself enough to stop shaking him, while I told him 
 to hold his tongue. At last, maddened by his cease- 
 less cries, I pulled out my 45 Colt, and held it to his 
 head. 
 
 " Stop, and tell me everything, or I'll shoot you as 
 dead as cannibal meat ! " I said. 
 
 Boromai turned gray, and held his peace. I let him 
 go then, and set him up against a tree he seemed 
 unable to stand and, still holding the pistol, ordered 
 him to speak. He shut his eyes tight, and sniveling 
 the while, rattled out a brief story in his own tongue. 
 Brief and bald though it was, I knew it to be true. 
 I had handled natives long enough to judge when they
 
 WHEN THE RED GODS CALL 71 
 
 were lying, and when, by some unusual chance, they 
 were not. Patently, Boromai had been frightened 
 into truth. 
 
 This was what he said. 
 
 The Hanuabada girl belonging to Taubada (the 
 Chief) had cried when he went away, but in a day or 
 two she began borrowing new grass skirts from the 
 other women, and painting her face continually, and 
 looking out from the jetty every hour. And the talk 
 of the plantation was that she expected Master to 
 turn and come back. Some days, and some days, and 
 some days, passed, and Master did not come back, but 
 the Hanuabada girl still made herself fine as if for 
 a yam dance, and looked very often out to sea. And 
 some days and some days and some days passed. And 
 the " sikoona " that belonged to the white man with 
 the head like a lokohu (red bird of Paradise) came 
 to the island. And the white man went to the house. 
 The Hanuabada girl cried when she saw him, being a 
 woman, and therefore foolish, but some days and 
 some days passed, and the plantation boys saw them 
 walking all the time about the shore together, and at 
 evening they laughed and sang, and drank the wisiki 
 from the stone jar, in the house, and so it was for days 
 and days and days more. And Siri, who knew the 
 white men's ways, and Siri's wife Bogi, went to the 
 Hanuabada girl when the white man had gone to 
 swim, and said to her that she did wickedly, and that 
 Lineti would kill her, and the white man with the 
 head of a lokohu, and Siri, and Bogi, and all the plan- 
 tation boys, when he came back, and Siri and Bogi
 
 72 WHEN THE RED GODS CALL 
 
 said that they did not want to be killed. But the 
 Hanuabada girl had gone mad with pride and the fool- 
 ishness that is in women, and said that her white man 
 would kill Lineti, and she would watch them fight, and 
 at the end when Lineti was killed, she would dance the 
 dance of the women who meet the warriors coming 
 home, and they would put Lineti's skull on the ridge- 
 pole of the house. And Siri and Bogi cried, because 
 they saw that the white man had made puri-puri 
 (sorcery) and given the Hanuabada girl over to devils. 
 Then there were days and days and days, until it was 
 a moon, and the white man said that Lineti would 
 come back quickly. So Kari and the white man put 
 all the small things of the house into the big " si- 
 koona," and the " sikoona " boat was waiting at the 
 place of the stones, but Kari would drink more wisiki 
 before she went to the boat, and the white man drank 
 too. And they came out from the house, standing up 
 and running and falling down, and the white man was 
 laughing like the crow that eats flesh, and Kari 
 screamed after the same way as the cockatoos. And 
 they both had fire in their hands. There had been 
 no rain since Master went away, nor for a month be- 
 fore, and the plantation was dry as the sand when it 
 is noon. The Hanuabada girl and the white man, 
 screaming and laughing, went to the young cocoanuts 
 with fire in their hands, and the men were all afraid, 
 and ran away, only Siri came and cried out, and took 
 the fire, and fought with them. He, Boromai, had 
 run up one of the palms, the big old palms, and could 
 not get away like the other boys, and he saw how the
 
 WHEN THE RED GODS CALL 73 
 
 white man hit Siri with a knife in the breast, and Siri 
 lay down, and the blood came out, and the Hanuabada 
 girl, when she saw the blood, laughed a great deal 
 more, and began to dance the women's dance, but the 
 wisiki had made her feet foolish, and she fell. Then 
 the white man took her up and carried her to the boat, 
 and the " sikoona " went away, and he, Boromai, was 
 very near being burned to death, for the flames spread 
 everywhere, and he could not get down from his tree 
 till all the fire was finished, and the house and the lit- 
 tle cocoanuts burned up. And because he knew the 
 pigs would come out of the bush by and by, he had 
 taken Siri down to the shore, and covered him up 
 with sand. All that night the men and their wives 
 had cried, and cried, and cried, and cried, and the next 
 day while Boromai was sleeping, they had got up 
 early, early, and taken the canoes away to Cape En- 
 diadere, and those that could not get in had lain down 
 on the beach and screamed, because they knew that 
 Lineti would kill them all when he came back. All 
 over the island they were hiding, and there was very 
 bad fear on them. 
 
 " He tell true, Taubada," said the voice of Garia 
 close beside us. " I been look along bush, I see flenty 
 boy, he stop lie down. Taubada," scanning my face 
 with savage keenness, " I think more better you telling 
 Boromai you no kill all that boy, by-an'-by he come 
 out." 
 
 Garia had read my mind clearly enough. I might 
 have knocked about the boys in my first access of 
 rage (killing was, of course, far outside my thoughts)
 
 74 WHEN THE RED GODS CALL 
 
 if they had appeared at once. I was quieting down 
 now, and beginning to think. There seemed a pros- 
 pect of action ahead, somewhere and down that 
 meager channel the confined and chafing waters of my 
 mind rushed, as a river rushes when the lock-gate is 
 lifted. 
 
 " You can go and tell the boys to come out ! " I said 
 to Boromai, in his own tongue. " Say that I will 
 take them all to Cape Endiadere in the cutter to-mor- 
 row. Tell them the plantation is finished." 
 
 No second bidding was needed; the boys, swelling 
 with importance, ran to collect their comrades, and I 
 remained on the beach. The sun beat mercilessly 
 down from the brassy sky; the hot wind, roaming 
 about the lonely shore, cried in the dry pandanus 
 trees. And as I waited there, again and again, with 
 the tyrannous insistence of a chance phrase seizing on 
 an overstrained mind, did Garia's cry on the jetty echo 
 in my ears " Taubada, no more, no more ! "
 
 CHAPTER V 
 
 x I V EN days afterwards, close on to sundown, I 
 * steered the Bird of Paradise into Rossel La- 
 goon. 
 
 Rossel Island is the last, loneliest outlier of the New 
 Guinea continent the very end of the scattered 
 string of islands and islets, far removed from one an- 
 other, that depends from the long " tail " of Papua 
 in a southeasterly direction. No ships call there, no 
 white men with the rarest of exceptions come and 
 go. Its very shores are scarcely charted out; its 
 swampy, mountainous, densely forested interior, only 
 a few shipwrecked sailors have ever seen; and they, 
 for the best of reasons, have never come back to tell 
 what they saw. 
 
 Much as I had traveled about the coasts of Papua, 
 my business or pleasure had never taken me so far out 
 as Rossel, and I had some little difficulty in making 
 my way there, among the innumerable uncharted 
 reefs and atolls, and the treacherous currents of the 
 Louisiades, the Bonvouloirs, the Ralicks, and the Cal- 
 vados Chain. Garia, who was a Motuan from the 
 Central Division of the mainland, could not help me at 
 all, and I found myself constrained, half way through 
 the four hundred mile run from Cape Endiadere, to 
 put in at the island of Nivani, where they were talking 
 
 75
 
 76 WHEN THE RED GODS CALL 
 
 about making a Government station, and ask a few 
 questions about the course. 
 
 It did not strike me at the time that I was acting 
 rather foolishly that the errand on which the Bird 
 of Paradise was flying southward, was scarcely one 
 that demanded advertisement. Governor Hammond, 
 I afterwards heard, was already beginning to set his 
 mark on British New Guinea, which had, up to this, 
 been notorious as the most utterly lawless colony in 
 the Empire; but of any changes that had taken, or 
 were taking place at the executive end of the country 
 I knew nothing, and in the state of mind which pos- 
 sessed me then, should probably have cared less if I 
 had known. 
 
 So, as I have said, I ran into Nivani, found a brand- 
 new magistrate making arrangements for a Govern- 
 ment copra plantation, and putting up a tin-roofed 
 bungalow asked him if he knew the shortest and 
 best course to Rossel Island, got an answer, shouted 
 out to me from the beach, as I sat in my dingy for 
 I did not land and sailed away again through 
 Horaki Raki and Wuri-Wuri passages, southeastward 
 for Rossel Island. I knew whom I should find there, 
 as well as if Sanderson had left me a memoradum of 
 his plans. Rossel was one of the islands to which he 
 traded now and then, bartering tobacco and toma-' 
 hawks, for red shell had a certain value in New 
 Guinea; and I knew that the limited intelligence of 
 the brute would carry him just far enough in the path 
 of diplomacy to make him select the most out-of-the- 
 way place he knew anything about without enabling
 
 WHEN THE RED GODS CALL 77 
 
 him to see that that was exactly what any other person 
 would expect him to do. If I had been dealing with 
 a man of superior intellect, I would have looked for 
 him somewhere near Port Moresby or Samarai, know- 
 ing he would argue to himself that the out-of-the-way 
 corners would be the very first to be searched. But 
 since it was Sanderson, a creature to my mind not 
 much higher than the brutes with whom I had to do, I 
 steered for Rossel as straight as I could go ... 
 and I was right. 
 
 We came under the lee of the island just after the 
 sun had set, while the brief equatorial twilight was 
 still lingering in the sky. There is something wicked 
 about a New Guinea sunset; many old traders and 
 shell-hunters will know what I mean, although it is 
 almost impossible to describe it. The lurid purples 
 and bloody reds of the western sky the monstrous 
 piling of cloud on cloud, fantastic with wild simu- 
 lacra of routed and flying armies, of dragons and 
 krakens and bat-winged nightmare beasts, such as only 
 the trade-wind's giant hands can sculpture the 
 heavy stillness that so often falls on land and sea with 
 the death of the sun, like the silence of a darkening 
 room where one lies foully slain all make the even- 
 ing hour of this strange country as unlike as possible 
 to the " holy eventide " that most of us remember well 
 too well in the far-off northern lands, where 
 May swells sweet in the twilight, and church-bells ring 
 as the evening star shines out, and " peace comes down 
 with nightfall."
 
 78 WHEN THE RED GODS CALL 
 
 Do those who live in the placid countries in the 
 lands where all things always are the same realize 
 much of their own law-abiding nature is made for 
 them by the surroundings of their lives? Do they 
 know how every evil passion of humanity flourishes 
 in these wild countries? How the fierce climate adds 
 its fierceness to jealousy and rage, how the violence 
 and cruelty of the savages among whom one lives, and 
 the small account set on human life by men who are 
 forced in their own persons to disregard danger of 
 any kind, envelop one's mind like a poisonous miasma, 
 stifling and even destroying the white man's hard-won 
 heritage of pity? 
 
 I am not desirous of making excuses for myself. 
 What I have done, I am being punished for, and the 
 punishment is no doubt deserved ; but as for repentance 
 or excuse, I will have none of either. 
 
 Still ... I have sometimes wondered whether 
 I could have felt as calmly confident of my own pur- 
 pose, as deadly certain that I should carry it out, in 
 any other surroundings. 
 
 There is death in the very air of Rossel Island. 
 There is death, violent and cruel death, in every word 
 of its history. It is not a generation since the people 
 of the island captured, imprisoned on a barren rock, 
 and by slow degrees killed and devoured, a shipload of 
 three hundred Chinese coolies, wrecked on their way 
 to Australia. Murder is the profession of every Ros- 
 sel Islander, torture his amusement. A man-hunt is 
 so dear a delight to him that he will let the destined 
 victim of the cooking-pots know his fate days before-
 
 WHEN THE RED GODS CALL 79 
 
 hand, in order to enjoy the pleasure of raising a hue- 
 and-cry, and hunting the wretch from dawn to dusk, 
 before the smothering-gang closes round to choke his 
 life out with their practiced hands. Civilization, ex- 
 cept in the form of a venturesome trader or two, has 
 never come near this inferno of the islands, and it is 
 safe to predict that when the opening up of the main- 
 land comes as come it certainly will Rossel 
 Island will be the last place to feel the change. 
 
 And the island looks what it is. 
 
 We came slowly up into the great semi-circular bay, 
 shut in by sinister black hills, just as the sun had gone. 
 The after-glow still lingered; there was light enough 
 an evil, copper-green glare, like the reflection from 
 some witch's cauldron to see the stark outlines of 
 the hills, standing shoulder to shoulder in an amphi- 
 theater some three thousand feet high, about the death- 
 still, dark green waters of the bay. The dense forest 
 that covered the hills hung on them like a black cloak, 
 down to the very lip of the sea; there was not so much 
 as a yard of open sand where a man might find foot- 
 hold. If there were eyes behind that curtain, watch- 
 ing us as we came in, there was nothing to tell of them. 
 Only the white cockatoos, ghostly in the green twi- 
 light, flitted their lost spirits up and down the face 
 of the dark cliffs, tearing the silence with their home- 
 less wails. 
 
 ' Taubada, no good this place," said Garia fear- 
 fully, as the anchor of the boat plunged down. 
 " Plenty devil he stop. I too much fright." 
 
 "Which are you most afraid of the devil or
 
 80 WHEN THE RED GODS CALL 
 
 me ? " I asked, sitting down on the cabin skylight to 
 fill my pipe. I have set out to tell the truth in this 
 story, and I am consequently obliged to say that I felt 
 perfectly cool and perfectly satisfied with myself, and 
 as sure of what I was going to do as I was sure of fin- 
 ishing my smoke. 
 
 Garia looked at me before answering. I remember 
 very well how his china-like, brown-and-white eyes 
 shone out of his almost invisible face in the dusk 
 oddly strained they looked, and all the pupil showed. 
 
 " More fright along you," he answered ; his teeth 
 seemed to be chattering. 
 
 " Then you'd better hold your tongue," I said, smok- 
 ing, and Garia held it. 
 
 So much so, that when a streak of something crim- 
 son came floating past the cutter, on the outward run 
 of the tide, my Papuan reached at it and held it up to 
 me, without a single word. It was a native waist- 
 cloth of red trade calico brand-new. 
 
 Then I knew that I was right, and that Sanderson 
 was here. 
 
 With the first glimmer of daylight, I started about 
 getting the cutter under way. I calculated that the Oro- 
 kolo had probably made the land at about the same 
 point as I had, but that her master had run westward 
 down the coast before the " trades," looking for some 
 more secluded harbor. It could not be a difficult mat- 
 ter to find the schooner, wherever she might be 
 the island was not anywhere twenty miles in length. 
 
 So, after a hurried breakfast, I got the Bird of
 
 WHEN THE RED GODS CALL 81 
 
 Paradise going before a strong squally wind, and 
 sailed out of the bay at a ten-knot gait. If the place 
 had looked evil the night before, it looked deadly to- 
 day. The tree-hung cliffs and hills were all blackish 
 green, like moss on a wet stone; dark mangrove beds 
 ran out here and there into the water from the foot of 
 the mountain wall, the open lanes among their snaky, 
 slimy roots gleaming un wholesomely under the fitful 
 light of the day. And it rained how it rained ! 
 The roar of the cataract that fell on the deck of the 
 cutter hour after hour, as if Niagara had broken loose 
 in the sky, almost drowned my voice when I shouted to 
 Garia; the land was constantly blotted out by flying 
 processions of gigantic mist-wreaths, rearing their 
 spectral-hooded heads high above the hills and sweep- 
 ing their shroud-like robes over miles of angry sea. 
 Dark water, dark shore, and baffling, streaming mists 
 wild gusts of wind and rain, and the cutter lying 
 over on her gunwale, with a runnel of foam flying aft 
 along the deck so passed the day. It was well on 
 in the afternoon, and the rain was coming down more 
 violently than ever though one would scarcely have 
 thought that possible when Garia leapt to his feet 
 with a yell that pierced through all the trampling of 
 the rain, and roaring of the wind in sheets and sails. 
 " Taubada ! Taubada ! Orokola he stop ! " 
 I had been busy putting about, and had not seen 
 what the Papuan's quick eyes noticed so soon as it 
 came in sight round the projecting point we were at- 
 tempting to weather. . . . We had caught the 
 schooner !
 
 82 WHEN THE RED GODS CALL 
 
 There she lay in the shelter of a narrow islet, safe 
 from every wind that blew, and moored to the cliff 
 itself. Her dingy trailed at her stern empty. Her 
 sails were neatly stowed; there was no smoke from 
 the galley fire; there were no figures stirring on the 
 deck. 
 
 " Taubada, I think all that people he been clear out," 
 observed Garia anxiously. 
 
 How much the man knew or guessed of my inten- 
 tion in following up Sanderson and the schooner, I 
 have never troubled to think. It struck me once or 
 twice just then, for example that he was not alto- 
 gether ignorant. But I had other things to think 
 about. 
 
 " I dare say," was my answer. " Down sail ! " 
 
 We anchored the cutter under the lee of the land, 
 some distance from the schooner, and got out the 
 dingy. The wind had gone down since we ran into 
 shelter ; the bay was empty and still, and there was not 
 a sound to be heard, but the grinding of our rowlocks, 
 and the far-away, faint trickling of some unseen 
 waterfall. 
 
 " Bolted," I said to myself, without any special con- 
 cern. I knew it could make no difference in the 
 end. 
 
 We went on board the schooner, and found her ab- 
 solutely deserted, not even a native left in charge. 
 There were signs of recent life on the shore ashes 
 of a fire which had been built up inside a stone hearth, 
 white-man fashion ; a pile of empty meat tins, a mouth-
 
 WHEN THE RED GODS CALL 83 
 
 organ, a broken whisky-bottle. I went over and ex- 
 amined the ashes. They were cold, even underneath 
 the stones. 
 
 " Taubada," said Garia, his brown body trembling 
 as he spoke, with mingled excitement, cold and fear. 
 " I think boy belong Rossel Island, he see cutter come 
 las' night, he run flenty, flenty fast, tell Sanasoni, boy 
 belong Sikoona, girl belong Taubada. I think all that 
 people be fright, he run long bush." 
 
 " Yes, that's about the size of it, Garia," I said. 
 " Go back to the cutter and get me a lantern, the bag 
 of trade in my cabin, and something to eat." 
 
 Loaded up with these things, and armed with a re- 
 volver and a sailor's knife, in case of trouble with the 
 natives, I landed on the rocks at the water's edge 
 for here again there was no beach and set off along 
 the narrow scratch of track that I could see leading 
 away into the forest above. I was quite clear as to 
 my plans, and not in the least excited. Garia, curi- 
 ously enough, was so strangely uplifted by something 
 or other one can never get at the depths of a na- 
 tive's mind, and I for one don't ,think it worth trying 
 that he sang wildly and fiercely all the way out to 
 the cutter again, even stopping now and then to wave 
 the paddles round his head, and let out a terrifying 
 yell. I thought I recognized that last expansion of 
 feeling; it was known among the mountain tribes as 
 the death-cry. Its history is too long to write down, 
 and in any case it is the reverse of pretty. 
 
 It was curious how that cry followed me; I could
 
 84 WHEN THE RED GODS CALL 
 
 hear it for quite a long time after I had left the sea 
 behind, and began climbing up through the soaking, 
 soppy forest. 
 
 I looked for, and found, tracks in the pasty 
 mud of the path prints of native feet everywhere, 
 and plain among them one track that was not native 
 the print of a white man's foot, bare. 
 
 That was like Sanderson to take off his boots in 
 order to lose his tracks among those of the natives, and 
 forget that a foot that has gone shod leaves a print 
 a child could scarcely mistake. I had no difficulty in 
 picking out and following his track for a mile or more. 
 Then I lost it; the path turned into a river bed, after 
 the manner of native roads in New Guinea, and thence- 
 forward became one with the stream. 
 
 I stopped to look round. It was growing dusk here 
 in the heart of the forest, though outside the rainy 
 light still lingered. Drip, drip, went the wet from the 
 trees on the spongy soil; a green and red parrot 
 screamed spitefully at me, and dived in among the 
 boughs. The air was full of the smell of rotting 
 leaves and soaking earth. It looked like an excellent 
 place to die and be buried in, this dark island; one 
 could hardly imagine that anyone, even the aboriginals, 
 enjoyed living in it. 
 
 Still, there must be natives, and there must be a vil- 
 lage, somewhere near this track. The next thing was 
 to find them. 
 
 I did find them. After a little trying about, I saw 
 a clearing ahead, and in another minute was standing 
 in the open square of a small village, very neatly built
 
 WHEN THE RED GODS CALU 85 
 
 of stick and thatch, all the houses set up on high sup- 
 ports, with attractive little porch-verandas about the 
 doors. 
 
 I looked about curiously; I knew nothing of these 
 people except by hearsay, and certainly had not been 
 prepared for anything so well built as these houses. 
 There were carvings lying about the doors, and elab- 
 orately ornamented bags, and a good many red and 
 yellow flowers were to be seen in the village square, 
 evidently planted there. A cat, fat and sleek, and ap- 
 parently well treated, ran into the bush as I approached. 
 It seemed hard to believe that this place could be the 
 home of the desperate cannibals and man-hunters I had 
 heard of. There was no one to be seen, but I knew 
 very well the inhabitants were probably hiding within 
 a few yards of me in the bush, looking at me from 
 their unseen retreat, and wondering whether it were 
 worth while to strangle and eat me or no. 
 
 I sat down on the veranda of the biggest house, and 
 waited the return of the men with what patience I 
 could. I knew very well that I could do nothing in 
 this unknown island without the help of the natives, and 
 it was important to gain their good will at once. I took 
 out my pipe, cut up some trade tobacco, and began to 
 smoke; knowing the smell would draw them in, if they 
 were anywhere near. New Guinea has many tribes 
 many nations, indeed, one might say but of them 
 all, there is not one that does not love tobacco, strong 
 trade tobacco in dark, treacly sticks, better than its 
 own soul if a Papuan has a soul. 
 
 Whether it was the tobacco, or curiosity to see the
 
 86 WHEN THE RED GODS CALL' 
 
 unknown white man, or both together, I cannot say. 
 But the bait took. By-and-by, when I turned my head 
 a little to the right, I saw, standing half behind me, a 
 group of about a dozen men. I had not heard them 
 move, I had not seen them come. But there they 
 were. I looked at them, and they looked at me, and 
 both of us were silent. 
 
 I don't know what they may have thought of me, 
 but I certainly thought them the worst-looking crew I 
 had seen, even in New Guinea. They were rather 
 small, very dark, and extremely ugly. Their heads 
 were smaller, their noses flatter, than those of the 
 mainland people, and I never saw such mouths before 
 or since, save on a toad. They were almost naked, 
 being clothed only in a curious national costume of 
 eight or ten loops of rope, festooned about their hips. 
 Most of them had pencils of white shell like tusks 
 thrust through their noses. They had no spears or 
 arrows, and this convinced me that the smothering 
 stories were true, for the uncivilized tribes, as a gen- 
 eral rule, go armed almost night and day. 
 
 It was necessary to get into touch with these people 
 somehow or other, if I did not want to form the (lit- 
 eral) piece de resistance for a strangling party. I took 
 a couple of sticks of tobacco, broke them up, and dis- 
 tributed them. They were readily taken; Sanderson 
 had familiarized the people with trade tobacco, in his 
 various comings and goings, and the islanders were 
 evidently fond of it. Taking care not to show all the 
 riches in my bag, I pulled out a handful of beads, and 
 offered them to a man who seemed to be something of
 
 WHEN THE RED GODS CALL 87 
 
 a chief, to judge by his elaborate feathered ornaments, 
 and the deference paid him by the other men. He 
 snatched at the gift, examined it, and bestowed it in 
 the bag he carried over his shoulder an odd little 
 storehouse of betel nut, shell money, and other native 
 valuables, worn by every man. A piece of fine toilet 
 sponge off the reef was contained in each bag, as I 
 noted with amazement it seemed that these canni- 
 bals who did dainty chip-carving, and cultivated 
 flower-gardens, also carried the refinements of life so 
 far as to wash their tough black hides with delicate 
 sponges, like any white lady. They began to talk 
 now, in a hideous tongue like the snappings and snarl- 
 ings of dogs, quite unlike anything I had ever heard 
 before. I could not ev > make a guess at what they 
 were saying, but I conti ed to let them know by signs 
 that I was in search of the other white man, who had 
 taken away my wife, and that I would give them much 
 tobacco if they would help me to find him. 
 
 They were a little slow in taking up the meaning of 
 my sign talk ; I dare say they might not have grasped 
 it at all, had they not guessed something of my errand 
 from what they had seen themselves. The idea did 
 penetrate at last, and then 
 
 I was scarcely prepared for its effect. The islanders 
 raised a yell that must have been audible down on the 
 shore, and followed it up with a series of frenzied 
 yelps I can really call them nothing else expres- 
 sive of the wildest delight and eagerness. One after 
 another, attracted by the noise, more men came run- 
 ning in from the bush (still in the same mysterious,
 
 88 WHEN THE RED GODS CALL 
 
 sudden fashion) until we had thirty or forty, all plun- 
 ging and howling with excitement in the little square. 
 There was no fear now that they would turn on me. 
 I was going to give them what they liked better than 
 anything in the world a man-hunt. 
 
 Nothing would do them but we must start at once, 
 in spite of the fact that night was darkening down. 
 With difficulty I succeeded in making most of the crew 
 turn back, save some five or six, who insisted on com- 
 ing, and these I had to allow, though indeed one would 
 have suited my humor better. A guide was what I 
 wanted, not a pack of hounds. It seemed, however, 
 that I was to have the latter or nothing. 
 
 I have no very clear recollection of the night and 
 the day that followed. I know that I and the villagers, 
 and half a score of other natives who turned up on the 
 way, and insisted on joining the party, spent the hours 
 from dusk to dawn, and from dawn to noon again, 
 climbing, sliding, crawling, running, along endless 
 miles and miles of forest track, almost every yard of 
 which seemed to be perpendicular sometimes up 
 and sometimes down, but never level. I know that it 
 rained sometimes so heavily that in full morning the 
 light grew gray and dim, and we seemed to be run- 
 ning along in a water gloom somewhere at the bottom 
 of the sea, with long, wet, weedy trails of greenery 
 swinging low down from the dark canopy above, and 
 giant taro leaves as big as tables, beaded all over with 
 clammy dew, striking at us with their damp hands as 
 we swept past. I remember that the island men ran 
 low and softly, and carried no light even in the dark ;
 
 WHEN THE RED GODS CALL 89 
 
 and that often they turned to me, when the day was 
 coming, and mopped and mowed hideously to express 
 their anger at my noisy movements, for now they were 
 mad with the lust of the chase, and almost ready to 
 kill the hunter, if he interfered with the pleasure of 
 the hounds. But at times, when we stopped to breathe, 
 they would gather round me, and feel my limbs ad- 
 miringly, and measure the depth of my chest with 
 their hands placed back and front, and show by their 
 gestures that they thought I traveled well. We ate 
 once or twice I from the bag I carried, and they 
 from strange bundles of banana leaf bound up with 
 sinnet and we drank many times from the streams, 
 which were wonderfully clear and cold in all that 
 clammy heat. We swam and waded across rivers, 
 many and many of them, or it may have been that we 
 crossed and recrossed one or two, following up their 
 course I cannot tell. The islanders watched for 
 signs as they ran, and saw them so easily, so constantly, 
 and (as I afterwards knew) so certainly, in places 
 where I could find no trace myself, that I wondered 
 at the keenness of their senses. Now and then there 
 were things that I could understand a rag of flan- 
 nel, a dropped button, a footprint. . . . And, as 
 the black hounds showed by word and look, and even 
 by low beast-like whines of delight, as the day drew 
 on, the signs began to grow fresher with our progress 
 towards the center of the island. It was clear that 
 we were catching up on our quarry. 
 
 It must have been about noon when the islanders 
 began to slacken their speed, and creep stealthily along
 
 90 WHEN THE RED GODS CALL' 
 
 the track that we were following a downward- 
 sloping scratch in the slippery black earth, much en- 
 cumbered with fallen logs and drooping boughs. The 
 rain was over now, the soil was steaming with heat 
 and damp, and the sun had begun to force its way. 
 here and there through the thick forest roof in amaz- 
 ing lights of lurid green, like the colored flares in 
 a firework show. The wonderful pale orchid that 
 grows in Rossel, and nowhere else, seemed to have 
 made one of its homes in this valley; a huge cluster 
 of its ice- white, starry blooms sprang from the black 
 bole of a fallen cottonwood tree, shining out in that 
 gloomy place like one pure thought in an evil 
 heart. . . . 
 
 Did such a simile arise in my mind at such a mo- 
 ment? I am obliged to confess that it did, incon- 
 gruous as the fact may seem. If there is any man 
 on earth made all of one piece all consistent, in 
 nothing self-contradictory I have not met him, and 
 I do not profess to be related to him. . . 
 
 As I said, the men were creeping softly and stealth- 
 ily now, looking ahead through the boughs from time 
 to time. Presently the chief beckoned to me, and 
 pointed to something a long way below. 
 
 We were standing half way down the valley, the 
 ground falling sharply away below us. At the bottom 
 there was a wide stony river bed, only half filled by 
 a shallow hurrying stream. Under the lee of the op- 
 posite bank was a rough temporary shelter of sticks 
 and leafy boughs, with a small fire burning outside. 
 There was an old meat tin on the fire, and a man was
 
 WHEN THE RED GODS CALL 91 
 
 bending over it, watching it . ., . a tall man in 
 a filthy, ragged suit of ducks; a man with curly yellow 
 hair. . . . Sanderson! 
 
 Eyes starting out of his head, and limbs trembling 
 with excitement, the islander drew me back into the 
 shelter of the trees, and began pantomiming again, 
 while his twenty or thirty followers sat down on their 
 haunches, lolled their mouths open, and looked more 
 like dogs than ever all but six, who detached them- 
 selves from the rest, and took their stand where they 
 could peep over into the valley below. 
 
 The chief pointed to these six, and made vivid, 
 violent gestures describing their office. They were to 
 surround Sanderson (helped by the rest of the pack), 
 and then, in an instant, to fasten upon him, and bear 
 him down, one at each arm, one at each leg, one to 
 kneel upon his chest, and one to hold his mouth and 
 nose. This the chief described with incredibly fierce, 
 yet incredibly silent pantomime, quite exhausting him- 
 self with the vigor of his efforts, yet making so little 
 noise that he might well have been a dark phantom 
 grinning and leaping unsubstantially through the 
 dreams of some fevered brain, only the rustling, swing- 
 ing branches far overhead, and the hurrying river be- 
 low, being real. 
 
 I had expected some such difficulty as this, and 
 was not unprepared. I had no intention in the world 
 of letting loose this pack of black hounds on a man 
 who was at least outwardly white like myself, nor 
 did I intend any hand but my own do the work 
 that I had come to do. There was no use attempting
 
 92 WHEN THE RED GODS CALL 
 
 to argue with the islanders, even if I had known their 
 language. I did not try. I sprang up on the bank, 
 where I could be seen clearly from below, and shouted 
 out at the top of my voice " Sanderson ! " 
 
 I used to be known on the brig, in my old sailor 
 days, as the only man whose voice could be heard 
 from bowsprit to rudder chains through the howling 
 of a Western Ocean cyclone. That shout waked up 
 the valley. The natives sprang to their feet and 
 snarled with rage; there were more nasty looks fo- 
 cused on me than I cared about, until I drew my re- 
 volver, and pointed it at the bunch of them. Before 
 they had time to decide what they were going to do, 
 I had taken a dozen long jumps down the side of the 
 gorge, and was within a yard of the man I had hunted 
 from end to end of the country. 
 
 He had dropped the tin he was holding over the 
 fire when he heard my cry, and the tea it held was 
 trickling over the stones in a dark-brown stream, but 
 he had not run away, though I daresay he would have 
 had time to plunge into the bush while I was getting 
 down the cliff-side. I was surprised, almost disap- 
 pointed, that he had the courage to face me; I had 
 thought him of the rat breed through and through. 
 
 Perhaps I had forgotten that the cornered rat is 
 brave. It was not by chance that Sanderson had come 
 down to lonely Rossel, not for convenience that he 
 had pitched his camp in the heart of an unknown and 
 dangerous island. He was certainly hiding from me, 
 in fear of rne. Yet when hunted down he showed his 
 teeth.
 
 WHEN THE RED GODS CALL 93 
 
 " What do you want in my camp? " he asked, with 
 an oath between every word, and a foul name at the 
 end. His hand went to the leather holster on his 
 belt. 
 
 " You know what I want," I said. " Put that pistol 
 on the ground." 
 
 As I had covered him with mine, he was obliged to 
 obey. The metal rang hard on the stone. 
 
 Then I threw my own on the ground beside it, 
 pulled the knife out of my belt, and dropped it too. 
 
 For just one minute we stood looking at each other, 
 and, I think, measuring one another, mind and body 
 ' we two who had met but once before, on the little 
 island of sun and flowers, and who were now met for 
 the second and last time in this gloomy gorge of Death, 
 from which we both well knew that only one would re- 
 turn. 
 
 Such was the evil ascendency of the man, and his 
 power of conveying his thoughts without words, that 
 even in that moment he succeeded in making me feel 
 I had made myself absurd by chasing after him, mean 
 and cowardly by using the natives to track him to his 
 lair. He grinned at me like a dog before it bites, 
 and I knew as well as if he had spoken that he was 
 saying in his mind " The man who could not keep 
 his wife The man who boasts and bullies. . . . 
 The ugly, undersized brute who thinks himself a hand- 
 some fellow. . . ." 
 
 I don't suppose he had ever heard of hypnotism by 
 name, but if he did not know and use its power, then 
 no one in the world ever did. Evil himself, he had
 
 94 WHEN THE RED GODS CALL 
 
 power, like the devils of the Bible, upon other devils, 
 and when he called on them, they came. The Papuan 
 savagery latent in my gentle little wife the mean- 
 nesses and weaknesses of my own character the 
 wickedness, if one but knew it, of a thousand other 
 souls, in other years and countries all answered to 
 his call, sure as the rivers run to meet the calling of 
 the sea. I am near ashamed to write the words, but 
 it is true that for a moment I felt inclined to beckon 
 down my black hounds from the cliff above, and let 
 them do their worst on the brute that was so much 
 lower than they. A vile thought, and one that, in 
 a less poisonous presence, would not have been mine. 
 
 I need hardly say that the impulse passed away 
 as quickly as it had come. I turned half round and 
 signaled to the islanders where they hung on the 
 verge of the descent, eager to fling themselves down, 
 yet somewhat fearful of my pistol, which they seemed 
 to understand. I waved them back, and pointed to 
 the weapon. They understood that too, and, chatter- 
 ing and snarling with rage, stayed where they were. 
 
 Now all this time only a few seconds, in reality, 
 but it seemed long Sanderson had been standing 
 just as I found him, his gold hair shining in the single 
 ray of sun that crept down into the dusk of the gorge, 
 his stained, ragged clothing, and haggard face, giving 
 the lie clear enough to his deliberately insolent ex- 
 pression. I think, if he had appealed to my pity 
 but how do I know? I am telling the tale, not of 
 what might have been, but what was. 
 
 "You know what I want," I said again; it seemed
 
 WHEN THE RED GODS CALL 95 
 
 that he would not speak. He kept eyeing me up and 
 down, his hands twitching at his sides, his face a 
 hard mask of hate . . . yet with something wild 
 and frightened beginning to struggle behind the mask, 
 as a wild beast struggles in a cage. I think he 
 must have seen the truth in my face, for I was be- 
 ginning to feel as if there were no weight in my 
 body, and there was fire all down my spine, and there 
 was a red mist creeping over everything before my 
 eyes, the same mist that, once or twice or thrice in 
 my lifetime, has set a mark forever upon certain hours. 
 
 . . . Then, so suddenly that I had no time to 
 guard, he struck at me with a knife (I had not known 
 he had it) and spat almost in my eyes. 
 
 The knife missed as I sprang aside, just grazing 
 the top of my shoulder. Even while I sprang, quick 
 as a lightning picture seen for an instant in a storm, 
 I saw the black hounds down in the valley, sitting on 
 their haunches in a wide circle up and down the slopes 
 of the cliff, and wagging their tongues with joy. It 
 passed like the flash in the thunder-cloud, and all my 
 jealousy, and agony, and rage, and all my very life, 
 went out like the lightning itself in one straight blow 
 that struck him on the temple, and sent the black soul 
 that sheltered there, back to the dust from which it 
 came. 
 
 He fell as a dead man falls, and lay on the stones, 
 staring up at the sky. 
 
 The islanders were round him like a pack of car- 
 rion crows, before he had well touched the earth. 
 They squatted about him, and felt his wrist and his
 
 96 WHEN THE RED GODS CALL 
 
 heart, and touched his eyes with their black fingers. 
 Then they sprang to their feet, and raised a yell of 
 laughter, and I knew them to say that he was dead, 
 and that the sport had been good. 
 
 That is all I have to say about the death of San- 
 derson. I made the natives carry his body up on to 
 the crest of the hill, and bury it deep in the firm soil 
 of an open spot under some casuarina trees, knowing 
 that they would not take the trouble to disinter it, 
 if the job were well done. They growled a little 
 over this, but I pacified them with the gift of a pound 
 of tobacco from my bag, and promised them more 
 when I should get back to my ship expressing my 
 meaning by signs that they seemed to understand. I 
 knew well that they were bitterly disappointed at having 
 had their quarry snatched from them twice first 
 living, and then dead and, without being more 
 afraid of the brutes than I have ever been of natives, 
 I quite understood that my getting back alive to the 
 coast was very much a matter of luck. The promised 
 reward for safe-conduct had its effect, however, and 
 they guided me by a short cut back to the bay where 
 the cutter was moored, in a very few hours. I paid 
 them there, as I had promised, and they disappeared 
 into the forest, howling and whining with joy. 
 
 I have been particular in mentioning these matters, 
 because of the misrepresentations from which I suf- 
 fered later on. 
 
 All this time I had heard nothing about Kari, and 
 indeed I had not greatly troubled myself about her, 
 thinking her not worth it. But now that I was down
 
 WHEN THE RED GODS CALL 97 
 
 on the coast again, and ready; to make sail, I thought 
 of asking Garia had he seen or heard anything. 
 
 It was almost dark, but I did not care to hang 
 about the neighborhood of the island in such a small 
 boat any longer than could be helped, and we were 
 just about making sail, in the ugly light of the after- 
 glow, when I called out to my man through the flap- 
 ping of the canvas 
 
 "Did you see the woman?" Somehow, I could 
 not make up my mind to speak her name. 
 
 Garia, who had been staring at me in silence since 
 I came on board, stopped hauling, and leaned his 
 dark face over the sail, close to mine. 
 
 " Taubada ! You no savvy ? " he cried. 
 
 "What?" I asked. 
 
 The Papuan pointed to the waters of the bay, sweep- 
 ing his arm round with one of those expressive ges- 
 tures of which uncivilized man alone has the secret. 
 
 " Orokolo he finished," he said. 
 
 And for the first time I noticed that the Orokolo 
 was no longer there. Where had the schooner dis- 
 appeared to? She had only a native crew; could 
 they have stolen her, in the absence of their master? 
 
 ' Taubada," said Garia, very talkative now, but 
 still casting odd sidelong glances at me. " I stop 
 here, I look along bush. By-'n'-by some boy belong 
 Sanasoni he come run quick, quick, girl belong Tau- 
 bada she come. All that boy he go 'long sikoona, 
 flenty he cly, flenty flighten. Girl belong Taubada 
 she go sikoona, she cly all same tockatoo, she sing 
 out along me * Taubada he go kill Sanasoni, kill Kari,
 
 98 WHEN THE RED GODS CALL 
 
 kill all the boy.' My word, he flenty flighten, that 
 fellow! I laugh along him, I telling him Taubada 
 he kill all that boy, that girl, by-'n'-by he eating him. 
 All the boy he up-sail, he go out, Kari she go along. 
 By-'n'-by too much wind he stop outside, one boy he 
 taking wheel, he no savvy flenty, big, big squall he come. 
 That boy he let go wheel, he sing out, he cly, all the 
 boy he cly, Kari she cly, big, big, big wind he take 
 sikoona, throw him down, by-'n'-by sikoona he no stop 
 no more, boy he no stop, Kari no stop. Finish ! " 
 
 " Good God ! " I said. " Do you mean they let 
 her get aback in one of those squalls, and sank her? " 
 
 " Yes, he get aback. He all fool, I think. Very 
 quick he all been go 'long hell, all the boy, Kari, she 
 go," said Garia with considerable satisfaction. " Me 
 miss'n boy. Me go 'long heaven, by-'n'-by some day." 
 
 " You little beast, couldn't you have put out and 
 picked some of them up ? Were they all drowned ? " 
 I asked. 
 
 " Yes, all finish that fellow," said my follower 
 cheerfully. " Too much wind he stop, I no want I 
 finish." 
 
 I could find nothing to say in answer to such a 
 complete philosophy of life; in truth, I was little in- 
 clined to speak. The news had come with a greater 
 shock to me than I could have believed. To know 
 that Kari was gone that the knot of my ill-starred 
 marriage had been cut asunder by the sword that 
 shears through all the tangles of all our lives at 
 last waked such a conflicting variety of feelings in 
 my mind, that I could talk no more. We were run-
 
 WHEN THE RED GODS CALL 99 
 
 ning out of the bay in the growing dark before a 
 light favoring breeze. I gave the tiller into Garia's 
 hand, and went and sat down upon the skylight, look- 
 ing forward to the yellow sunset, and the weltering 
 black sea, and the night that was swiftly closing down 
 on all. 
 
 I thought of Kari as I had known her in the old 
 days, a gentle, frightened child following me through 
 the blue ranges of the Astrolabe, almost worshiping 
 me as her rescuer and protector a growing girl in 
 the Mission, waxing coquettish and pretty as she ma- 
 tured, but always with a ready welcome for " Lineti " 
 when he called a woman, my wife, my little brown 
 bird in our own little nest, loving me after the ca- 
 pricious fashion of a native, yet somehow making 
 warm my heart for her and afterwards 
 
 No! I put that thought away. She was dead. I 
 would remember her as I had loved her, as I had 
 seen her last. The other Kari, the wild Papuan sav- 
 age, with all the evil nature of her cannibal ancestors 
 suddenly awaked and brought to daylight by the black 
 influence of the blackest hearted of men that Kari 
 I would forget. She slept in the heart of these lonely 
 coral seas, let her sins against me sleep with her. 
 
 The play was played out the last act of that long 
 tragedy over. I was free to begin my life again.
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 
 TJ AIN, rain! such rain as one knows only in New 
 -*-^- Guinea stupefying one with its day-long roar 
 on the iron roofs, jetting out of the overflow pipes 
 of the tanks in a solid bar of water that digs deep 
 holes in the ground; beating down the great heads 
 of the coco-palms till their eighteen-foot leaves droop 
 like dying ferns, and interposing a wall of tumbling 
 water between the jail and the spongy grass-plot, and 
 the belt of alligator-haunted bush that runs along 
 the margin of the beach. The big island out there, 
 that seems, on a clear " southeast " day, to float on 
 the verge of the horizon like some purple orchid bloom 
 blown down from the Astrolabe ranges, looks like 
 nothing but a dark smear or a piece of wet blotting- 
 paper, this wretched morning. The native prisoners 
 have been taken off their road work, and are squatting 
 on the long veranda, passing round their bau-baus 
 '( bamboo pipes) from hand to hand, and chewing betel 
 nut and lime. They look cheerful and happy, and 
 some of them are laughing consumedly at a yarn 
 which is being recited by a murderer from the Hydro- 
 graphers' Range country, who is doing a year in jail 
 for eating his wife "the reason assigned for the 
 rash act " being that the lady talked too much. 
 
 . . . They flutter like wild birds in a cage, at 
 first, these native prisoners, and then, just as one 
 
 100
 
 WHEN THE RED GODS CALL 101 
 
 begins to think they will break their hearts and die, 
 they settle down quite comfortably, and take to their 
 regular meals and work without giving any trouble. 
 Freedom is ahead of them somewhere, somehow 
 a good many moons, whether six or sixty they don't 
 know, and it is all the same to them, since their minds 
 don't stretch beyond the first figure in any case. And 
 there is more food here than they have ever had in 
 their lives. And they have blankets and tin spoons, 
 and other luxuries they'd give you their wives and 
 children for, out back. And Wilks is indulgent ; when 
 there is no work to do (quite often there is not) he 
 lets them sit and yarn and smoke by the hour, on the 
 veranda, or in the shade of the water tanks. They 
 are a very clubbable folk, these Papuans. Every jun- 
 gle or river village has a great club-house, where the 
 bucks of the tribe sit and boast to one another, and 
 the old men tell one another how much better things 
 were done on the river when they were young and 
 somebody gnaws a rib, and somebody picks a tibia, 
 and somebody hospitably gives his neighbor a bite off 
 a skull, and everyone is sociable and jolly. . . . 
 
 Minus the ribs and skulls, it is much the same sort 
 of thing here on wet days. Yes, I think the colored 
 ninety-nine hundredths of the jail is fairly happy. 
 As for the white fraction 
 
 Wilks interrupted me just then, coming in for some 
 tools. He stopped to tell me the yarn that the Hydro- 
 graphers' native had been spinning ; a warder from the 
 East End had interpreted it for him. Here it is, word 
 for word
 
 102 WHEN THE RED GODS CALL 
 
 " I think very small of you people on the coast. 
 You are afraid to go inland, you never see the people 
 and houses in the mountains. I have seen everything 
 in Papua, everything, everything, everything; I have 
 walked about very much when I was with the police 
 many moons ago. One time I went far, far, far 
 inland, up into the high, high, very high hills. 
 And the people are silly like bats, and I could do what 
 I liked with them. There was one village where they 
 all had tails like kangaroos, and they were very silly, 
 silly, silly people there, and I played tricks on them. 
 They had holes in the floors of their houses for their 
 tails to hang down when they went to sleep, and I 
 used to go under the holes at night, and I would tie 
 a knot in every man's tail as it hung down, and then 
 I would run through the village, and scream, 
 scream, scream that the enemy were coming with 
 spears and arrows, and all the people would jump up. 
 But the knots in their tails would catch, and they 
 would fall down, fall down, fall down, howling, and 
 I would laugh, I would laugh till there was no more 
 breath in my belly." 
 
 " Do you believe that yarn? " I asked. 
 
 Wilks sucked his pipe, and seemed to listen to the 
 bellowing rain. 
 
 " I dono," he said meditatively. " If I was 'ome 
 in Poplar, or livin' in barracks in Agrar or Calcutter, 
 same as in the old days, I'd laugh at all that 'eathen 
 rubbish fast enough. But this place ain't Poplar. 
 Not yet Indiar. And dono."
 
 .WHEN THE RED GODS CALL 103 
 
 " Why," he added, taking his pipe out of his mouth, 
 and turning his childlike blue English eyes on me 
 " Why, there's that Johnnie from Mekeo the one 
 that's in for roastin' a sorcerer alive on a stick 
 he says to me the other day that he sor that sorcerer 
 with his own eyes kill his brother the man's brother 
 
 by giving him puri-puri stuff, and the boy was so 
 dead they stuck a spear into him, and the gas came 
 out bustin', like when you pick a child's balloon. And 
 when 'e'd been dead twenty- four hours which is 
 too long for a man to be above ground in this country 
 
 the sorcerer, he made the boy alive again, and the 
 Mekeo man sor him walkin' about, and talked to him. 
 And then in another day he died again, and the sor- 
 cerer, he dried up that time, and wouldn't or couldn't 
 do nothing, so he planted the boy, and went for the 
 sorcerer. It's as true as I'm standing here, Mr. 
 Lynch. And if you please, sir, I'll trouble you to 
 pick up all those papers, and put your cell in order 
 a gentleman of your education should know better 
 than to let his cell get into a proper hurrah's- 
 nest!" 
 
 He went away, and I tidied up the place it was 
 something to have even so much occupation. Then I 
 sat listening to the thunder of the endless rain 
 there had already been five inches, though it was not 
 three o'clock until the noise nearly maddened me, 
 and I took out this book to escape for a little from 
 myself. 
 
 For this is one of the bad days. They come again 
 and again, and all the pluck one has is wanted, to pull
 
 104 WHEN THE RED GODS CALL 
 
 one through without "breaking out." Breaking out! 
 the phrase means nothing when you read it in some 
 police report at home: but let anyone try for himself 
 what it means to endure years of confinement, and he'll 
 have news to tell me. 
 
 Yet one must endure, and without complaint. For 
 when a punishment is deserved and just, it is best to 
 take it with one's mouth shut. 
 
 I am being punished for breaking through the fence 
 that reserves the right of retributive action to certain 
 classes. Soldiers may kill in revenge for national in- 
 sults. Judges may kill for the safety of society. In 
 nearly all primitive communities, gold-mining dis- 
 tricts and so forth, where there is no law but that of 
 natural justice, a committee of leading men will hang 
 half a dozen offenders up to a tree before breakfast, 
 and no one will blame them. But if you are not a 
 licensed slaughterman, and if the law of civilization 
 obtains in your country, you are a murderer if you do 
 what a hundred thousand decent men would do to- 
 morrow were there no public opinion to hold them 
 back. The man who has never felt that he could 
 and would kill another without remorse, did he not 
 fear the consequences, must be made of very different 
 clay from most. 
 
 Do I complain? Not of the law. Having carried 
 out justice for myself, taken the chances, and found 
 them turn up wrong way out for me as I knew they 
 might I have nothing to complain about. I knew 
 that everyone could not be allowed to act as I acted. 
 Whether it be right, as I hold, or very wrong indeed,
 
 WHEN THE RED GODS CALL 105 
 
 as my kindly, though interfering visitors from the 
 mission have tried to impress on me. 
 
 If I have a grievance, it is simply this that so- 
 ciety makes you pay, not only the just penalty for 
 your offense against its laws, but also the unjust pen- 
 alty of the loss of your whole life's prospects. 
 
 Four years for manslaughter in Portland, or Berlin, 
 or New York, or French Cayenne, or here in Port 
 Moresby's little toy jail on parole, with books and 
 light work, and meals from the tin hotel it is all 
 the same. One and all mean ruin. One and all 
 mean a crippled life: a man maimed in a limb of his 
 character, and limping through all the rest of his 
 journey. Is that just? 
 
 But then your friends, the true ones, will stand 
 by you . . . will they not? 
 
 There was a picture I used to be very fond of, in the 
 year I spent at my London crammer's. They had 
 it in the drawing-room: it was an excellent copy of 
 a painting by a new artist Burne-Jones. It rep- 
 resented a man and a woman, dressed in some curious 
 mediaeval costume, sitting on a heap of ruins, under 
 a stormy sky. They were surrounded by stones and 
 briars, and there was not a living creature in all the 
 landscape but themselves. Yet you could see that the 
 storm, and the loneliness, and the catastrophe, what- 
 ever it was, that had beggared them and made them 
 homeless, had no power to touch them, since it had 
 left him to her, and her to him. They were holding 
 hands, and looking in one another's eyes : and what 
 they saw there seemed to be enough for them.
 
 io6 WHEN THE RED GODS CALL 
 
 On bad days like to-day I find myself remem- 
 bering that picture. I think, if I had it here, I should 
 tear it into rags ; and throw the rags down the north- 
 west wind, howling on its way to sea. For it is a 
 false picture, false as the Father of all lies. 
 
 There are no such women. 
 
 I am not writing an autobiography, so I may pass 
 over a good deal of what happened after the loss of 
 the Orokolo. In brief, I sold my cutter, abandoned 
 Clare Island, and took up my abode in the Central 
 Division, hundreds of miles away from the Eastern 
 coast and its memories. I had made up my mind to 
 forget. 
 
 I don't know that I should have cared particularly, 
 even had I found that Port Moresby knew the true 
 story of Sanderson's end. But it did not. The loss 
 of the Orokolo was known pieces of her wreckage 
 had been sighted in the islands, and Papua at large 
 drew its own conclusions, when Sanderson was seen 
 no more. The death of Kari and the burning of my 
 plantation were known, simply because I told them; 
 but nobody asked me for details. It is possible that 
 I did not look as if I should encourage questions. 
 There are two sides to the possession of an alleged 
 ugly temper. 
 
 I was not penniless, for I had over two hundred 
 lodged with a North Queensland bank, and the sale
 
 WHEN THE RED GODS CALL 107 
 
 of the boat had brought me a hundred and eighty. 
 I might have done something towards the start of 
 another plantation with this, but the idea did not 
 appeal to me. It may have been that the settling-down 
 impulse had worn out, as it does only too soon with 
 us of the gypsy breed, how much soever we may 
 hanker after the unchanging rest, and the year after 
 year peace, and the little quiet home of our very own 
 for a time. The time comes to an end : that's the 
 trouble of it. 
 Well, 
 
 " Send the road is clear before you, 
 When the old spring fret comes o'er you." 
 
 because, if you are one of the wandering breed, you'll 
 go, whether it is clear or not, and Heaven help any- 
 thing or anyone that stands in your way ! 
 
 There's no spring in New Guinea, but for all that, 
 " the old spring fret came o'er me " very strongly just 
 then, and I had not been a week in Port Moresby 
 before I was laying in stores, and engaging boys, for 
 a bird-shooting trip into the interior. Bird of Para- 
 dise and other skins fetch excellent prices now-a-days, 
 and there was no more profitable way in which I could 
 have employed my time. 
 
 I had no white man with me. I was always good 
 company for myself when I chose: there's no pair 
 of mates in Australasia suit each other better than 
 Hugh and I. Garia was with me, as usual: he had 
 become quite a devoted servant by now, though it 
 would be hard to say on what grounds, as I was never
 
 108 WHEN THE RED GODS CALL 
 
 indulgent to my boys, or showed any special feeling 
 for them probably because I hadn't any. 
 
 I can tell you, the hills were calling, in that clear 
 southeast weather, when the gray-green eucalyptus 
 country all round Port Moresby was crackling with 
 dry heat, and the tracks were soft with dust, and 
 the blue wall of the Astrolabe Range, as it shows 
 out from the top of Paga Hill, rose sharp and clear 
 into the sun-bleached sky. I was glad from the bottom 
 of my heart to tramp off at the head of my train 
 of naked mop-haired carriers, through the township 
 and along the cliff, and inland across the wide sun- 
 baked flats, going towards the " Never-Never " once 
 again. 
 
 And surely, it was for luck (I thought) that, just 
 as we were leaving the inhabited country, a beautiful 
 chestnut mare, ridden by a slim girl in a holland 
 habit, should sweep down on the procession from be- 
 hind a sudden turn, to give us our last glimpse of the 
 world we were leaving behind, in the pleasantest pos- 
 sible form! 
 
 It was the Governor's daughter, of course 
 Stephanie Hammond. Everyone in Papua knew her 
 name by this time, and guessed that, being an only 
 child, she had been called for her father, Stephen 
 Hammond. I had not seen her during the week, of 
 my stay in port, but I had heard of hardly anything 
 or anybody else. They said she was going to marry 
 the Government Secretary: but the rumor was so far 
 without any official sanction. As Carolan was verjr
 
 WHEN THE RED GODS CALL 109 
 
 well connected, and would be well off, and as he was 
 not more than twenty-seven, good-looking, steady, and 
 popular, most of us the outer barbarians of Papuan 
 society thought the event could only be a matter 
 of time. 
 
 She came cantering along the grass, sitting straight 
 and gracefully, her hair braided in endless rows all 
 round her head under her sun-helmet, her slight 
 pointed foot in its English boot just showing under 
 her habit. As we came nearer, she checked the mare, 
 and tried to make her stand the beautiful creature 
 was dancing and fidgeting at the line of loaded car- 
 riers, and seemed not a little inclined to bolt. 
 
 Of course, I could do nothing less than come for- 
 ward and take the mare's bridle, lifting my hat and 
 apologizing, as I did so. And thus we met face to 
 face for the first time Stephanie Hammond and I. 
 
 The mare quieted down the instant I touched her. 
 I had known she would there is nothing that goes 
 upon four legs or two wings that I cannot tame when 
 I want. The rider, on the other hand, colored a little 
 and flashed a quick, curious look at me, her lips falling 
 slightly apart. For the moment I thought her fright- 
 ened she was such a fragile slip of a young girl, 
 and the mare was really a fiery mount for her. Then 
 I saw that she was not thinking of her horse at all, 
 but of me, and that she had (in the language of popu- 
 lar gossip), "heard things," and didn't know what to 
 make of them, or of myself. 
 
 -It was only for a moment that I could read her
 
 I io WHEN THE RED GODS CALL 
 
 expression. Then she drew down the blinds, as a 
 society woman can, and presented a perfectly blank 
 front to my curious gaze, as she made her little speech 
 of courteous thanks. She looked steadily at the am- 
 ber handle of her whip while she spoke, and did not 
 show me her eyes again. 
 
 But I had had one look in right through those blue 
 windows before they were curtained, and I was not 
 offended by what I saw there. 
 
 " Please allow me to hold your horse until the car- 
 riers are well away," I said, keeping my grasp of the 
 bridle. 
 
 " You have quieted her wonderfully," answered 
 Stephanie Hammond. She put the snaffle rein inside 
 the curb, and her eyes followed her hand. " Can you 
 always quiet a horse by touching it?" 
 
 " Usually," I said, enjoying the sight of her eye- 
 lashes, which turned up quite wonderfully at the ends. 
 She had a pointed chin with a dimple in it, and her 
 lips had the perfect surface of a flower petal. . . 
 
 . . . Sometimes, long ago, riding through the 
 green forest tracks of the South Sea Islands, I have 
 come upon a bed of sensitive plant beside the road, 
 and have wondered to see how surely those delicate 
 leaflets felt the approach of the heavy hoofs, many 
 yards away, and shrank down as they came near. 
 . . . Can it have been, that morning on the lonely 
 out-back road, that the soul of the young girl, a hun- 
 dred times more sensitive than the mimosa leaf, felt in 
 all its delicate fibers the near approach of something 
 strange, strong, and terrifying, and instinctively drew
 
 WHEN THE RED GODS CALL in 
 
 back into itself? . . . The Governor's daughter 
 never looked up, but as I continued to delight my 
 woman-starved eyes on the sweetness of her face, she 
 grew slowly pink, down to the very edge of her dress. 
 
 " You rude brute! " I said to myself. The carriers 
 were almost out of sight round the turn in the road. 
 I let go my hold of the bridle, drew my hand once 
 down the chestnut's satiny neck, in the way that a 
 horse likes, and stepped back. 
 
 " I think your horse will be all right now," I said. 
 " I'm extremely sorry we scared her." 
 
 " Please don't trouble about that : there was no harm 
 done," said the sweet voice it was a very sweet 
 voice indeed. " Thank you very much for holding 
 her. Good-by." 
 
 . . . Had she looked up again, or had she not? 
 The flying hoofs of the mare were far away down the 
 road, in a cloud of dust. The carriers were clear out 
 of sight. There was not a sound but the wind in the 
 eucalyptus trees, and the harsh clatter of a leather- 
 neck on a bough. 
 
 I turned round, and got on my way again. 
 
 "I believe you didn't you perfect darling!" I 
 said. 
 
 I would like to write a good deal about that bird- 
 shooting trip only that it has nothing in itself to do 
 with the story. I'd like to try and tell though no- 
 body could tell how the country looks up among the 
 high ranges, when you come out of your tent of a 
 morning, into the air that is like a sea of crystal, and
 
 ii2 WHEN THE RED GODS CALL 
 
 stand beside the fly, looking miles and miles away, 
 over cone-shaped and castle-shaped peaks of every 
 shade of purple and blue, and down enormous gorges 
 that are fiery green in the sun, and black as black vel- 
 vet in the dark at the bottom, with a streak of foamy 
 white showing here and there to mark the course of 
 some big river that has never a name or a place on the 
 map. You think the side of that gorge is within a 
 cricket-ball throw, until you see white specks like flies 
 flitting up and down its walls, and then you understand 
 that those are cockatoos, and that the scale of the 
 whole landscape is so huge that you yourself scarcely 
 stand for the value of an ant in a scuttle of coals. 
 . . . Your boys are still asleep, and there isn'4 a 
 native village in a day's walk, and not a white man but 
 yourself has ever climbed these ranges. The place is 
 as God made it, and as it will remain, colossal, still, 
 and calm, for many a score of years after the tide of 
 civilization has swept into every other quiet nook on 
 earth. It belongs to the wild creatures of the moun- 
 tain the wallabys and wild boars and pythons ; to 
 the birds and creeping things ; to the marvelous butter- 
 flies, big and swift as swallows, that flash in gorgeous 
 blues and greens, and gilded orange, and gay black and 
 white and crimson, about every rare cluster of blossom 
 that lights up the somber forests. 
 
 Lovely and peaceful as they are, you make your way 
 into these unknown lands under no truce with Nature. 
 Slip across the edge of safety anywhere, anyhow, and 
 she will sweep her ocean of primeval forest over you 
 as passionlessly and relentlessly as she sweeps her At-
 
 WHEN THE RED GODS CALL 113 
 
 lantic or Pacific over some struggling ship overtaken 
 by a storm. Let but a man's carriers desert him in 
 these out-back wildernesses let a rock fall and lame 
 him and it is all New Guinea to a broken biscuit 
 that the bower-birds will find a white skeleton, well- 
 cleaned by the ants, under the fern when the rainy sea- 
 son is over, and will have a couple of phalanges, and 
 a loose vertebra or two, to put among the bright bits 
 of shell and stone that decorate their dancing-grounds. 
 . . . " On ne badine pas " with the bush country 
 of Papua. 
 
 There was no question of trouble in my expedition, 
 happily. My boys were a decent lot, and contented 
 with their job. Our swags full of the beads and tom- 
 ahawks and tobacco brought us sweet potatoes and 
 yams in plenty, at the villages, and our shot-guns 
 saved us from encroaching too much upon the tinned 
 provisions. We did very well in birds: I had a cou- 
 ple of hundred skins of birds of Paradise, every kind, 
 from the common Raggiana to the rare blue of the 
 high ranges, besides many of the giant Gaura pigeons, 
 and scarlet king-birds, and miscellaneous prey of other 
 kinds, by the end of a couple of months. The stores 
 were lasting splendidly : we hadn't met with any hostile 
 tribes at least, none that I could not manage to 
 make peace with, though most of them were inclined 
 to spear us at first sight, through sheer alarm. I had 
 found colors of gold in two creeks that were within a 
 reasonable distance of the coast, and hoped I might do 
 well out of the discovery later on. I was fit, and my
 
 WHEN THE RED GODS CALL 
 
 boys were contented, and it seemed that the best thing 
 I could do, undoubtedly, was to keep on the trip for 
 another two months. 
 
 . . . Instead of which, I struck my camp one 
 morning at six, told the carriers we were bound for 
 home again, and started off down an atrocious gully 
 that was called a track, with the compass pointing me 
 to Port Moresby, as fast as ever I could go. 
 
 The truth was, that trip was haunted. 
 
 By nights, when I'd be lying on my bed of cross- 
 way sticks, under the low roof of the fly, with a blanket 
 pulled up round my shoulders, the moon, as round 
 and white as a shilling, looking in under the V-shaped 
 door, and the frogs booming out a Wagner chorus 
 somewhere in the river-gorge below, I used to think of 
 what we had been doing during the day, and see it all 
 over again the five- foot cassowary that had lifted 
 its great blue helmet out of the bush, right beside me, 
 as I was sighting for a long shot at a hornbill the 
 gorgeous flash of a crimson bird of Paradise, shooting 
 like a comet across some sunlit valley the waterfall 
 I had discovered, four hundred feet high, dropping 
 straight as a plumb line into a boiling pothole as big 
 as a city square the skinning and preparing of the 
 birds after sunset, the lazy smoke by the camp-fire be- 
 fore turning in, ... Musing dreamily over all 
 these things, and watching, with half-shut eyes, the 
 flutter of the leaves outside the door, I would listen 
 to the murmur of the river over its stones far away 
 below, until the moon and the tent and the swaying
 
 WHEN THE RED GODS CALL 115 
 
 bamboo boughs faded away, and the song of the water 
 grew ever faint and fainter, and I was . . . 
 
 No, not asleep! for just at that moment something 
 always wakened me with a start a face that grew 
 out of the darkness, circled round by a luminous haze, 
 and hovered close to my pillow, looking at me. It 
 came and went almost like a flash of lightning, for it 
 always wakenec^ me instantly, and once I was awake, it 
 was there no more. It startled me, though I am not 
 easily startled, and I used to spring half up, and stare 
 round the tent, looking into every corner, and wonder- 
 ing where I was. . . . 
 
 Still the calm moon, and the swaying fronds of the 
 bamboo, and the whisper of the stream. ... I 
 was in the Owen Stanley Range, alone with my boys. 
 . . . The camp fire was leaping and dying outside 
 the tent. The wind blew down from the icy summits, 
 lonesome-sounding and chill. . . . She was not 
 here. 
 
 Yet I had seen her face, her blue eyes, her dark soft 
 hair woven in innumerable braids, her mouth, with its 
 curious wax-like smoothness and dark red color, 
 and she was looking at me, straight and steadily, as she 
 had not looked in real life. Her lips were a little 
 apart, her eyes showed wonder, and a certain question- 
 ing. And always, the little haze of light clung about 
 her head. 
 
 Now, if the truth must be told, I had seen a good 
 many charming faces hovering through my dreams, in 
 the wandering years gone by faces of many nation-
 
 n6 WHEN THE RED GODS CALC 
 
 alities, and many kinds of loveliness : some that weren't 
 even lovely, but that one liked as well as if they were: 
 some Well, this is not my " carte du Pays du Ten- 
 dre." . . . Everyone who has ever been in love, 
 after any of the various ways of loving, knows 
 that this appearance of a face in the darkness, circled 
 with light, is as common as fancy itself. Who has not 
 read of it a hundred times, in poetry, good, bad, or in- 
 different? Who does not at least remember Tenny- 
 son's beautiful picture of the 
 
 " Passionate, pale, proud face, star-sweet on a gloom 
 profound." 
 
 in " Maud," the poem loved by lovers? 
 
 But of all the dark and fair, and fierce and gentle, 
 and budding and full-blown beauties who had played 
 this pretty trick on me in old times, not one had looked 
 at me as if she saw me. Now this one did. It was 
 that, that used to waken me so suddenly, in the first 
 light sleep of night and sometimes even in the deep 
 dead rest that comes with the cool of dawn. This 
 face, unlike any of its predecessors (Stephanie, human 
 snowdrop that you were, you would scarcely have 
 cared to be classed with some of them) was not a 
 mere mechanical painting in the dark, of something 
 that I had seen before, line for line and color for color. 
 It was a vital, clinging entity with an existence of its 
 own, and it saw me. 
 
 Sometimes it appeared shadowed by the white sun- 
 helmet, sometimes without. I saw it look pale at 
 times, and bright at other times. Once it came with all
 
 WHEN THE RED GODS CALL 117 
 
 its hair floating like seaweed in water about the head ; 
 that time, its eyes were sad and dreamy, and shad- 
 owed by some uncomprehended trouble. But how- 
 ever it came, it shook my nerve each time as never a 
 cannibal in war-paint, poising his spear at my breast, 
 could have shaken it. And the strangest thing about 
 the whole business was that I was really not in love 
 with Stephanie. 
 
 The slightness of our acquaintance would have been 
 no protection against such a catastrophe, if I had been 
 inclined to it experience at least had taught me that. 
 I admired the Governor's daughter extremely, and 
 thought her not at all like any other girl I had ever 
 known there was something so fragile, yet so gal- 
 lant, so tender, yet so brave, about this sailor's child 
 with her father's name. But I did not want to kiss 
 her, or sit out under the palms in the moonlight with 
 my arm round her waist, talking honey-treacle non- 
 sense or to hold that slim foot of hers in my hand, 
 and spring her to the saddle, or set my shoulder for 
 her light weight when she dismounted, standing so that 
 she would be obliged to rest there just a moment 
 longer than was strictly necessary. ... At least, 
 not any more than I wanted to do any or all of these 
 things for any charming girl, on general principles. 
 
 Then, what did it all mean ? 
 
 There did not seem to be an answer to that question 
 
 except that answer that I made for myself, when 
 I struck camp, and started away hot-foot for Port 
 Moresby. The vision, fancy call it what one may 
 
 was certainly getting on my nerves. I had some
 
 ri8 WHEN THE RED GODS CALL 
 
 idea that I might escape from it, in escaping from these 
 lonely, unknown ranges, where fancy might well run 
 wild and, in any case, I had not much notion of 
 stopping up in the Owen Stanley Country with the 
 ghost of a girl haunting me, when the girl herself was 
 alive to exorcise the shade, only a few days away. 
 
 It took us over a fortnight to get back : some days we 
 made twelve miles or more, going from sunrise to sun- 
 set, some days less than half of that. It has been said 
 that travel in the far interior of New Guinea resembles 
 nothing so much as the progress of an ant up and down 
 the teeth of a comb; and indeed, the simile is not far 
 out I have a decided objection, myself, after a hard 
 day's climbing up and down, to be obliged to camp in 
 full view of the small spot from which I set out early 
 in the morning: but in some parts of the high ranges, 
 that is the commonest of trials. 
 
 It happened one evening that we camped on a shoul- 
 der of the range, just beside a drop that showed you 
 half New Guinea lying all pale and blue and silver- 
 threaded with rivers, right under the lee of an over- 
 hanging fringe of green pitcher-plants. A small 
 waterfall slipped down the cliff with a pleasant mur- 
 mur, off to the right, and after the boys had filled the 
 billy-cans, and were starting to make tea and boil rice, 
 I went down to the edge of the fall, and found a dry 
 stone where I could sit and smoke. 
 
 It sounded very sweetly, murmuring away there in 
 the gathering dusk, with the casuarinas sighing over- 
 head, and the faint crackle of the camp-fires just audi- 
 ble in the background. I listened rather lazily to it
 
 WHEN THE RED GODS CALL 119 
 
 for a minute or two, wondering what it reminded me 
 of. Then I remembered Stephanie Hammond's 
 voice ! 
 
 " This is beyond a joke ! " I said, getting to my feet 
 and banging the ashes out of my pipe. " How can a 
 girl's voice be like a hundred tons of water falling 
 over a cliff? Next thing I know, I shall be saying 
 that her smile is the morning, and her eyes are the 
 stars, and that the birds are singing her praises like 
 a blessed poet in a blessed Elizabethan madrigal ! If 
 I were in love with her but I never did cut any of 
 those silly sixpenny-ballad capers even when I was in 
 love with any of them and so far as this goes, I 
 swear I shouldn't worry if I'd never see her again in 
 my life!" 
 
 It will hardly be believed, but it is nevertheless true, 
 that two days later, having thought scarce a bit about 
 the Governor's daughter in the interval, I heard a little 
 green bird say " Stephanie ! Stepha-nie ! " as clearly as 
 if it were talking. I had always thought that bird said 
 " Bread and cheese " before : but it seemed to have 
 changed its tune. And on the next day we had to 
 cross a very high shoulder of the range, where the air 
 grew damp and cold, and there was nothing but a sea 
 of rolling clouds below the little native track we fol- 
 lowed, and English flowers grew by the way, lovelier 
 than all the blazing coral-blossoms and splendid f rangi- 
 panni of the plains, to the eye of the northern born. I 
 found white wild strawberry flowers here in the moss, 
 and forget-me-nots, and in one place even violets, 
 slight and pale, but exquisitely sweet.
 
 120 WHEN THE RED GODS CALL 
 
 "Violets . . . 
 Sweeter than lids of Juno's eyes, 
 Or Cytherea's breath," 
 
 came to my mind, as I stooped to pick them. 
 
 " I don't think she did look up," I said half-aloud, 
 sticking the flowers in the breast-pocket of my shirt. 
 Then I fairly stamped on the ground, and wondered 
 for the twentieth time had the sun got at my brain ? 
 
 We were nearing the coast now, and as we went 
 downwards day after day, it grew gradually hotter, 
 until the memory of those cool misty valleys where the 
 violets grew, far above the clouds, seemed like a dream 
 of some past life of bliss. In the low-lying plains of 
 the rivers, crossing leech-infested swamps where huge 
 alligators lay hidden, and the torturing scrub-itch insect 
 clung to every leaf and stem, the air was hot and heavy 
 as steam from some gigantic cauldron, and the carriers 
 lagged, near as we were to home. All day I walked, 
 soaked through with heat, and sat at night by my camp- 
 fire drying my few clothes, and making futile 
 " smudges " to smoke away the bloodthirsty hordes of 
 mosquitoes. I got thinner with the heat, and of 
 course there was fever about, and my temper suffered 
 a little. Garia was amazingly patient when I snapped 
 at him, and seemed worried when I would not eat : he 
 used to spend a good deal of his time slaving over the 
 cooking pots, trying to make something that would 
 tempt my appetite without much result, as a rule. 
 He used to watch me, too, with those melancholy 
 brown-glass eyes of his, when I sat doing nothing in
 
 WHEN THE RED GODS CALL 121 
 
 camp of an evening, and his conclusions seemed to 
 trouble him. 
 
 " I can't eat your beastly curry, Garia," I said one 
 night, handing back the tin plate to him. " I don't 
 know what stuff you've put in it." 
 
 " Me put all same thing me been put all-a-time," 
 remonstrated Garia, holding the plate out. " He good 
 curry. More better you eat him, Taubada." 
 
 " Take it away, I tell you, I've got fever," I said 
 irritably. 
 
 Garia laid a brown claw on my forehead, and with- 
 drew it, shaking his head until the drops of the last 
 shower flew from his bush of hair right and left. 
 
 " No got," he pronounced. 
 
 " I've got something," I said, staring blankly at the 
 dark green rampart of forest that shut in our little 
 camping-ground. The moon would not top that 
 mighty wall for hours to come, but the sky was 
 sparkling with stars. There was something comforting 
 about those stars: they reminded you that you and 
 everybody else would be dead and buried by and by, 
 and that nothing at all would matter then. . . . 
 
 " Taubada," said my Papuan solemnly. " You no 
 got fever. You think along one girl. I savvy." 
 
 " The devil you do ! " I said. " It seems you know 
 more than I do." 
 
 ; ' Yess-s, I savvy flenty, too much I savvy all the 
 time," assented the modest aboriginal. " Who belong 
 that girl, Taubada? I no hear him." (I have not 
 seen her.) 
 
 " There isn't any girl, Garia," I said.
 
 122 WHEN THE RED GODS CALL 
 
 " I think you lie flenty, Taubada," remonstrated 
 Garia, in a respectful tone. 
 
 " Oh, all right, I'm lying," I answered. It seemed 
 too much trouble to contradict anybody about any- 
 thing. 
 
 "Taubada, that girl got father belong her?" 
 
 " Yes, got father. You're laboring under a misap- 
 prehension all the same, my good Papuan." 
 
 " I no savvy that- fellow talk. Father belong him he 
 want flenty too much big pig, too much toya (arm- 
 shell), too much tooth belong dog? " 
 
 " Yes, Garia, she's too expensive an article alto- 
 gether, and in any case I'm not bidding." 
 
 "You no got?" 
 
 " No got." 
 
 Garia rolled a banana-leaf cigarette industriously. 
 
 " Father belong girl, I think more better you-me 
 kill him," he observed, in a casual tone. 
 
 " Afraid that cat won't fight, Garia. ' New Guinea 
 way ' is of no account here. Besides, the young lady 
 has no regard for me girl he no want." 
 
 " I think you lie, Taubada," repeated the monoto- 
 nous Garia. " All the girl he want you. You flenty 
 good fellow man. You fight all same bush-pig. You 
 say ' Damn ' all same Cap'n belong ship. All the 
 Papua girl, he like." 
 
 " Yes, but you see, this is a white girl, Garia." 
 
 " White girl he no all same ? " 
 
 I burst out laughing. Garia had at all events driven 
 the dark mood away. As for his question, it was what 
 might be honestly termed a " poser."
 
 WHEN THE RED. GODS CALL 123 
 
 " Well, Garia," I replied seriously " that requires 
 more thought than I am prepared to give: but a very 
 wise man has said that 
 
 ' The Colonel's lady and Judy O'Grady 
 Are sisters under their skins.' 
 
 What do you make of that ? " 
 
 " I savvy what he say," replied Garia, answering the 
 implied tone of patronage. " He say, all the woman, 
 he all same, underside skin belong him. He talk good, 
 Taubada?" 
 
 " By Jove, Garia, I think he does! " I said. " And 
 so do you, my woolly-headed child of Nature ' Out of 
 the mouths of babes and sucklings ' Go off and make 
 the boys turn in : we'll have an early start to-morrow." 
 
 " You eating that curry, Taubada? " begged the per- 
 sistent one. 
 
 " Oh, hang the curry, it's cold," I said. But it 
 tasted well, after all.
 
 CHAPTER VII 
 
 44TT7HEN I was prospecting for gold about the 
 * * D'Entrecasteaux," proclaimed Worboise, in a 
 loud bumbling bass, " I used to know a native called 
 Adilawa." 
 
 Everyone on the veranda exchanged looks of resig- 
 nation, and prepared to drop off into the state of coma 
 infallibly produced by Worboise's reminiscences. I 
 suppose they were interesting enough in their way, if 
 one hadn't had too much of them, and if they had not 
 invariably turned on matters already so familiar to 
 most of us as to have lost all spice of interest or ex- 
 citement. Strangers used to say that Worboise was 
 one of the most entertaining characters they had ever 
 known. So he was for a day. But we had him 
 all the time, and we were wearied of him as only one 
 wearies of people in the narrow circles of the Never- 
 Never lands, where everyone has full opportunity to 
 know a great deal too much about everyone else. 
 
 All Port Moresby was on the veranda that night, 
 the wide veranda of Government House, overlooking 
 the tangle of low uncleared bush on the hill, and the 
 mangrove swamp below, and the great moon-silvered 
 harbor, with Fishermen Island lying low and black 
 on the horizon, like a sleeping whale. The new Gov- 
 ernor, rather to the astonishment of the settlement, 
 
 124
 
 WHEN THE RED GODS CALL 125 
 
 had made a point of encouraging the scant dozen of re- 
 spectable whites to drop in in the cool of the evening, 
 and exchange their views on Papuan matters gener- 
 ally over a cup of coffee and a smoke. I don't think 
 any of us mistook this condescension for an example 
 of the equality that usually prevails in small and prim- 
 itive communities. We quite understood that Gov- 
 ernor Hammond was studying us for his own pur- 
 poses, and that his attitude towards his loyal subjects 
 of the capital was very much that of the conscientious 
 rector's lady towards the deserving poor in her " dis- 
 trict." Professions, like men, have the defects of 
 their qualities, and the training of the navy does not 
 make for breadth in matters social. 
 
 It was certainly an odd collection of humanity that 
 assembled that evening on the veranda, after the sun 
 had set in a blaze of marigold and geranium behind 
 the swaying palms, and the transparent tropic dark 
 had filled the hollow of the hills with its cooling flood. 
 A lean, yellow-faced brace of Government officials in 
 loose duck suits a gold-miner with cheeks boiled to 
 fish-belly white in the steaming bush of the Louisiades 
 a schooner captain, ruddy and bulbous-nosed a 
 storekeeper or two, tidy, dull, and curious one or 
 two beche-de-mer traders from the unknown West 
 a plump missionary a French recruiter Wor- 
 boise himself, appallingly fat in his shrunk khaki coat, 
 reen forced by a blue singlet instead of a waistcoat 
 myself, in as much of a white shell-jacket suit as the 
 cockroaches and silver-fish had left me His Excel- 
 lency, and His Excellency's daughter this was all
 
 !I26 WHEN THE RED GODS CALL 
 
 the company, and it left nobody out except the hotel- 
 keeper, who was his own barman and billiard-marker, 
 and the three sandalwood traders who were too busy 
 drinking up the price of their last cargo to attend to 
 anything else. This was Sunday night, and by some 
 odd convention an evening of special leisure to a 
 populace that was certainly not overworked on any 
 day of the week. 
 
 Stephanie, pouring out coffee at the far end of the 
 veranda, looked, as Leon Cruchet, the recruiter, said 
 ecstatically, like a white cloud come down from heaven 
 with an angel in the middle of it, in her tremendous 
 ballooning gauzy dress, which quite filled up the bas- 
 ket chair she was sitting in, and boiled frothily over 
 the sides. She wore the smallest possible waist (the 
 schooner captain, who was married, said it was a bit 
 too good to be true, in his opinion, but in our opinion, 
 that was only because Stephanie didn't like him, and 
 always poured out his coffee last). When she got up 
 to rustle back through the dining-room to her bedroom, 
 as she generally did very early in the evening, you 
 could hear her monstrously high heels go click-click 
 on the boards, like the sound of a wood-pecker on a 
 tree. We thought it all charming. We would have 
 thought it charming if she had worn a tower on her 
 head, like the ladies of the eighteenth century, or 
 chained her feet to her knees, like the fashionable folk 
 of the Middle Ages. She represented the whole world 
 of white women to those few solitary men of Port 
 Moresby, who had all of them wives or sweethearts or 
 sisters with white skins and straight hair, somewhere a
 
 WHEN THE RED GODS CALL 127 
 
 long way away, and who, all of them, missed those 
 other halves very much more than they would have 
 thought possible, while they had them. 
 
 As for me ... But I was telling about Wor- 
 boise and his yarn. 
 
 "... a native called Adilawa, a better fellow 
 you couldn't wish to see; he was six foot two in his 
 bare feet if you counted his hair; he was hereditary 
 head-boiler to his tribe. . . ." 
 
 " Hereditary what ? " gasped Stephanie : but Wor- 
 boise bumbled on, stopless and resistless 
 
 ". . . and every one he boiled they'd give him 
 its tortoise shell earrings now Adilawa he'd a reel lik- 
 ing for me and good-natured wasn't the word any- 
 thing he could do he would was it yams or boys to 
 carry for us or a bit of dog's meat, not bad either 
 when your cartridges are out and they think the world 
 of it themselves next to a roast of the forearm 
 well Governor Hartley he had me arrested for a bit 
 of a spree at Dinner Island the man being taken down 
 to Sydney by a mission boat to have his ribs fixed up 
 and as it wasn't convenient to jail a white man five 
 pounds says he and you may think yourself lucky all 
 the same as fifty to me being dead broke just then 
 now Adilawa he walks into court which was the deck 
 of the Government schooner and says he'll pay for 
 his white man and it was nearer ten pounds of tor- 
 toise shell than five that he had in his string bag and 
 Burns' Philp's trader he bought it cheap and I never 
 forgot it on Adilawa though says he like a reel gen- 
 tleman don't you worry for the boys they'll buy it all
 
 128 WHEN THE RED GODS CALL 
 
 up as like as not most of it'll come back to me in the 
 way of business later on they're reel nice fellows if 
 you can get the right way of them another time. 
 
 5> 
 
 "Worboise! Have a whisky?" . . . His 
 Excellency had been long enough in Port Moresby by 
 now to know how best the tide of pioneer eloquence 
 might be stemmed. 
 
 " I thank Your Excellency," said Worboise with 
 sudden formality, getting up to take the glass, and 
 plainly displaying one orange sock and one red, droop- 
 ing mournfully over the string lacing of his boots. 
 
 Stephanie, prettily posed in the midst of her white 
 cloud, fixed two blue eyes upon him, and asked 
 
 "And Adilawa is he dead?" evidently for the 
 sake of saying something polite. 
 
 Worboise lifted his flat fishlike eyes over the rim 
 of his glass, set it down, still staring immovably at 
 Stephanie, and whistled. 
 
 A sound like a dog awaking was heard from under 
 the house,' and immediately after, a large brown man 
 bounded up the steps of the veranda. He had an in- 
 credibly tall mop of hair, circled by a halo of casso- 
 wary feathers: a pencil of orange shell was thrust 
 through his nose: he had a bear's tusk slung locket- 
 wise on his chest, and wore a hornbill beak set in a 
 fiber armlet. The rest of his costume consisted of a 
 " jury-rigged " kilt of some checked cotton stuff, 
 which I conjectured, by Stephanie's instantly sup- 
 pressed look of horror, to be one of the Government 
 House kitchen dusters.
 
 WHEN THE RED GODS CALL 129 
 
 Worboise pointed a dark-nailed thumb at the ap- 
 parition. 
 
 " That's him, and the best cook-boy in the Terri- 
 tory," he said with feeling. 
 
 " Naturally," chuckled the Governor, who seemed to 
 be enjoying himself. 
 
 Stephanie's vocabulary appeared to fail her alto* 
 gether for a minute, and then 
 
 " Is he a Christian ? " she asked a little primly. 
 
 " Christian! Didn't I say he could COOK? " 
 
 ". . . Can she cook collops?" quoted the 
 Governor reminiscently. " Stephanie, my dear, you've 
 had a long day don't you think you must be tired ? " 
 
 I have described this evening, not because it was 
 remarkable in any way, but because it was a fair sam- " 
 pie of a good many others. I think I had been to 
 Government House some four or five times about 
 then. His Excellency had been kind enough to give 
 me a general invitation, and to repeat it, subsequently. 
 It seemed that he looked on me as useful source of in- 
 formation about the country, and wanted to draw me 
 out on the subject of my various experiences. So far, 
 I don't think he had got very much. I understood 
 His Excellency's methods of making people talk by 
 this time, and did not like them greatly. It displeased 
 me to see my " mates r ' of the Port, one after another, 
 turning their minds inside out for the diversion, infor- 
 mation, or what not, of Captain Hammond, uncon- 
 sciously led on by the " sounding brass and tinkling 
 cymbal " of his easy chatter, and never noticing the
 
 i 3 o WHEN THE RED GODS CALL) 
 
 stony gray eye that kept such sharp and unflinching 
 watch, above the talkative mouth. When he had 
 enough of any man, he could cut him short with scant 
 ceremony, and turn the conversation to something 
 else. I think I took a malicious pleasure in circum- 
 venting the queries which he put to me about the tribes 
 of the interior, the lie of mountains and rivers, and 
 so forth; but the truth was that I did not like him. 
 The old grudge of the merchant sailor against the 
 Royal Navy may have had something to do with it: 
 Captain Hammond's evident conviction that he had a 
 right to command any information, or indeed anything 
 else, that I might possess, had rather more : but strong- 
 est of all, in the elements of my growing dislike for 
 our Governor, was the knowledge that he considered 
 me, socially, as far removed from equality with him- 
 self and Stephanie, as his own little Cockney valet. I 
 had almost forgotten that such things as class distinc- 
 tions existed, living as I had done, for the most part 
 among those who were accustomed to rank men by 
 nothing smaller than character. But now that the 
 lines of social division were thus set up as a fence in 
 front of me, I could not help remembering that any 
 advantages attaching to the possession of birth and 
 education were mine as much as Captain Hammond's : 
 and certain small slights to which I was subject about 
 this time began to rankle. 
 
 It was all exceedingly foolish, of course. Why 
 should I, who years and years ago had thrown up my 
 hand in that idiotic game called Society, and resigned 
 all claim to its pasteboard prizes, grizzle because Caro-
 
 WHEN THE RED GODS CALL 131 
 
 Ian, the R. M., was constantly dining at Government 
 House, whereas I had not had, and was not likely to 
 have, a chance to break bread under its roof? Why 
 should I smart every time I met Captain Hammond 
 in the township, and was greeted with a curt nod 
 the R. M. being sure to receive a smile, a lift of the 
 hat, and probably a word or two as well? Why, in 
 the name of common sense, should I feel injured be- 
 cause Carolan got his clothes from Bond Street, and 
 spoke with the exquisite finish of accent that marks the 
 man who has associated with none but the cultured 
 classes? Why should I bristle like a hedgehog when 
 the young Resident Magistrate, evidently wanting to 
 make up for his superior's scant cordiality, drew his 
 chair up to mine of an evening, and began to talk to 
 me about trade-winds, and copra, and other subjects 
 carefully and kindly selected to suit my presumably 
 limited type of mind? Well perhaps I was begin- 
 ning to guess why. But I don't know that that made 
 matters any better. 
 
 And what about the Governor's daughter? 
 
 The visions that had broken my sleep, away in the 
 Owen Stanley Range, troubled me not at all, under the 
 tin roof of Worboise's modest shanty. I ate my meals 
 as usual, and Garia, I dare say, found me an easy mas- 
 ter. I had business in Port Moresby just then 
 only the disposal of my bird skins, but it took some 
 time. Afterwards by-and-by, I did not exactly 
 specify when I meant to make a second trip into the 
 interior, and get all that I could get of the gold I had 
 found, before the news of the discovery leaked out, as
 
 132 
 
 it was sure to do, sometime. There was no risk of 
 that at present, however the district was totally un- 
 known to whites, and the idea of prospecting in that 
 direction had never so much as occurred to anyone. 
 
 In the meantime 
 
 Well, in the meantime, I had spent several evenings 
 at Government House, with the rest of the proletariat, 
 seen Stephanie pouring out coffee, and told her that 
 I took a little sugar, and no milk. Also, I had been 
 introduced to her, with a batch of half-a-dozen others, 
 and received the seventh part of a pretty little bow and 
 smile. But not a word had I spoken to her, in the 
 way of ordinary conversation. In spite of His Excel- 
 lency's condescension, nothing could be clearer than the 
 fact that his daughter, socially speaking, was not 
 for us. 
 
 It always happened that the chairs were arranged in 
 such a way that no one could sit near Stephanie, un- 
 less he had the nerve (which nobody had) to pick up 
 his own chair, and carry it right past the Governor, 
 down half the length of the veranda. Carolan, it is 
 true, often occupied that favored place, but he was 
 usually planted there when we arrived, having already 
 dined at the house. Besides, Carolan was inside the 
 fence, outside of which we others strained and stared. 
 He used to take a pleasure, I thought, in showing off 
 his intimacy : he talked in low tones, and tried to make 
 Stephanie laugh at private jokes a thing she was 
 much too well-mannered to do and he used to hand 
 her cups and jugs as often as he could, taking such 
 care of the china that he never let it go until his long
 
 WHEN THE RED GODS CALL 133 
 
 brown fingers had safely met her little white ones, on 
 handle or edge. ... I used to wish, sometimes, 
 that I had the chance of showing Carolan a trick of 
 my own about squeezing hands: one that nobody has 
 ever wanted to be shown twice. . . . 
 
 It was a curious thing, that in spite of all Carolan's 
 attentions, and in spite of the demands made on her 
 by the claims of hospitality, and in spite of the fact 
 that she never seemed to look at me, Stephanie cer- 
 tainly heard everything I said to anybody on the ve- 
 randa. How did I know? I can't say. But I did 
 know. Her eyelashes, or her head, or something in 
 the way she smiled, told me every now and then I 
 can't explain how. I'm afraid I talked at her, when 
 I did talk, which was not very often. It was fas- 
 cinating beyond anything that I can tell, to see how 
 that swallow-swift mind of hers followed me from 
 point to point how quickly and certainly she caught 
 any allusion or idea that passed over the heads of the 
 others how, all unconsciously, she signified assent 
 with the fleeting shadow of a smile, or showed her 
 delicate disapproval by the compression of that flower- 
 petal lip. . . . 
 
 . . . In love with her? No, I was not. Inter- 
 ested, fascinated even, if you like, but as to love. 
 . . . Why, what an airy fleeting spirit of flower 
 and fire it was! Who could picture such a creature 
 as a wife, a mother? I was horribly afraid of her 
 marrying Carolan, and yet I didn't think she would. 
 Her very flirtation with him for she did flirt, openly 
 and unashamed was more like a child playing at
 
 WHEN THE RED GODS CALL 
 
 " grown-ups " than a woman venturing on that most 
 perilous of all games of chance, where hearts are laid 
 for stakes upon the table. Carolan's stakes might be 
 on the table, indeed, but if she were not playing with 
 counters, I was much in error. 
 
 Had she anything but counters to play with ? That 
 was assuredly none of my business: so it interested 
 me. I tried to read her face more than once I am 
 one of those who believe that a woman's face, and 
 indeed all of her, expresses her heart in characters 
 clear enough to tell many a secret, if one can but read 
 them. But the handwriting of physique was hard to 
 spell, in Stephanie's case. She had not the slit small 
 mouth, the thin eyelid, the hard hand, of the woman 
 too cold for love: nor was she, in spite of her delicate 
 make, of the swan-throated, dove-eyed, reed- voiced 
 type that can love nought lower than heaven. No, 
 after all, aerial creature though she was, there was 
 something about Stephanie a little warmer, a little 
 nearer, than angels and fairies. ... I think that 
 Herrick must have known her great-great-great-great- 
 grandmother an ancestress very like her charming 
 descendant-to-be when he wrote that immortal de- 
 scription of a dainty maiden 
 
 " Have you seen but a white lily blow, 
 Before rude hands have touched it? 
 Have you seen the fall of the snow, 
 Before the soil hath smutched it? 
 Have you felt the wool of the beaver, 
 Or stroked the swansdown over,
 
 WHEN THE RED GODS CALL 135 
 
 Or tasted the bag of the bee? 
 
 O so white, O so soft, O so sweet is she ! " 
 
 I don't seem to be getting on with my story. But 
 it is amazing how long that comparatively short period 
 of evening visits seems to have lasted, before the event 
 occurred that put a new face on things in general. For 
 years and years, I seemed to have been tramping out 
 from Port Moresby in the cool of the evening, carrying 
 a hurricane lantern, when there was no moon, because 
 of the snakes and crocodiles, in the big black man- 
 grove swamp making quick time across the flat on 
 the other side, where the mosquitoes came out of the 
 grass, and tore you like wolves breasting the hill 
 that led to Government House, and seeing, at last, the 
 orange glow of the lights, and the scattered forms in 
 the chairs, and the cloud of white drapery at the cof- 
 fee-table, and the half-naked boys handing cups, just 
 as usual feeling myself, just as usual, amazingly 
 out of breath when I reached the steps I, who could 
 beat my own mountain boys on a steep rise in the 
 eleven thousand foot ranges, where the air grows thin, 
 and knees begin to tremble, and lungs seem made of 
 lead I seemed, as I say, to have been doing all this 
 for years, and yet it was scarce six weeks since I had 
 come back to port, and this was, after all, but the fifth 
 time I had called, when Carolan, of all people on 
 earth, threw the match into the tow at last. 
 
 It came about like this. I was sitting half in the 
 shadow of a big pot of palms, listening, more or less, 
 to His Excellency holding forth with babbling fluency
 
 136 WHEN THE RED GODS CALL 
 
 upon the merits of different kinds of food for fowls. 
 Worboise was sleeping, all spilled out over his ham- 
 mock chair : luckily, he did not snore. Leon Cruchet, 
 who was loyal down to the tips of his cockroach-eaten 
 shoes, was trying, in a shocked and surreptitious man- 
 ner, to wake him up. Two Samarai traders were 
 smoking stick tobacco (the Governor never shared 
 his cigars), and staring out to sea. Carolan, listening 
 with half-an-ear, devoted the rest to Stephanie, whom 
 he was supplying with crystallized sugar flowers out of 
 a gilt French box evidently a present. 
 
 " Try a violet," he said. ..." No, sir, I would 
 certainly not leave the meat bones in the food. I know 
 it's done, but . . . The roses are almost the best, 
 Miss Hammond. You haven't tried the orange-blos- 
 som yet, have you it's the very best. Let me pick 
 you out one," with a look that was meant to say a 
 great deal. 
 
 " I think," said Stephanie coolly, " it's rather two 
 sweet to eat." 
 
 " Don't eat it, then take a piece to dream on 
 won't you ? " 
 
 " What will it make me dream of? " demanded the 
 girl, with a face of such childlike candor that one could 
 see she meant mischief. " There are things " - look- 
 ing rather too pointedly at her neighbor, " that would 
 wake one up crying for Nurse and the candle ! " 
 
 " I don't mean things, I mean people," replied Caro- 
 lan, who was nothing if not literal. " Don't you ever 
 dream of people ? " 
 
 For a moment I felt enraged with Carolan's atti-
 
 WHEN THE RED GODS CALL 137 
 
 tude, even more than his words. He seemed to have 
 the fine contempt for my presence and the presence of 
 the traders, that a certain section of society has for 
 its servants, when discussing affairs that ought to be 
 private. We were evidently " things," rather than 
 people, to him. But I had hardly time to feel 
 the smart, for, in answer to his banal question, 
 Stephanie . . . 
 
 I can hardly write it even now without emotion 
 it meant so much to me has meant and will mean 
 so much, through all my journey this side of the 
 grave. Diana's moon-ray, falling on Endymion in the 
 grove, can scarce have filled the common herdsman's 
 heart with such a flood of wonder and delight as that 
 which broke overwhelmingly on me in that moment 
 on me, the landless, moneyless, characterless, godless 
 wanderer when Stephanie looked at me and blushed. 
 
 It was only for a moment, and I am very sure that 
 no one else saw it. Now, if anyone else had seen it, 
 could he have guessed what a special significance it 
 bore . . . 
 
 No one but myself knew of those weeks in the Owen 
 Stanley Range when Stephanie's wandering wraith had 
 kept me from sleeping, night after night, and by its 
 strange vividness and aliveness had set me wondering, 
 often enough, if there were indeed "more things in 
 heaven and earth " than had hitherto been dreamed of 
 in my philosophy. . . . 
 
 Were there? Was this a proof? In the name of 
 all that was wonderful and delightful and impossible, 
 did she know?
 
 138 WHEN THE RED GODS CALL 
 
 From my shadowed corner under the palm, I saw 
 the quick blush fade as swiftly as it had come, and 
 give way to waxen white the flying, involuntary 
 glance bury itself in the ground. With consummate 
 grace, she took up the broken thread of her conversa- 
 tion, and wound it on so easily and smoothly, that no 
 one, save myself, could have noted the gap. She 
 smiled, she flirted, she played with her fan. But all 
 the time the waxen paleness remained, and the little 
 fingers, when they closed on the fan-sticks, shut so 
 tight that the knuckles shone out like ivory. 
 
 She was afraid. She was afraid of me. She was 
 afraid, in all the snowy little soul of her, that I should 
 guess . . . 
 
 What? 
 
 The answer to that broke like a fanfare of golden 
 trumpets into my mind. The whole world was sing- 
 ing, beating, shouting out the truth. The dim veranda 
 seemed ablaze with light with the light that never 
 was on sea or land : the light that shines but once on 
 any life, and never at all on some. And up to meet 
 that never-hoped-for splendor sprang the hidden fire 
 that had burned unknown so long, under dead wet 
 leaves of utter hopelessness : under white cold ashes of 
 forgotten sins: under beating rains of loneliness and 
 pain alive all the time, and burning upward to the 
 day. I loved Stephanie. 
 
 Yes, you had reason to be afraid, little white soul 
 trembling in the dawn of an unknown light. I knew 
 the stainless secret that you would have given your 
 life to hide : Father and friends and recognized lover
 
 WHEN THE RED GODS CALL 139 
 
 might do what they would the Cerberus that guards 
 the gateway between the under and the upper worlds 
 of society might howl his worst common sense and 
 common prudence, and providence for the future, and 
 settlements and dowries and all the wretched crew of 
 " social wants that sin against the strength of youth," 
 might shriek like a pack of wolves at our heels they 
 were all of no more account than a swarm of buzzing 
 flies: and like a swarm of flies they would be swept 
 aside, when they crossed the path of the strongest 
 thing in all the world the thing that makes the world 
 itself go round love. . . . 
 
 And all the time, His Excellency's excellent voice 
 kept burbling on it had only got one or two sen- 
 tences further on while the stars were changing in 
 their courses, and the world turning upside down, for 
 Stephanie and for me. You might put as much green- 
 stuff as you could get into the food-boiler, I was told : 
 it would do the birds no harm : and you were safe 
 quite safe with potatoes at any time. A friend of 
 his had got an excellent recipe for artificial food in 
 the Poultry Record, and reported astonishing results 
 in eggs: but he (the Governor) considered the Poul- 
 try Record a most unreliable rag, and he would never 
 be astonished to hear of heavy losses in Lord Van- 
 couver's farms had he mentioned that his friend 
 was that well-known agricultural Marquis ? 
 
 " Quite seldom," I said gravely. Leon Cruchet 
 looked at me with round eyes of horror, but the Gov- 
 ernor was absorbed in his subject, and flowed serenely 
 on. Then a brilliant idea occurred to me: my mind
 
 140 WHEN THE RED GODS CALL 
 
 was racing like a screw out of water, and I seemed to 
 be able to think at thrice the usual pace 
 
 " Do you know Fur and Feather, your Excel- 
 lency? " I asked. 
 
 " No is it a good paper? " 
 
 " There is nothing in the least like it/' I declared, 
 solemnly. This was quite true, since no such paper 
 ever existed. 
 
 " Where is it published ? " asked the Governor with 
 interest. 
 
 This was my moment. I reached for a pencil and 
 memorandum pad that I had noted on the table, wrote 
 on a blank leaf "Messrs. Lloyd Jones, Ltd., 49 
 Bouverie Street, Fleet Street, E. C." a sufficiently 
 convincing address for a pure impromptu of the min- 
 ute and handed the leaf to Captain Hammond. In 
 the moment that he was occupied reading it, I whipped 
 out another leaf and penciled a single line on it. 
 
 This was what I wrote my sailor's memory for 
 poetry, and the sight of a gayly bound volume on the 
 center table, together prompting me 
 
 " Matthew Arnold : Sonnets 'Longing' 1-6." 
 
 Then I pinched the paper into a tiny wad, and hid 
 it in my hand. 
 
 The Governor looked up from the slip I had given 
 him. 
 
 " Thanks it might be useful. I'll send for a sam- 
 ple copy if I remember," he said. And the subject 
 of the poultry-yard being for once exhausted he 
 turned to Leon Cruchet, who was all of a grin at His 
 Excellency's affability, and began drawing him about
 
 WHEN THE RED GODS CALL 141 
 
 certain alleged cases of blackbirding reported from the 
 East Cape country. 
 
 Now was my time. His Excellency had settled 
 down to business, and was trying, in quite a genial 
 manner ; to make the flattered Cruchet Incriminate his 
 partner. For the moment, he was fully occupied ; and 
 Fortune favors the brave in love as in war. This was 
 assuredly love I had known it for quite five min- 
 utes. If utter hopelessness had made me as diffident 
 as a girl hitherto, there was nothing of the girl about 
 me now, and I did not intend it to be very long be- 
 fore Stephanie should know as much. . . . The 
 passion-flower blooms swiftly, in the countries of the 
 sun, and your sea-gypsy with the salt drop in his blood 
 is the last of all men to let that blossom of blossoms 
 linger on the stem. . . . 
 
 I rose to say good-night, got a curt nod from the 
 Governor (he seemed to be just growing hot on the 
 scent of a kidnaped crow), and received the usual 
 condescending smile and shake-hands from Carolan, 
 who came down the veranda to meet me. It had not 
 happened hitherto that Stephanie had shaken hands 
 with the guests, at their departure. Things always 
 fell out not by accident, I am sure so that she 
 was right at the other end of the veranda about leave- 
 taking time, and no one seemed to have courage to 
 cross the invisible line of demarcation, and go right up 
 to her. I crossed it to-night, however, once and for 
 always. I walked down the full length of those echo- 
 ing boards and really, it needed all the courage I 
 had : went up to the little coffee-table, and shook
 
 142 WHEN THE RED GODS CALL 
 
 hands as I said " Good-night," just as if I had done 
 so every time I had taken my leave. And in the 
 course of the shake-hands, a minute wad of paper 
 passed from my fingers to Stephanie's. 
 
 She never turned a hair. I had hoped she would 
 not, and gambled on the chance. A girl as pretty as 
 Stephanie, I guessed, is not making her first acquaint- 
 ance with smuggled notes at one-and-twenty her 
 age, as I had lately learned it. She had perfect com- 
 mand of herself now, and did not flutter an eyelid, or 
 change color a shade, as she smiled her little formal 
 good-night. Worboise and the Captain and Cruchet 
 the latter much to His Excellency's disgust, I have 
 no doubt all got up at once to go, when I did, like 
 a flock of sheep following their leader, and still more 
 like sheep, they followed me up to something that they 
 never would have faced alone the Governor's daugh- 
 ter, no less. 
 
 I had not calculated on that turn of affairs, nor on 
 all the three shaking hands with Stephanie, as I had 
 done evidently thinking that we had all been guilty 
 of an unpardonable solecism in neglecting the cere- 
 mony hitherto. I must own that my blood almost ran 
 cold for a minute. But I need not have feared for 
 Stephanie. Without any hurry or confusion, her slim 
 right hand with its sparkling rings glided across the 
 left hand, almost imperceptibly, and then stretched 
 itself out empty. 
 
 The guests shook hands solemnly, and departed. 
 Captain Hammond looked on with a wooden face : 
 you could not tell what he thought. The last I saw
 
 WHEN THE RED GODS CALL 143 
 
 of Stephanie, as I went down the hill into the darkness, 
 was a vision of a still white figure on the steps, haloed 
 by the glow of the lamp from the house. ... It 
 made me think of saints I had seen in lighted shrines 
 along the midnight way, when I was tramping through 
 golden Andalusia, long and long ago. . . . The 
 poets were all abroad in my brain that evening. . . , 
 
 " So high, so far, and so apart "... I 
 thought, looking back at my Madonna in her shrine. 
 
 . . And yet, dear saint, I knew well that it would 
 not be very long before you were shut into your little 
 moonlit room with Matthew Arnold for company, 
 breathlessly turning over the leaves till you came upon 
 the sonnet, and then catching your breath with indig- 
 nation, and amazement, and . . . Oh, yes, I hoped 
 with something else as well when you came upon 
 the message that I had been audacious enough to send 
 you 
 
 " Come to me in my dreams, and then 
 By day I shall be well again, 
 For then the night will more than pay 
 The hopeless longing of the day. 
 
 " Come, as thou cam'st a thousand times, 
 A messenger from radiant climes . . ." 
 
 But for the next two lines I had no use 
 
 " And smile on thy new world, and be 
 As kind to all the rest as me."
 
 CHAPTER VIII 
 
 ' I V HE state of mind I went home in that night need 
 not be described to anyone who, like myself, has 
 seen the moon drop out of heaven into his hands be- 
 cause he cried for it and it certainly could not be 
 described to anyone who has not. I do not say that 
 I had had no hope at all of ever finding favor in my 
 lady's eyes, but at best, it was a mere "If only!" 
 sighed from the bottom of the heart in lonely hours, 
 and generally coupled to the pleasing fiction which I 
 had upheld so long that I wasn't in love with her, 
 really. 
 
 You see, there are so many " if-onlys " in life, little 
 hard buds that do not look as if they were ever meant 
 to blow, and never do blow, generally speaking. "If 
 only " one were a millionaire, or a President, in- 
 stead of a bank clerk. . . . "If only " one could 
 live a hundred years. . . . "If only " the dead 
 could come back to us from beneath the grass-grown 
 sod, on which the rains of many years have beaten 
 down. . . . "If only " the stars would stand still 
 in their courses for us, and the sun pause in the 
 heavens, and the world swing round from its orbit, to 
 bring us our heart's desire. . . . 
 
 " If only " the very words are a sigh of hopeless- 
 ness. And yet, "If only " does come true at times. 
 
 144
 
 WHEN THE RED GODS CALL 145 
 
 Paupers do wake up to find themselves richer than 
 princes. Plowmen do rise to sit on thrones. The 
 sickly lad outlives his century. Those counted dead 
 come back to life and love. The stars drop down from 
 heaven into our lap for playthings sometimes. 
 
 I had not touched intoxicants that day, and I drank 
 little at any time, yet I was drunk that night, if ever 
 a man in this world was drunk with sheer delight. 
 
 It seems absurd, on the face of it, that I should have 
 been so certain this peerless creature was beginning to 
 care for me, on evidence so slight, or that I should 
 not have stopped to consider what it could mean or 
 where it could all lead to, if she did. But " Credo 
 quia impossibile " was my creed that night, and I held 
 to it triumphantly. As to consequences I didn't 
 think, or argue, or plan : I just meant to marry her 
 that was all. 
 
 I don't know to this day what Worboise talked 
 about all the way back, but as I dare say he did not 
 know himself, that matters little. We turned in 
 shortly after getting back to the little tin shanty on 
 the beach. I need scarcely say I did not close an eye 
 all night. 
 
 Naturally enough, the chief desire in my mind next 
 day was, somehow or other, to maneuver an interview 
 with Stephanie : although how it was to be done, I did 
 not see for the moment. She had given up riding by 
 herself, owing no doubt to a recent report of tribal 
 disturbances in the Astrolabe, and now-a-days, the 
 chestnut mare, Daisy, never cantered along the hill
 
 146 WHEN THE RED GODS CALL 
 
 track, or over the flat, without His Excellency's big 
 bay, or Carolan's smart little pony close at hand. 
 She did not go out walking, as far as I knew: and of 
 course, private conversation on the Government House 
 veranda was an impossibility. 
 
 I can't say I felt quite so confident or as well 
 pleased this morning. The inevitable reaction was 
 getting in its work, and I began to wonder was it just 
 possible that I had been making the most colossal fool 
 on record of myself. After all, what justification had 
 I for behavior that, in the uncompromising glare of 
 the midday sun, seemed next to unpardonable? 
 
 Too restless to stay in the house, or endure Wor- 
 boise's endless talking, I wandered out in the full heat 
 of the day, and tramped I do not know how many 
 miles on the native track that leads past the Mission 
 grounds, towards the Laleki River. There had been 
 drought for a good many weeks, and the country was 
 baked to a cinder. Through the shadeless gray-green 
 eucalyptus, through the melancholy mop-heads of the 
 pandanus, through the dust vanes of the palms, the 
 sun struck straight and clear upon the crumbling earth, 
 from a sky as hard and blue as a bit of china. The 
 flat sapphire-colored sea, spread out between its cir- 
 cling headlands, looked as if you might turn the blade 
 of an ax on its surface. You could feel the heat 
 smacking you on the back, and slapping you in the 
 face, and in the hollows of the hills, where the air was 
 shut away, you gasped as if you were drowning. A 
 hard, brassy, heartless, wicked kind of a day: a day 
 when the country flaunted all its worst points in your
 
 WHEN THE RED GODS CALL 147 
 
 face, and threatened you as plainly as if it had shaken 
 a spear at you, after the manner of its sons. 
 Not a day, assuredly, to put heart into a man who was 
 beginning to want it. s 
 
 I don't know how far I had gone, or when I had 
 turned, but it was late in the afternoon when I found 
 myself close to the Mission again, within a few min- 
 utes of Government House. The sun, as it wore down 
 to the west, had lost not a whit of its power, and the 
 glare from the sea was almost insupportable. The 
 leathernecks clattered and shouted in the cocoanuts 
 like a ward of lunatics let loose. I hated them, and 
 I hated the Australian crows that were dodging in 
 and out of the mango boughs, screaming a long-drawn, 
 mocking, insulting " Ha-ha-ha ! " It seemed to me 
 that there was nothing tolerable on the island-conti- 
 nent of New Guinea that afternoon myself least of 
 all. 
 
 There is nothing sportsmanlike about Nature. 
 When you are down, she has a nasty way of kicking 
 you. She kicked me that afternoon not only kicked 
 me, but danced on me. At least, that was how I felt 
 when I suddenly met Stephanie and her father coming 
 out of the Mission grounds, and received, from one, 
 the usual curt official nod, from the other 
 
 Well, the cut direct given as a London lady can 
 give it, without actual rudeness just a bow with the 
 eyelashes, a slight change in the set of the lip the 
 mere ghost of a recognition, that said as plainly as 
 possible " I do not actually cut you, because I am too 
 polite, but . . ."
 
 I 4 8 WHEN THE RED GODS CALL 
 
 I stood there in the sun-parched grass, and wished 
 I was dead. 
 
 When I got back to the shanty, a little later, I found 
 some relief in kicking Garia off the veranda, where he 
 was chewing and spitting betel nut with hideous in- 
 dustry. 
 
 " You brute," I said, adding a strong expression or 
 two, " what do you mean by sitting there ? Go off 
 to the cook-house." 
 
 Garia took me in with his bulging crab-eyes, and 
 seemed to decide that I was not too dangerous to face 
 out, this time. 
 
 " Me wantum talk along Taubada," he pleaded, has- 
 tily shoving a quid into his cheek. 
 
 " Go and be hanged," was all the reply he got. 
 
 My black warrior began cramming his knuckles into 
 his eyes. 
 
 " Wantum talk," he sniffed. " Wantum one girl." 
 
 " So do your betters, confound you," said I, glaring 
 out to sea with my arms folded, and probably looking 
 like a cheap caricature of Napoleon crossing the Alps. 
 
 Garia, oddly enough, seemed to find something en- 
 couraging in my demeanor, for he continued, keeping 
 a cautious eye fixed on me, but showing off his tears 
 to full advantage. 
 
 " Wantum marry one girl." ( Sniff. J 
 
 "Where's your wife, you Brigham Young? " 
 
 " He no young, he flenty old, flenty fight, flenty 
 talk, no work. I been frow him away. Wantum 
 marry one girl, Taubada." He wept again. 
 
 " Garia, you're scandalous in the last degree : one
 
 WHEN THE RED GODS CALL 149 
 
 would think you belonged to the best set of London 
 society. What do you want ? " 
 
 " Wantum one " 
 
 " You said that before. What you want alonga 
 me?" 
 
 The crocodile tears dried up. Garia straightened 
 himself, wiped his eyes, and came down to business. 
 
 " Me wantum seventeen shilling, sixpence, buy five 
 pound tobacco 'long store." 
 
 " That's the price of your happiness, is it? " 
 
 " Yessir. Me gettum flenty bead, toya (armshell), 
 sapi-sapi (shell money). Me get tobacco. Mother 
 belong girl he talk bad along me, he tell, me no good. 
 Suppose me give five pound tobacco along that mother, 
 he talk good, he giving girl. Taubada, you give me 
 tobacco." 
 
 His face was as plaintiff as a child's, his big brown 
 chest, all shining with the cocoanut oil he had rubbed 
 on to make himself beautiful in his lady's eyes, heaved 
 up and down with his anxiety of soul. He knew very 
 well indeed that his wages were anticipated already 
 for a month ahead, and it was long odds this addi- 
 tional draft on the future would not be honored. The 
 tears were already in his eyes. 
 
 " Me wantum too much that girl," he sniffed. 
 
 Utterly unconscious of the sport the gods of chance 
 were having with me that day, I clinched my own fate 
 as well as his with my reply. 
 
 " I suppose one poor devil may as well be happy, if 
 another can't. There ! " and I threw a sovereign 
 across the veranda.
 
 150 WHEN THE RED GODS CALL 
 
 Garia' s face lit up as he caught it, but, with Papuan 
 brusqueness, he offered no thanks, turning off in the 
 direction of the township and the store, without a 
 word. 
 
 "Here, you ungrateful beggar, say thank-you!" J 
 called. 
 
 " Thank you, Taubada," he said, hanging on one re- 
 luctant foot. 
 
 " Whose girl is she what mother belong that 
 girl ? " I asked, feeling that I had some right to know 
 what my money was going to buy. 
 
 " Girl belong Guarume." 
 
 " Guarume ! There are two Guarumes that I know 
 of. What's the girl's own name? " 
 
 " Tararua, Taubada. He call Tararua," explained 
 Garia, fidgeting like a small boy with a sixpence in his 
 pocket, and a tart-shop round the corner. 
 
 "Where she stop?" 
 
 This last was shouted down the track, for Garia 
 had taken to his heels, and was off hot- foot for the 
 store. Most reluctantly he checked for a minute, 
 called out 
 
 "He stop Govamen' House, along Misi Sefania!" 
 and stood champing his bit in the pathway. 
 
 I was struck dumb for a moment. 
 
 " Taubada, I go ? " called the lovelorn suitor. 
 
 " Go ! " I answered, and he was away like a bandi- 
 coot. 
 
 It was evening now, and the sun was low down in 
 the west a cloudy evening, after the heat of the
 
 WHEN THE RED GODS CALL 151 
 
 day, and threatening storm. But for me, the sun had 
 only that moment risen. 
 
 Stephanie's maid and my cook-boy enamored of 
 each other, married, living together in the village ! ( for 
 all our servants, in Port Moresby, went out only by 
 the day). Why, a five-act comedy could not have 
 produced a neater, more convenient, more entirely de- 
 lightful coincidence. My spirits went up again with 
 a jump. If charity is a virtue, virtue was certainly 
 not going to be its own reward, in this instance. 
 
 It was quite a new cook-boy who turned up next 
 morning. Garia was a good-looking fellow in any 
 case, big for a Papuan, well-made, and finely muscled ; 
 and he did not neglect the business of personal adorn- 
 ment, as a rule. But his toilet to-day surpassed any 
 previous efforts in that direction. He had a bird of 
 paradise tail on each side of his head, a half-circle of 
 scarlet hibiscus flowers above his forehead, and an- 
 other of green parrot plumes behind. An aigrette of 
 combined flower and feather, two feet high, nodded 
 from the center of the enormous bush into which he 
 had teased his hair: his ears were loaded with strings 
 of shell money, and his elaborate harness of beads, 
 teeth, shells, and mother-of-pearl, rattled, as he walked, 
 like the pebbles on a stony beach when the tide is com- 
 ing in. 
 
 " Hallo, Garia, you're got up to kill ! " I called out. 
 " Guarume she been talk good alonga you, eh? " 
 
 " Guarume she talk good. I go talk along girl to- 
 day. Taubada, by-an'-by you let me go ? " he asked.
 
 152 WHEN THE RED GODS CALL 
 
 Worboise was out: I had the house to myself. I 
 beckoned Garia up on to the veranda. 
 
 " Look here," I said. " Is the girl willing to marry 
 you?" 
 
 " I think she wantum all right by-an'-by, suppose I 
 giving her flenty bead, calico, seegar," averred the 
 lover. 
 
 " Suppose you give her something big, would she 
 marry you straight off to-day ? " 
 
 " I no got somesings big," lamented Garia, turning 
 the plaintive stop on again, and watching me with a 
 magpie eye. 
 
 " How much she want, marry you to-day? " 
 
 Garia drew a big breath, and appeared to reflect. 
 
 " I think," he said, letting out all the wind in his 
 chest with one gasp, to express the magnitude of his 
 idea " I think, she marry me suppose I giving her 
 one big pig." 
 
 This was no joke, for the current value in trade of 
 a big pig was not less than five pounds. However, I 
 was not in a state of mind to count trifles. The sooner 
 that marriage took place, the better for me. 
 
 "You can have a day off and go and get one," I 
 said. " I'll pay for it. Bring the girl up here to-mor- 
 row, and let's see whether you have got good value. 
 I hope you've picked a decent looking one, at least." 
 
 I dismissed him with a lordly wave of the hand, and 
 sat down on the step of the veranda to muse and 
 dream on my own account. The lotus-eating mood 
 was on me that morning : I did not feel like working, 
 or thinking, or doing anything but lounging here by
 
 WHEN THE RED GODS CALL 153 
 
 the sea, listening lazily to the lazy drone of the coral- 
 reef, and 
 
 " Falling asleep in a half dream . . . 
 To watch the ripples crisping on the beach, 
 And tender curving lines of creamy spray. . . ." 
 
 . . . Confound the boy! 
 
 " Taubada," said a monotonous voice at my elbow. 
 
 It is not necessary, I suppose, to write down what I 
 replied. I had thought him half way to the village 
 by this time the simple savage, bent on prosecuting 
 his simple love affair, and innocent as a baby of all that 
 was in my mind. Why couldn't he hurry up and leave 
 me to my dreams ? 
 
 " Taubada," remarked the bridegroom, cramming a 
 chew of betel nut into his cheek " Tararua, she 
 say " 
 
 " Well ? What did she say ? Hurry up and get 
 off." 
 
 " Tararua, she say Misi Sefania, she been cly all 
 night." 
 
 He was gone this time gone like a lizard when 
 you hit at it with a stick. His paradise plumes were 
 nodding and streaming in the sunlight, a long way 
 down the track quite a hundred yards from the spot 
 where I was sitting on the veranda, petrified. 
 
 The simple savage, indeed! 
 
 " Worboise, I'm going to Government House," said 
 I, some hours later. 
 
 We had had our supper, excellently cooked by Adi- 
 lawa, the ex-head-boiler, and were smoking outside.
 
 154 WHEN THE RED GODS CALL 
 
 The night was outrageously warm, with a low plum- 
 colored sky, hanging heavily over a dead black sea. 
 Our sleeves clung wet with perspiration upon our arms : 
 we had taken off ties, unfastened shirts, kicked off 
 shoes, but coolness was not to be found, that night, 
 upon the length and breadth of New Guinea. 
 
 " Now look here, boy," said Worboise, taking his 
 pipe out of his mouth, and turning a reproachful gaze 
 on me " do you think this is the sort of night to 
 tramp two miles out and home ? " 
 
 He always called me " boy " not because I was 
 one, at thirty years of age, but because I suppose 
 he was misguided enough to have some sort of a fancy 
 for me, in spite of my being, like Carlyle, " gey ill to 
 live wi'," at times. 
 
 " Yes, I do," I said selfishly, knowing that the old 
 fellow was too good-natured to refuse, and too so- 
 ciable to let me go alone. " You won't feel the heat 
 half so much if you get up and stir about." 
 
 " Well, boy, youth will be served," said my compan- 
 ion, getting up heavily. " You won't want me to put 
 on a collar? " with a reproachful, fishlike gaze. 
 
 " No, no ! " I said hastily. " I shall wear one my- 
 self at least, I'll take it in my pocket, and put it on 
 after the flat but you're all right with a tie." 
 
 Worboise, nodding his head sadly, went into the 
 house to adorn himself, and shortly afterwards 
 emerged ready for the road. 
 
 Blessings on his dear old stupidity! He never 
 asked a question, or saw anything that you didn't want 
 him to see, or remarked on your dress, or demeanor,
 
 WHEN THE RED GODS CALL 155 
 
 or indeed, on " anything that was yours." He never 
 wanted to know, in short. Despite his appalling talk- 
 ativeness, he was not one of the worst to get on with. 
 And I really think the Governor liked his visits and 
 himself as well as he liked anyone certainly better 
 than he liked mine, or me. 
 
 Certainly, my welcome that night was a good deal 
 cooler than the weather. I do not know what His Ex- 
 cellency had seen or guessed come to that, there had 
 really been nothing, so far, for him to see but I had 
 scarcely set foot on the veranda, before it became plain 
 that my presence was not ardently desired. Captain 
 Hammond greeted me in a wooden manner peculiar to 
 himself, and immediately became absorbed in some 
 small carpentry upon which he was at work, without 
 another word. Stephanie had not made her appear- 
 ance yet. Carolan was not there either. Worboise 
 and I were left alone with the Governor, and His Ex- 
 cellency did not seem inclined to smooth away any 
 awkwardness we might feel. 
 
 My good old chum weighed in at once with a de- 
 tailed account of a head-hunting party in the Solomon 
 Islands, in which he had been obliged to join, on pen- 
 alty of leaving his own head behind him to decorate 
 the local devil-temple. I must say there was rather 
 too monotonous a flavor of cannibalism about Wor- 
 boise's reminiscences, and it seemed as if His Excel- 
 lency had had as much anthropophagical anecdote as he 
 cared for, on the whole : for he cut brusquely into 
 Worboise's yarn before long, just as the head-hunt- 
 ers had set the narrator to gather Solamum Anthro-
 
 156 WHEN THE RED GODS CALL 
 
 pophagus for the flavoring of the pot, as a preventive 
 of indigestion and asked him did he ever lose his 
 keys? 
 
 Worboise gasped at the sudden change of subject, 
 and looked more fishlike than ever for a moment. He 
 had scarcely time to get his bearings again, and start 
 a fresh yarn about the time he lost the key of the box 
 that had all his cartridges in it, just as a hundred New 
 Hebrideans armed with Tower muskets were coming 
 down on his schooner, before the Governor scattered 
 the New Hebrideans, as he had scattered the Solomon 
 Islanders, with a yawn and an interruption. He suf- 
 fered extremely from the loss of keys by the boys, he 
 informed Worboise (still leaving me out of the con- 
 versation) and he was making a key-box with a slit 
 in the lid, to be kept locked, and to receive the vari- 
 ous keys after the fashion of a charitable collection- 
 box in a church. How they were to get out again I 
 forget, for at this point my attention became diverted 
 to certain mysterious noises from the back of the 
 house, and I was dimly conscious, for the next few 
 minutes, of a hard wooden voice proclaiming with 
 countless capital I's, a great many general truths about 
 keys and locking up, and staples and padlocks and let- 
 ter locks and chains all for the benefit of Worboise, 
 who was listening in a dull hypnotic manner, and 
 seemed to feel that somebody had taken something 
 from him, somehow. 
 
 . . . What could it be? It sounded like the 
 groans of someone being choked to death someone 
 fat and unwieldy, who made a heavy scuffling on the
 
 WHEN THE RED GODS CALL 157 
 
 earth, and fought hard but hopelessly for freedom. 
 . . . There were voices, too whispering, sup- 
 pressed, excited voices, and feet that pattered and ran. 
 . . . Native voices, native feet except. 
 
 No, surely, it was not the voice of my lily maid that 
 I caught for a moment, raising itself incautiously, and 
 then subsiding Stephanie's voice in that galley, 
 whatever it was ? 
 
 Well, if not, it was certainly her French shoes that 
 clicked hurriedly across the dining-room a minute after, 
 and herself slightly blown, if one may use the word 
 of anyone so elegant and just a little less exquisitely 
 neat than usual who appeared on the veranda, and 
 billowed into a basket chair, after shaking hands with 
 Worboise and myself very politely, and just as if she 
 had never seen us before. I liked that, on the whole : 
 she was overdoing things in a way that pleased me 
 . . . if I said through experience, it would look 
 vain, so I won't. 
 
 Dear lily-maid, she looked white enough this even- 
 ing to suggest that Garia and Tararua between them 
 had been telling the truth about her. . . . Crying 
 all night! I could have killed myself, for being the 
 cause of that and again, could have killed the gos- 
 siping Garia, at the thought that perhaps I wasn't, 
 after all! 
 
 She was astonishingly talkative and gay to-night 
 just a little more so than was natural, perhaps, but 
 it was charming, nevertheless. She was quite witty 
 with her father on the subject of the keys, and almost 
 flirted with Worboise, and she stitched away with
 
 158 WHEN THE RED GODS CALL 
 
 lightning stitches at the bit of embroidery in her lap, 
 and laughed at everything and nothing . . . and 
 didn't look at me at all. As for me, I stared 
 boldly, and rudely, and all the time. I was getting 
 tired of this business of stolen glances, which was not 
 at all in accordance with my constitution. 
 
 If the Governor saw me, I did not care. A cat 
 may look at a king, and an unlucky dog of a trader, 
 at a queen, without asking for permission, any day. 
 
 Suddenly, through the far-off murmur of the sea, 
 and the nearer murmur of pleasant conversation, broke 
 a piercing yell from the immediate rear of the house, 
 followed by a frantic scuffle, and a chorus of native 
 shrieking and laughing. 
 
 "It's got away!" said Stephanie, half-rising from 
 her chair. 
 
 "What has got away? what is the meaning of 
 this ? " demanded His Excellency, in a peculiarly Ex- 
 cellent manner. " May I ask, Stephanie, what possi- 
 ble connection you can have with the killing of pigs 
 which is apparently the cause of the agitation out- 
 side and what reason anyone can have for killing 
 or bringing, pigs here at this time of night?" 
 
 Most girls would have wilted away under the Gov- 
 ernor's tone, but Stephanie had something of Stephen's 
 spirit in her, to all appearance, and she answered with 
 perfect composure. 
 
 " It's Tararua's wedding, Papa. They aren't killing 
 the pig it's a present." 
 
 Obviously, Garia, having " found out a gift for his 
 'fair " had come up to present it in person. Stephanie's
 
 WHEN THE RED GODS CALL 159 
 
 words seemed to suggest that the gift had won the 
 lady's heart. 
 
 " What were you doing out there ? " 
 
 Stephanie drew a silken thread through her canvas, 
 and inspected the effect 
 
 " I ? Oh, Tararua wanted me to see the presents : 
 she has got quite a lot of things, beads and tobacco 
 and so on, as well as the pig. I'm sorry it disturbed 
 you, Papa : I was trying to make them keep quiet." 
 
 " Where does the marriage take place ? " demanded 
 the Governor. I could see that he was only follow- 
 ing out his usual habit of inquiring into everybody's 
 business on general principles, but I could also see that 
 Stephanie was not quite easy. 
 
 " They're all going down to Hanuabada for the 
 feast now," she said. " I don't think there will be 
 much noise just a little dancing." 
 
 The Governor drove his chisel into the wood. 
 
 "Who's she marrying?" he asked. 
 
 " A Motuan boy from the village." Stephanie had 
 stopped embroidering, and was sitting with her hands 
 folded up tight on her work. 
 
 Wh " 
 
 . . . It was an awful crash. The palm-stand 
 was solidly made, but the great clay pot that held 
 the plant burst like a shell on the floor, and scattered 
 earth and roots and leaves over half the veranda. I 
 was fulsomely apologetic ; I abused my own clumsiness 
 heartily: I groveled on the floor, helping the boys to 
 clear up. 
 
 The incident lasted a good five minutes, and by the
 
 160 WHEN THE RED GODS CALL 
 
 time it was concluded with the departure of the de- 
 pressed palm for re-potting, nobody was thinking 
 about anything else. 
 
 . . . Or almost nobody. As I went back to my 
 seat, Stephanie, screened by my passing figure, looked 
 up at me and smiled a smile that said " Thank-you ! " 
 as plain as print. 
 
 So she knew and she did not mind and we 
 were allies she and I, against her father ! 
 
 " It marches," said I to myself, as I regained my 
 seat. 
 
 I said before, and I say again, that the Governor 
 could have known nothing could have seen noth- 
 ing nothing at all. But Providence had certainly 
 furnished him with means of informing himself about 
 other folks' affairs, in some occult manner special to 
 himself. I did not know how much he comprehended, 
 but I was sure that it was no small proportion of the 
 truth, when I rose to say good-by that night. 
 
 Stephanie had been sent off to her room, on the 
 grounds that she looked tired which was true 
 enough. I did not care to stay on after she had left, 
 and rose to take my leave almost immediately. 
 
 " Good-night," said His Excellency, standing at the 
 top of the steps and giving me a wooden hand. " I 
 have been much interested in all you've told me about 
 the country and so on: very good of you to take the 
 trouble. You must call here after your next journey 
 inland, and tell me all about it I've been interested 
 in meeting you, Mr. a Mr. Lynch but you
 
 WHEN THE RED GODS CALL 161 
 
 really mustn't let me take up any more of your time. 
 Good-by." 
 
 . . . Down the hill, out on to the dark flat, 
 where the mosquitoes worried like dogs, through the 
 black mangrove swamp where the crocodiles crept 
 . . . for the last time. I had been turned out 
 civilly, amiably, but unmistakably, turned out. 
 
 Was it marching? 
 
 Good old Worboise had been up in the clouds as 
 usual, and never heard a word. He told me, on the 
 way home, about the cannibals of the Aird River 
 country, and how they boil sticks of sage with their 
 food, and about a Fly River tribe that eats corpses, 
 provided they haven't died of a wasting disease that 
 spoils the fat. I half heard him, and half not. I 
 was thinking busily, and the burden of my thought 
 was What next ? 
 
 Reading all this over, here in cool blood, with time 
 aye, time and to spare for quiet thinking, I have 
 become conscious that some excuse for my conduct 
 would be well in place. If I had one to offer, I would 
 certainly add it to these scrawled and melancholy 
 pages. But I have not. I did what was foolish when 
 I married Kari the Papuan, and I suffered for it. I 
 did what was both selfish and foolish, when I made 
 love to snow-drop Stephanie, and not only I, but she, 
 have suffered, and will suffer, for that. If I could 
 excuse myself, I would, but what excuse is there, save 
 that God, or the Devil, or it may be myself, made me 
 one of those who never count the cost?
 
 162 WHEN THE RED GODS CALL 
 
 And yet, perhaps there is an excuse after all; 
 but it is hard to put it into words. Or rather, it is 
 so easy to put it into words, that the words have lost 
 all their force. What is it, to say " I loved her, 
 she loved me " ? Every schoolgirl's manuscript 
 " story " tied up with pink ribbon, and hidden in a 
 bottom drawer, reeks with the phrase. Every ill deed 
 done for lawless passion, since the days of David 
 every silly match of an impulsive pair who are likely 
 as not to figure in the divorce courts before five years 
 are out is undertaken under the shield and justi- 
 fication of a feeling no nearer to most of those who 
 call upon its name, than are the stars to earth. But 
 still, the truth remains though it takes the pen of 
 a Petrarch, a Shelley, to tell it worthily and clearly, 
 that " true love " is not as other love, and to win it 
 in all honor and honesty, a man and a woman may 
 pay all the price that the world can ask of them. It 
 will be a heavy price : the Fates who hate true lovers, 
 take care of that.
 
 CHAPTER IX 
 
 T WAS caulking Worboise's ancient dinghy down 
 * on the beach next morning, when Garia appeared 
 with the bride, eager for my opinion on his bargain. 
 His finery of the preceding week was replaced by a 
 plain cotton " rami " or kilt, and, like the heroine of 
 an early Victorian novel, he wore, " but a single flower 
 in his hair." Obviously, Garia was of those who do 
 not believe in running after a 'bus when you have 
 caught it. 
 
 Tararua, the bride, was handsome according to na- 
 tive ideas: her nose was flat, and she had a mouth 
 like a frog, but she was a fine, upstanding, large- 
 limbed girl, with big black eyes, and shining teeth 
 not yet blackened by betel nut. Her demeanor was 
 better suited to a funeral than a honeymoon, being 
 solemn, sour, and unsmiling to the last degree: this, 
 however, was merely dignity, and not meant to suggest 
 dissatisfaction with her partner. I looked at her with 
 a good deal of interest it was strange to think of 
 this brown-skinned, bush-headed creature, in her ballet- 
 skirts of colored grass, attending on my dainty lady 
 waking her from her morning sleep, taking care 
 of her pretty clothing and delicate toilet accessories, 
 knowing or guessing at all her little secrets, as a 
 woman, black, white or brown, will always know or 
 guess at the heart of another. . . . 
 
 163
 
 164 WHEN THE RED GODS CALL 
 
 Coarse in essence as I knew the best of these savages 
 to be, it seemed almost a sacrilege. 
 
 And then came the burning recollection of that 
 other brown, half-naked girl, gentle and attractive 
 enough to outward seeming, untamed daughter of can- 
 nibals at heart, who had been my own married wife, 
 and whose successor, so please you, I was aiming to 
 make out of Stephanie Hammond ! 
 
 The insult of it ! A widower, to most young girls, 
 is less attractive than the bachelor who may at least 
 be supposed to meet his ideal for the first time in 
 her to whom he gives his name but the widower of 
 a black! 
 
 " I hope she'll never know," was the best I had to 
 say for myself. 
 
 " Taubada, you like him?" asked Garia anxiously. 
 He pushed the girl forward, turned her round like a 
 doll, smacked her solid arms with his hand, and showed 
 the thickness of her hair by a tug that would have 
 made a white woman shriek. Tararua only stared 
 at me with her glittering beady eyes, and kept her 
 hands stiffly by her sides in the attitude of " Atten- 
 tion." She was evidently determined to exhibit the 
 best of manners. 
 
 " Why, yes, Garia, I think you've made a satisfac- 
 tory bargain," I said, dissembling my laughter. " She 
 cost a good deal, but she seems to be a pretty fair 
 article. Does she like you ? " 
 
 " I no savvy," replied Garia contemptuously. Then, 
 with a sudden eldritch cackle " Plenty I make him
 
 WHEN THE RED GODS CALL 165 
 
 work by-'n'-by ; he go 'long bush to-day, cut down tree 
 for fire, carr)r .water, carry wood, carry yam. Flenty 
 he work, this my wife," exultantly. 
 
 "What about Misi Sefania? Won't she want 
 Tararua ? " 
 
 " Misi Sefania he tell Tararua he stop 'long village 
 to-day. To-morrow, all the time, he going Govamen' 
 House eight o'clock. Five o'clock I make him get 
 up ... quick, go work for me. Very good 
 thing I getting wife. Taubada, by-'n'-by you getting 
 some wife?" 
 
 " Perhaps, Garia." 
 
 " He work along you flenty ? " 
 
 " No, you bet she won't. I work for her." 
 
 The bride's face gave signs of life at this, and her 
 frog-mouth emitted a giggle. 
 
 " New Guinea way more better," said Garia cheer- 
 fully. His partner giggled again, and fixed me with 
 a beady stare. She seemed to think the conver- 
 sation irrelevant, and to be waiting for something 
 else. 
 
 " Well, if you're going to send Tararua to the 
 bush, you may as well come back to your work," 
 I said. 
 
 Garia saluted (he had been in the Armed Native 
 Constabulary) and went into the house, yelling an 
 order to Tararua, in a martial tone, as he went. The 
 bride, however, stood planted there, looking at me, 
 and still giggling. She was certainly waiting for 
 something. 
 
 " You want to talk along me ? " I asked.
 
 i66 WHEN THE RED GODS CALL 
 
 The giggles redoubled. Tararua bent her chin down 
 on to her tattooed bosom, and looked up under her 
 eyelashes. 
 
 "About Misi Sefania?" 
 
 "E ! " came the reply, and forthwith the floodgates 
 were loosed. A perfect river of pigeon-English 
 poured out on me, mingled with cackles of the purest 
 joy. Your New Guinea native is a born newsmonger, 
 and Tararua's cup of gossip was full to-day. That 
 she understood the purpose of her hurried marriage, 
 however, and meant to live up to the situation, was as 
 clear as daylight. 
 
 " Govana, he been talk strong along Misi Sefania," 
 she rattled breathlessly. " Cook boy he telling me, 
 Govana he talk Misi Sefania, blekfas' time to-day, 
 he saying Misi Sefania look out along Misi Lineti 
 (Lynch), Misi Lineti giving letter." 
 
 How in heaven . . . But I wanted to hear 
 more. 
 
 " Misi Sefania, he talk along Govana, he says Govana 
 tell dam lie (I recognized the native version here), 
 he go along him room, shut door." 
 
 "Was she crying?" I asked. 
 
 " Laa-si ! " said Tararua, using the emphatic Motuan 
 negative, her eyes sparkling with excitement. " He 
 no cly. He flenty wild along Govana. By-'n'-by Govana 
 he go 'long Misi Sefania room, he say, he wanting some- 
 sings, cook-boy no savvy what he want. Misi Sefania 
 he say ' No, no, you resulting me, I no say nothing, 
 you go to hell.'' (Native version obvious again.) 
 " Govana he say ' All right, you stop, by-'n'-by you
 
 WHEN THE RED GODS CALL 167 
 
 talk.' He lockum door, he go out, Misi Sefania he 
 stop." 
 
 This was news with a vengeance. How His Ex- 
 cellency had discovered the incident of the note, I 
 could not guess : but it was exactly like him to ferret 
 it out. It was clear that he had taxed Stephanie with 
 favoring me, that she had denied it as she had 
 every right to do, considering the extremely small 
 amount of encouragement she had really given that 
 she had taken refuge from further questioning in her 
 room ; that he had followed her, tried to extract some 
 kind of information, or possibly some promise, from 
 her, and failed, and locked her in, to meditate on her 
 supposed sins! A heavy hand, indeed, to deal with 
 my fragile, lonely little lady. What was she doing 
 now? Crying? No, I would swear not. There was 
 a blade of steel in that silken scabbard Stephanie 
 was Stephen's daughter, though her beauty could 
 scarce be owing to him. What would come of war 
 between such a pair one hard, tyrannical, overbear- 
 ing, the other fragile, yet firm, to be broken, perhaps, 
 but never to be bent ? . . . And I I the cause ! 
 
 I threw the bride a stick of tobacco, and told her 
 to go. Then I went into the house, and sat down 
 on the cane lounge, my head on my hands. My mind 
 was spinning like a screw raised out of water : I could 
 not think. 
 
 Old Worboise came out of the inner room, looking 
 exactly like the Mad Hatter, with a large pannikin of 
 eleven-o'clock tea in one hand, and a piece of bread,
 
 i68 WHEN THE RED GODS CALL 
 
 extensively bitten, in the other. He sat down on the 
 other end of the lounge, and looked at me, chewing 
 solemnly. 
 
 " Boy, you'd better have it out," he said. (As if 
 my distress were a tooth.) "You know I don't go 
 to ask questions, not in an ordinary way. But this 
 is beyond ordinary. Set up comfortable, and say it 
 all." 
 
 I do not know that there was much comfort within 
 range that day, but I sat up and told the whole story, 
 leaving nothing out. And certainly at the end I felt 
 better. 
 
 Worboise chewed industriously throughout the 
 whole recitation, making no comment at all. When 
 I had done, he swallowed his last morsel, emptied the 
 pannikin, and set it down. I can see him now, sitting 
 there in the warm dusk of the little iron house, with 
 a hand on each knee, looking not towards me at all, 
 but out through the fiery-white oblong of the door- 
 way, on to the sand, and the palms, and the burning 
 sea. 
 
 " Boy, it's a bad business," he said at last. 
 
 "Why?" I demanded hotly. 
 
 Worboise took up his tin pannikin again, looked in 
 it as if to find an answer, and set it down. 
 
 " Because," he said, " because of all this sort of 
 thing, you know." (I could have sworn his mind 
 still clung to the battered piece of tinware in truth, 
 none of the household appointments were of the best. \ 
 " It don't fit in, somehow." 
 
 " Well, I'm not a beggar," I said. " You know,
 
 WHEN THE RED GODS CALL 169 
 
 I've always worried out a good living ever since I 
 came to the Territory, and I only wish I'd a quarter of 
 the money I made and spent before that. I've as good 
 prospects as any of these whipper-snapper Govern- 
 ment officials better, if it comes to that. Why, 
 which of them could make two hundred in six weeks, 
 as I did in the Astrolabe and the Owen Stanley, not 
 long ago ? And I've other irons in the fire that you'll 
 hear all about by and by. Why, I'm one of the most 
 successful men in New Guinea, take it all round. If I 
 were to buy a schooner, and recruit for the Queensland 
 plantations, or go back to the beche-de-mer or the 
 pearl shelling, I could make a little fortune in no 
 time." 
 
 " Well, boy, you know I'm no swell myself, but I 
 was reared in the Old Country, and I know their ways. 
 And you was something of a swell yourself, when 
 you was a nipper, so I believe. Now do you think 
 New Guinea ways is ways for a swell to take to ? " 
 
 " By God, I do," I said, getting up to my feet, 
 " swell or no swell if she loves me. If she 
 does, she'd go to hell with me, and be happier there 
 than in heaven without. If she doesn't, why, let her 
 marry that lady's lapdog Carolan, and go home and go 
 to tea-parties all the rest of her life I don't want 
 her. But, Worboise, she does. I'll swear it. I'm 
 willing to allow that it's foolish of her to care for a 
 rip like me, but seeing that she is foolish in that 
 particular way why, what's there in her different 
 from the women who helped to make Australia forty 
 years ago, that she shouldn't care to take the chances
 
 170 WHEN THE RED GODS CALL 
 
 they did? They were just her sort, many of them 
 and they came out from home with their men, and 
 stuck to them through thick and thin and I'd stake 
 my life on it that if you could round up all that's 
 left of that crowd, and all that's left of their sisters 
 who stayed at home, and kept their nice complexions 
 and their place in society you'd find the Australian 
 lot thought they'd made the best use of their lives. 
 . . . And think of her people, who they were 
 Admiral Steve Hammond of Nelson's staff Scott 
 Hammond, who nearly did Speke out of the discovery 
 of the sources of the lile Gilbert Hammond of the 
 Crimea and as for her father, he's the hardest case 
 I ever met, but people do say the battle of Alexandria 
 wouldn't have gone the way it did if he hadn't been 
 there. Blood tells, a girl with that ancestry wasn't 
 meant to spend her life curling her hair for dinner- 
 parties. And she's stood up to that old devil of a 
 Governor as not one of his officers would have dared 
 to do in a month of Sundays. And we're as much 
 engaged as if I'd asked her twenty times, and seen 
 her a hundred. We fell in love with each other the 
 day I held her horse on the Laloki track, only we've 
 both been fools enough not to know it and well, 
 she's mine, Worboise, and I'll tell her so, and claim 
 her, just as sure as there's a God in heaven." 
 
 " Boy, boy, boy ! " old Worboise sighed, looking at 
 me as I tramped up and down the room. " Boy, I 
 seen many an 'asty one, but never one as 'asty as 
 you. Pluck you have, and luck you have, and looks 
 you have, such as women likes better on the whole
 
 WHEN THE RED GODS CALU 171 
 
 than the pop-eyed sort with a pretty mustarsh, but 
 common sense you 'aven't, and not if one was to wash 
 you out pannikin by pannikin till you was all washed 
 down stream, one wouldn't find a color of it in you." 
 
 " Common sense ! " I said. " The boast of everyone 
 who isn't half alive! If one is to judge of it by the 
 sort of folk who have got most of it, heaven save 
 me from having any. But I never really knew what 
 most people mean when they talk about it and I don't 
 believe they know themselves." 
 
 " Some do, some do," answered old Worboise pa- 
 tiently, " but you've 'it the nail on the 'ead when you 
 say you don't, boy. I'm not blamin' you, you was 
 just made that way." 
 
 " Well, you who have so much," I said, rather more 
 scornfully than was generous, " tell me what you think 
 I ought to do." 
 
 " I won't go so far as that, but I'll tell you what 
 I think you oughtn't to. I know you're fair jumpin' 
 to be off to Government House, and tell His Excel- 
 lency he don't know 'ow to manage his own family, 
 and let the young lady out of her room, which she's 
 like enough out of by now, anyways. But I wouldn't, 
 boy, if I was you." 
 
 " Well, I've got to see her somehow," I declared. 
 
 " If you've as much sense as would lie 'eaped up 
 on a thruppenny-bit, you'll wait till you've cooled off 
 a bit. You see, boy, if a man goes to 'andle women 
 or 'orses without he's cool, he's liable to get thrown. 
 You wait till to-morrow, when that Tararua's back 
 at her work, and don't you fret your insides out about
 
 172 WHEN THE RED 'GODS CALL 
 
 your girl being in a comfortable bedroom for a day, 
 with 'er books and 'er work, regular meals and drinks. 
 I'll lay you His Ex. is fair ashamed of himself by 
 this time, and she'll be out for a ride this afternoon 
 same as usual. You get up Paga Hill after dinner and 
 see." 
 
 The strain and the fury seemed to have eased off 
 by now : I was able to think, and I sat down again. 
 
 " I'll wait," I said. " Only till to-morrow, though. 
 I expect things will have straightened out by then." 
 
 " You may take your davy of it. Now look-a-here, 
 I see an alligator nest in the mangroves round the 
 point, only the day before yesterday two dozen 
 eggs there was in it and if they've taken to lay in' 
 about there, you and me would stand a good chance 
 of pickin' one off. Suppose we takes the Winchesters 
 out, and has a try." 
 
 We spent half a day in the black sludge of the man- 
 grove swamp, and got no more than a distant shot 
 at a gray streak sliding into the water missed, of 
 course, for you can't hit an alligator through his ar- 
 mored tail but I was rewarded for the tramp, for 
 the big, coarse white eggs were beginning to hatch, 
 and I came away with a baby alligator tied up in my 
 handkerchief, a green-eyed, needle-toothed, wicked 
 little thing no longer than my hand, absurdly harmless, 
 and absurdly fierce. I put it in a kerosene tin full 
 of water, and left it there while I climbed up the hill 
 to look out for Stephanie and her horse. She came
 
 WHEN THE RED GODS CALL 173 
 
 late, but I saw her at last, riding towards the Mis- 
 sion, with Carolan and the Governor close behind. 
 
 So she was released ! I felt I should sleep the better 
 for the knowledge. 
 
 I sent the alligator to Stephanie that same evening, 
 not by Tararua I did not wish to advertise the 
 bride's connection with my household but by a hired 
 boy. I had tied a blue ribbon round the ridiculous 
 little creature's neck, and shut it up in a tea cannister. 
 It was an odd love-gift, perhaps, but New Guinea is 
 an odd country. 
 
 By nine o'clock the alligator was back in the cottage, 
 with a very cool little note " Miss Hammond is 
 obliged to Mr. Lynch for his present, and regrets 
 she cannot accept it." 
 
 But I threw the letter above my head, and caught 
 it again and laughed. For, scribbled very hurriedly 
 in pencil, on a corner of the sheet, was the one word 
 " Dictated." 
 
 When Garia went home a little later, he carried a 
 note which was to be smuggled into Stephanie's room 
 at once, by Tararua. It ran as follows 
 
 " I shall be waiting under the big rubber tree at five 
 A. M. Please give me a chance to explain and ask par- 
 don. HUGH LYNCH." 
 
 It was not five o'clock by a good ten minutes, when 
 I turned up the grassy avenue from the sea next morn- 
 ing, and hastened to hide my white suit under the 
 huge shadow grove of the rubber tree that stands
 
 174 WHEN THE RED GODS CALL 
 
 some way below Government House. Very shadowy 
 indeed it was at that hour, for the sun was hardly 
 risen, and only the tops of the hills stood as set in 
 full day. Under the great Ficus, the ground was a 
 brown raffle of withered leaves for hundreds of feet; 
 no grass could grow beneath that dense dark shade. 
 But every limb, as it shot forth from the colossal 
 trunk, spanning incredible spaces of empty air with 
 its unsupported length, was garlanded all over with 
 fern and feathery creeper, and here and there a deli- 
 cate pale orchid bloom true Gardens of Armida in 
 the sky. At the utmost ends of these giant branches, 
 the smaller boughs swept down to touch the ground, 
 enclosing within the magic circle of the tree a whole 
 great world of silence, solitude and dark. 
 
 Here I waited, leaning against the enormous cen- 
 tral trunk, and watching the vivid rays of the tropic 
 dawn shoot arrow after arrow through the loopholes 
 of the boughs, aiming, as they aimed all day, first low, 
 then high, then low again, at that impregnable pillar 
 of gloom in the heart of the forest sanctuary, and 
 falling short, as they always fell. Beyond the palms, 
 a little way off, the sea lipped the stones of the boat- 
 house pier ; the tide was coming in with scarce a ripple, 
 but you could hear every whisper of salt water on 
 stone and weed, in the breathless hush of the dawn. 
 Strange creatures of the night were hurrying home: 
 a giant lizard, as long as a man, ran by like a guilty 
 thing, and buried itself in a copse of dew-wet spear- 
 grass, some eight feet high a brown wallaby, with 
 hanging front paws and silly sheep-like face, bounded
 
 WHEN THE RED GODS CALL 175 
 
 through the undergrowth outside the tree, in long 
 crashing leaps, and vanished almost before I had time 
 to turn and look at it. A hurried, scrambling sound 
 somewhere beyond the rubber boughs told of a bandi- 
 coot getting home to his burrow in a bandicoot's in- 
 evitable state of fuss and flurry. The leathernecks 
 in the mangoes were waking up now, and beginning 
 an offensive " Te wakatipu ! O do come here ! Te 
 wakatipu ! O do come here ! " . . . Surely it 
 was time for Stephanie to come, if she was coming. 
 
 And then I saw her, coming down from the Gov- 
 ernment House, a vision of floating white muslin and 
 white parasol, crowned by a foolish little pink bonnet 
 just like a rose. 
 
 Looking at her, unseen myself, as she came down 
 the hill, the wild improbability of the entire scene took 
 sudden hold of me. New Guinea is a land where the 
 improbable happens every day, and the impossible at 
 least once a week, but six years' residence in this 
 craziest of countries had not shown me anything more 
 unbelievable than Stephanie Hammond, coming down 
 that ill-kept grass walk among the tree-ferns and silk- 
 cottons, at five o'clock in the morning, to meet me, 
 the " hardest case " on all the Papuan island-continent 
 Stephanie, an it please you, who never had looked, 
 and didn't look now, like anything on earth but the 
 portrait of some Lady Ida or Lady Millicent, hung 
 on a picture-gallery wall Stephanie, who was as 
 prim as a primrose, and as dainty as a duchess, and 
 as shy as a little white nun. . . . 
 
 The very buckles on her Parisian shoes the very
 
 176 WHEN THE RED GODS CALL 
 
 curls on her immaculately dressed head seemed to 
 cry out on the impossibility of the thing. All that, 
 within stone's throw of a village of naked savages, 
 and a swamp full of snakes and alligators with me 
 in the foreground, me, Hugh Lynch, rough, hairy- 
 pawed, burned black with sea and sun, and dressed in 
 a suit of slop-made ducks a man, I suppose, as 
 God made me, but scarce a gentleman, as society makes 
 the breed. For the stretch between eighteen and 
 thirty is a long one, and Lynch of New Guinea was 
 not Lynch of Harrow and Sandhurst, by just so long 
 a gap. 
 
 But the impossible had happened, and here she was, 
 coming to a halt outside the sanctuary of the rubber- 
 tree pausing on one foot, listening and looking 
 back, and listening and looking forward, with some- 
 thing of girlish fear in her attitude lips parted, nos- 
 trils dilated with her hurried breathing. 
 
 No, it was not fair to spy on her like that. I came 
 out from under the branches, offered my hand, and 
 hastened, before she could speak, to thank her for 
 coming, in the humblest words I could command. For 
 I saw that it had been touch and go with her whether 
 she would come or not, and that she was almost re- 
 penting at that moment. 
 
 " Come in under the tree," I urged, " it's cooler 
 there " a silly speech to make, at five o'clock in the 
 morning, when the air is almost cold but I meant, 
 and she understood, that it was safer. 
 
 . . . Half dark beneath the boughs, the sun just 
 up, the sea sparkling gold and crystal through the
 
 WHEN THE RED GODS CALL 177 
 
 thick tapestry of leaves that hid us away from all the 
 outer world earth and air full of the fresh scents 
 of the early day, and never a sound near us but the 
 breathing of the wide Pacific in the bay below. . . . 
 We might have been Adam and Eve alone in Paradise. 
 And in truth, it was very near Paradise to me, to see 
 those blue eyes close to mine in the gloom, and to 
 note the hurried swell of the girlish breast guessing, 
 as I did, that this pretty agitation was not altogether 
 unconnected with the presence of ugly Hugh Lynch. 
 
 She began to speak the moment we were under 
 cover. 
 
 " I don't know what you can think of me, Mr. Lynch 
 I really don't know what anybody could think 
 but I had to speak to you and my father is so un- 
 fortunately . . . prejudiced . . . unreason- 
 able ... at times, that he obliges me to act in a 
 way I don't like." 
 
 I bowed my head, but remained silent I wanted 
 her to talk. 
 
 " I'm really afraid ... he must have said 
 something to prevent your calling again it seems 
 most absurd . . ." 
 
 She seemed to lose breath, and had to pause for a 
 moment, but she recovered herself with admirable self- 
 command, and went on. 
 
 " I did not want you to think that I had had any- 
 thing to do with it. I am very fond of my father, 
 but I don't share his prejudice against everyone who 
 is not rich and important. It seems to me well, 
 snobbery. But, if you will let me say so "
 
 178 WHEN THE RED GODS CALL! 
 
 " Anything/' I said, taking her hand, and trying 
 successfully, I think to look as if I didn't know 
 what I was doing. Stephanie, after a moment's hesi- 
 tation, left her hand where it was, and went on speak- 
 ing, as if she didn't notice either. Oh, the pretty 
 game of love! 
 
 "I I don't think you ought to copy out poetry 
 and give it to me, or send me " 
 
 "Alligators," I supplied. 
 
 " Or send me anything . . . you see, we are 
 such slight acquaintances, and people talk, even here. 
 And Papa found your note that evening it dropped 
 out of my pocket and he was very angry. He 
 went to look up the quotation, but he didn't find it, 
 because " with a mischievous laugh, instantly sup- 
 pressed " the page wasn't in the book when he 
 got it. But really I hope you understand me, 
 and that you won't write, or send me things any more ; 
 it would be so much better not." 
 
 " Do you mean it ? " I asked. My other hand had 
 closed round her other hand now, and we were stand- 
 ing there in the green-lit cavern of the rubber-tree 
 boughs, holding hands like children. She made the 
 least little effort to draw away but I looked at her 
 with an expression of perfect unconsciousness, and 
 she let her fingers fall again. ("I don't believe he 
 really knows he's doing it," said the innocent girlish 
 face.)] 
 
 " Of course I mean it," she replied. She seemed to 
 have forgotten that it was I who had asked her to 
 come and hear me. I let my " apology " go by the
 
 WHEN THE RED GODS CALL 179 
 
 board apologies are the man's excuse for a meeting, 
 as good-bys are the woman's, and neither is needed 
 when it has served its turn. 
 
 " I will not write to you, or send you anything 
 again/' I said solemnly. Whether I had mental res- 
 ervations or not, is a matter that concerns only my- 
 self. 
 
 She looked as if she had not expected just that 
 reply, and there was a perceptible touch of hesitation 
 in her next speech. 
 
 " That is what I ... ask." 
 
 " I beg your pardon," I said, rather wickedly. 
 
 " That is what I ..." The voice drooped 
 away. 
 
 " What you wish ? The sea sounds so loud ; it must 
 be a high tide. What you wish ? Was that what you 
 said?" 
 
 She knew that I was holding her now. She knew 
 that something stronger was holding her. To women 
 like Stephanie, I think the coming of love is almost as 
 the coming of death. My lady paled to the color of 
 her own white dress, and her hands grew cold in mine : 
 I thougfit for the moment that she was going to faint. 
 But she did not: she looked straight up to me, and 
 through her silence, and through the vivid dawn of red 
 that broke into day upon the cloud-soft pallor of her 
 face, the truth shone out 
 
 Her hands were fast in mine, and the very birds 
 above us could not see through the dark dome of leaf 
 and bough that shut us in. ...
 
 i8o WHEN THE RED GODS CALL 
 
 " That's quite enough," said a rather small and 
 smothered voice, close to my ear. " I think you are 
 the very rudest person I ever Please please ! " 
 
 I did " please," and she drew back, and began to 
 straighten her dear little bonnet and her hair. 
 
 " I hope you are ashamed of yourself," she said 
 breathlessly, with an attempt at severity about as suc- 
 cessful as a canary's attempt to scratch. 
 
 " When are you going to marry me ? " was all I an- 
 swered. 
 
 "Marry you?" said Stephanie Hammond, drawing 
 back a good deal further, with something of the look 
 of 
 
 " A wild thing caught within a trap, 
 That sees the trapper coming through the wood." 
 
 " I never mean to marry anyone ! " 
 
 " Then why did you " 
 
 " I didn't that is, I forgot and you are so 
 strong and besides, you really are the very rudest 
 person I ever met." 
 
 " By Jove, I hope so ! " I exclaimed fervently. 
 
 " No one ever was so rude before," reproved my 
 little lady, who was getting back some of her dignity 
 now. " Several men have asked me to marry them, 
 but they did it nicely." 
 
 "Yes, and a lot they made by that, didn't they?" 
 I answered. " I'm not asking you at all nicely, I'm 
 only telling you you've got to after letting me kiss 
 you three times "
 
 WHEN THE RED GODS CALL ,181 
 
 " Three ! It was more like thirty ! " said Stephanie, 
 flaming scarlet. 
 
 " All the more reason. I'm sure such a well- 
 brought-up girl as you are must have been taught that 
 you can't let any man kiss you, unless he's the man 
 you're going to marry. Haven't you ? " 
 
 " Why the sister at the convent did say " fal- 
 tered Stephanie, almost dumbfounded by this exhibi- 
 tion of Saul among the prophets. 
 
 " Of course they did : they were bound to and so 
 do I. No nice girl ever kisses a man if she isn't en- 
 gaged to him. Surely you are a nice girl aren't 
 you?" 
 
 Like most really adorable women, Stephanie had 
 not much sense of humor, and my gravity deceived 
 her completely. (I was laughing wildly all the time, 
 internally : but that she could not know. ) 
 
 "I I have always tried to be," she said faintly. 
 
 " Then, if no nice girl " 
 
 " Please don't say it again : you make me so 
 ashamed." 
 
 "If no nice girl . . . does . . . unless 
 she's engaged, and you are a nice girl, and you did, 
 then you must be engaged to me." 
 
 Stephanie looked a little giddy. She opened her 
 mouth, and shut it again. It seemed that my logic 
 was, for the moment, unanswerable. 
 
 " Well ? " I demanded triumphantly. 
 
 But I had not reckoned on the quickness of woman's 
 wit. 
 
 " It proves, I suppose, that I am engaged to you,
 
 182 WHEN THE RED GODS CALL 
 
 but not that I am going to marry you," protested 
 Stephanie. " One can be engaged without being mar- 
 ried. And I'm not going to marry anyone : I mean 
 to be a nun in a convent, sometime or other my 
 mother was a Catholic, and I always think I shall be 
 one too, when I am older . . . I'm sure I shall 
 be missed if I stay any longer good-by, Mr. 
 Lynch." 
 
 " Good-by," I said promptly. It is a good general 
 principle always to give a woman what she doesn't ex- 
 pect. 
 
 " You must not write to me," said Stephanie, hesi- 
 tating on one foot, in the airy pose I had already grown 
 to recognize as characteristic of her. 
 
 " I will never write," I said. 
 
 l ' You must not call." 
 
 " I will never call." 
 
 11 You must not send me anything." 
 
 " I will never send you anything not even an alli- 
 gator, or a box of French sweets." 
 
 " You must not stare at me like like like 
 that!" 
 
 " I will not stare at you like that," I parroted, look- 
 ing down at her shoe-buckles. 
 
 " Good-by." She held out her hand. I shook it 
 very politely. 
 
 " I'm going now." She gathered up her amazing 
 draperies, and dived through the screen of boughs, 
 while I held back as many as I could grasp. 
 
 " Please don't come here again it might get me 
 into trouble," sounded through the leaves.
 
 WHEN THE RED GODS CALU 183 
 
 " I will not come here again." 
 
 " Mr. Lynch, are you a parrot or a human being ? " 
 
 "Whichever you like," I said humbly. "But I 
 would rather be a New Guinea lory, than either, if I 
 might choose." 
 
 There was a moment's struggle between dignity and 
 curiosity, and then 
 
 " Why ? " asked a voice, outside on the grass walk. 
 
 " Because," I said sadly, " they are called love- 
 birds, and they always sit beside each other on the 
 same . . ." 
 
 She must have had at least three starched petticoats 
 on, to make such a rustle getting away. 
 
 It was really rather hard on Worboise, who wasn't 
 in love with anyone, that I should greet him with a 
 hail fit to wake the dead, when I got back to the house, 
 a little after six, and should insist on his rousing up 
 immediately to listen to the tale of my affections. 
 But the old fellow was always good-natured, and he 
 rubbed the sleep out of his eyes, and elevated his 
 mighty bulk on end, without a word of complaint. I 
 pitched myself on to an aged hammock chair that al- 
 most gave way with the shock, and started on my 
 yarn. Worboise, clad only in a native tunic, and look- 
 ing, underneath the protecting gauze of the net, just 
 like a very fat joint in a very large meat-safe, listened 
 as eagerly as if the tale had related to himself, and my 
 heart warmed to him as he laughed and slapped his 
 stout legs with appreciation. That he was a very silly 
 old man, and that I was a madly imprudent young
 
 184 WHEN THE RED GODS CALL 
 
 one, did not occur to either of us. Worboise's recent 
 astonishing display of worldly wisdom had been no 
 more than stray drift of flotsam from the sunken 
 Atlantis of a prosperous youth, cast upon the empty 
 shores of age: the barren sands of his sixty unsuc- 
 cessful years bore no more such fruit. Both of us 
 thought, I suppose as men of the isolated islands do 
 think in a narrow space, intensely lighted by per- 
 sonal desires and feelings, and circled roiind by an un- 
 considered chaos of dark that represented the outer 
 world. You and I, he and she, are all the figures 
 that find room in this narrow lime-light circle : They 
 the mighty They before whom the people of the 
 inhabited lands burn incense and bow their heads 
 simply do not exist. This is one, and not the least, of 
 the advantages of the Never-Never lands. 
 
 In cold blood, with more than a year of lonely medi- 
 tation between those days and these, I can see much 
 that I did not see then. It may be that at that junc- 
 ture, a little more of the tyranny of " They " might 
 not have been an unmixed evil. But I suppose what 
 was to be, was. 
 
 Worboise, as I say, was delighted with the progress 
 of affairs, though he evidently felt bound to keep up 
 his character of Mentor by abusing me a little. 
 
 " 'Asty, 'asty ! " he grumbled, looking cloudily 
 through the net. " No patience no prudence 
 just as I always said . . . Lord, boy, it's what 
 I'd a-done myself when I was a young feller of 
 thirty." (Worboise would persist in classing me as a 
 mere green youth, from the height of his thirty extra
 
 WHEN THE RED GODS CALL 185 
 
 years.) "I'm blest if I wouldn't. I'm blest if I'm 
 not sorry I never did." 
 
 The idea of Worboise, at any age, paying matri- 
 monial court to the counterpart of Stephanie, was too 
 much for me, and I lay back in the chair and roared. 
 But the old fellow did not notice : something had set 
 him off on his autobiographical rocking-horse, and he 
 was swinging away at the usual pace. 
 
 . . . " f When I was up in the Orokiva country, 
 years and years ago, there was an old chap there was 
 married to nine or ten of as nice girls as you'd wish 
 to see, they'd all got 'eads on them as big as bar'ls, 
 and they was tattooed beautiful, just like watered silk, 
 Omai the feller's name was, and he was a big chief 
 among the Orokiva. Now I was trading there for 
 native rubber with the people, bits of broken bottle 
 glass which they'd shave themselves with was what I 
 gave for it, and I tell you it used to pay me well, 
 though there's that much of original sin in an Oroki- 
 van they took like Christians to adulteratin' the stuff 
 with little stones just as soon as they found out it 
 could be done, well, I got to know a good deal of their 
 talk and one of trie times I went collectin' rubber 
 Omai he came to my tent and cadged a bit of biscuit 
 which I gave him and he set up on his 'ams nibblin' 
 it like a monkey, and says I, Omai what have you got 
 married that often for it's a ... expensive 
 thing gettin' married either for the white man or the 
 'eathen in his blindness, says I, and I don't see how 
 you make out it pays, Omai he was a reel nice feller, 
 he says, just as friendly as it might be you and me,
 
 186 WHEN THE RED GODS CALL 
 
 he says, why, I haven't got all them wives all the time, 
 he says, they doesn't last out well, what with the 
 fightin' and rowin' among themselves, when a man 
 will 'it one or two of them over the 'ead with a pine- 
 apple stone club, he says, and maybe 'it too 'ard, and 
 what with the tonguin' and abusin' of me night and 
 day, he says, which I've eat two of them for, but it 
 don't seem to teach the rest, he says, with all that it 
 takes a good few on hand to make sure that I won't 
 wake up some morning and find myself alone with only 
 one wife like a low-down common feller, he says, be- 
 sides, he says, when a man's gettin' old, how's he to keep 
 his end up if he ain't got no sons to make into fightin' 
 men and show them the way about, he says, why he's 
 no more account than a mud-crab livin' in an 'ole by 
 itself in the swamp, he says, so that's another reason 
 why I keep my wives up to the mark he says, for what 
 with the alligators and adders and boar constrictors, 
 he says, and the tribes up in the 'ills that's always on 
 the look-out for a nice well-fed baby, in yam-feastin' 
 time, there's no knowing when a house won't find it- 
 self right out of children unexpected-like, he says. 
 And then he cadges another two biscuits, and a stick 
 of tobacco, before he goes away, and I gives it him 
 willing, because of the good sensible talk he'd made." 
 Worboise had been getting up as he spoke, and was 
 now clad in the green and yellow suit of pyjamas that 
 was his usual indoor attire. The glare from the shal- 
 low reef-water below the beach slanted through the 
 open door, and shone right upon his face: I thought 
 he looked old and tired.
 
 WHEN THE RED GODS CALL 187 
 
 " Look-a-here, boy," he said, dropping weightily on 
 a chair, and staring down at his bare sunburned feet 
 " it's true for white men and for black, what Omai 
 said. When a man's gettin' old, without he has chil- 
 dren, he's no more account than a crab in a mud-'ole 
 by itself. Fellers don't understand that, not till 
 they're gettin' on. When you're five-and-twenty, you 
 says you'd like to see the woman as could put your 
 neck into the collar -meanin' you wouldn't like to, 
 and don't intend to. When you're a bit more, and 
 you see the other fellers worried with wives that's 
 cross and overworked, and kept awake with cryin' 
 babies, and washin' hangin' all over the 'ouse, and lit- 
 tle nippers screamin' and fightin' in the yard, and the 
 feller's tobaccy goin' to pay for Jinny's boots, and 
 'is bit of money that he was keepin' for the Cup, ate 
 up by Tommy's measles, well, you says to yourself 
 ' A young man married is a young man marred ' : 
 thank God I've 'ad the sense to keep me family all 
 under me 'at, says you. 
 
 " An' the time goes on some more, and the girls is 
 not as fond of you as they was, but still there's some 
 that's ugly, or a bit the worse for wear, keeps on 
 smilin' sweet as sugar at you, and you goes about 
 sayin' to yourself that you're the devil of a fellow, 
 but that they don't catch this bird with chaff, and 
 you're proud of yourself. And then all of a sudden 
 there's no more girls, and they don't want you at 
 swarrees, and when there's a picnic to the bush, or a 
 drive to the seaside in brakes, according whether it's
 
 r88 WHEN THE RED GODS CALL 
 
 Australyer or 'ome, and you goes to take a ticket, they; 
 says ' Who do you want it for ? ' 
 
 " And the Jinny s and the Tommys is grown up, 
 and walks about with their fathers, which you thought 
 was quite young fellers same as you till you see that, 
 and then you've got to believe they ain't same as 
 you. 
 
 "So now you thinks 'Well, if I'm gettin' old, 
 I'm gettin' wise law, the 'caps of things I've seen, 
 and the troubles I could keep young chaps out of, if 
 they'd listen to me,' and you gets 'auntin' round the 
 lads of twenty, and tryin' to give them advice, same 
 as if you was their father but there you ain't no 
 one's father, and no one wants to 'ear you gab. 
 
 " And you keeps gettin' older, and now it's the 
 young fellers of thirty you've a likin' for, because 
 that's the age our Billys and Tommys would have 
 been, if you'd 'ad all them little kids screamin' and 
 wakin' you up of nights, and eatin' and wearin' your to- 
 baccy and your drinks, same as your mates that you 
 was sorry for. And per'aps you're fool enough to 
 get fond of one of them, but just as like as not 'e says 
 to 'imself quiet-like, when you're on the gab, that 
 you're a bloomin' old nuisance any'ow, and Boy, 
 boy, you don't know 'ow strong you are, don't never 
 clap me on the back again like that. O Lord, Hugh, 
 you've fair knocked the life out of me! " 
 
 " Just what you deserve for talking rot ! " I said, 
 as he leaned over his chair and coughed, with a certain 
 dampness about his eyes that I don't think the cough
 
 WHEN THE RED GODS CALL 189 
 
 was accountable for. We reached out suddenly for 
 each other's hands, and executed a mutual shake. 
 
 " What's it all about ? " said I. " Am I to marry 
 nine ladies and eat them when they get quarrelsome? " 
 
 " You leave me get round things in my own way, 
 boy ; I'm slow, but I'm sure. What I mean to say is, 
 I'm glad you've picked your girl, and I'm glad she's 
 picked you, and I wish the two of you luck, and many 
 of them, for I tell you 'angin' round likin' other 
 men's sons when you're old, because you've got none 
 of your own, is about as much fun as dinin' off the 
 smell of other folks' dinners." 
 
 There was a personal note in all this that I could 
 not help but hear. Worboise knew he was losing the 
 man who had been in the place of a son to him, for 
 the best part of a year, and he took it a good deal 
 more hardly than I was worth. But what could I say ? 
 If we had been a couple of women, we could have 
 fallen on each other's necks, and wept a little, and had 
 what the tender sex call " a nice cup of tea " to- 
 gether, and so smoothed over the painful moment. 
 Being a man, I could only do what I did do light 
 my pipe and stroll out on the beach, leaving my old 
 chum to " find himself " as best he might. 
 
 Marriage, it seemed to me, even the shadow of 
 marriage to come, changed life upwards from the 
 root, and here was one of the changes. ... I 
 was learning new things these days, many of them, 
 and Stephanie, the little inexperienced school-girl, was 
 my teacher.
 
 190 WHEN THE RED GODS CALL 
 
 Out there under the palms, with the salt ripple crisp- 
 ing at my feet, and the lonely trade wind humming 
 over the sea, it came to me for the first time in my 
 life, what this age-old institution of marriage really 
 meant. Not the mere ceremony of a church a dozen 
 ceremonies never would have made Kari, the little 
 savage, my true wife. Not fierce love, such as I had 
 known in my Spanish-American days ( " husband 
 in the sight of heaven," you called me, my Concepcion, 
 tropic lily of the South: yet there was no more of 
 heaven about our bond, than about the gilded chain 
 you broke to come to me). Not even "the mutual 
 help and comfort that one should have of the other." 
 None of these makes true marriage, nor do all three 
 together. What, then? Just all these and something 
 more something that no poet from Solomon and 
 Euripides, down to Goethe and Meredith, has ever suc- 
 ceeded in putting into words, but that every " true 
 lover" sees and knows, when he looks into the eyes 
 of the woman who is to bear him company through 
 life and into that which lies beyond, where thought 
 sinks broken-winged, and fancy may not follow. 
 
 Love of the body companionship of the mind 
 and of the soul, what? 
 
 God knows. But it makes true marriage. 
 
 All that for Hugh Lynch to learn, through a girl's 
 blue innocent eyes Hugh, who at thirty thought the 
 rose of human love had not a petal left to unfold be- 
 fore him, not a breath of scent that he had not drunk 
 away! . . . Small wonder, indeed, that in those
 
 WHEN THE RED GODS CALL 191 
 
 wretched weeks in the Owen Stanley Range, I had not 
 known what was the trouble that had taken hold of 
 me ; for it was one to which, after all that had gone by, 
 I was as new as Stephanie herself. 
 
 It may have been because of this that the thought 
 of these old loves did not trouble me, for it seemed 
 to me that no man could give more than his best, and 
 that Stephanie, alone of all women in the world, had 
 had, and would have, that of me. 
 
 If I do not get on faster, I shall never finish the 
 story I have set out to tell. 
 
 There is so much to say about those few cool-season 
 weeks, when the southeast trade ran like a golden 
 river through the air, and nights were chill towards 
 sunrise, and the red full moon that had burned like 
 a coin new-hot from minting, in the heavy months of 
 November and December, now rose in the west clear 
 and cool as ice from the far-off peaks of Mount Vic- 
 toria, so much to say, and yet how impossible it is 
 to say it! 
 
 In those days, it seemed to me as though all my life 
 were gathering itself together like a river rushing 
 down to some great fall drawing every tributary 
 stream from far and near into the one resistless flood, 
 carrying away on its surface like withered leaves the 
 flotsam and jetsam of the passing days sweeping 
 always onward, always faster and faster in its deep- 
 ening channel, towards the one sure goal whither all 
 the forces of all the world were calling it. ... 
 
 Looking backwards now, as one might look from
 
 192 WHEN THE RED GODS CALL 
 
 the grave, the days and nights pass by in my memory 
 as a flying blur, lit only by those brilliant stars that 
 marked yet another meeting with Stephanie. For we 
 had met again, and yet again with the knowledge of 
 my lady's incomings and outgoings brought me by the 
 faithful Tararua, I was seldom at a loss for an op- 
 portunity, and as for using it when it came well, 
 a man who has learned his love-making among the 
 Latin races of Spanish America, generally knows his 
 lesson well. . . . Still, for all that, and all that, 
 progress was sometimes slow. 
 
 I had kept that extorted vow of not writing: I 
 could do without it now and as for presents, if I 
 sent none (in accordance with my promise), I brought 
 many. It was very seldom that we could meet in the 
 daytime, but in the quiet hours that came after all the 
 native servants were gone home, and the Governor 
 had tucked himself under his mosquito net at the other 
 side of the house, Stephanie's small window, that 
 looked out on the clump of lemon trees beyond the 
 back veranda, saw many reproductions of the " bal- 
 cony scene " so familiar in the loves of the southern 
 world. The village went to rest early: the lights of 
 Port Moresby died out soon after ten we might 
 have been alone on a desert island, by the time mid- 
 night had tinkled out from the gilt French clock in 
 the dining-room. . . . And at midnight, or a lit- 
 tle after, would come that " rudest man that Stephanie 
 had ever met," creeping into the shadow of the lemon 
 trees (for the moon was terribly bright) and waiting, 
 perhaps for minutes, perhaps for hours, until a little
 
 WHEN THE RED GODS CALL 193 
 
 stir inside the room, like a bird turning round in its 
 nest, would tell that Someone was awake, and waiting 
 too. . . . Then it was sometimes a smartly 
 fashioned bouquet of fragrant paw-paw blossoms that 
 flew in through the high-up window, and hit an invisi- 
 ble mosquito-curtain with a swaying shock some- 
 times it was just a loose bunch of brilliant orchids, 
 cold with midnight dew, once it was a pearl as big 
 as a pea, that I had fished up off the Angabunga 
 River, and sent flying in, cased in one of Nature's 
 jewel cases a hard-shelled pod from a silk-cotton 
 tree, tight packed with snowy down. And once (but 
 that night she would not show her face) it was a 
 wreath of orange-blossom smelling sweet as honey, 
 that dropped through the darkness, right into her 
 arms. 
 
 I waited till the bay turned gray in the dawning, 
 but never a gleam of the silken wrapper, or a sight 
 of the small soft face shadowed by a loosely twisted 
 knot of hair, came to reward me that night. And 
 the next time I came, there was no greeting for me 
 either, and no soft footstep stirring on the mats 
 within; so that I, thinking I had surely some rights 
 of my own by this time, was constrained to walk under 
 the house (raised, like all New Guinea houses, six or 
 eight feet from the ground, on piles) and rap cau- 
 tiously on the floor of Mademoiselle's room. This 
 brought her to the window at once, agitated lest some- 
 one should hear : and she stood looking down and 
 scolding softly, like a small soft bird chirping re- 
 proach at the disturber of its nest.
 
 194 WHEN THE RED GODS CALL 
 
 " Careless impudent rash ? " I said. " So I 
 am always was. Come down and teach me to be 
 good." 
 
 " Most certainly not," said Stephanie. " It 
 wouldn't be right." 
 
 " Not right to teach me to be good ? Oh, Ste- 
 phanie ! " I remonstrated, in the serious tones that 
 always puzzled her unhumorous little head. 
 
 " It's always right to teach people to be good," cor- 
 rected she solemnly "that is, if you know how 
 yourself but I don't think one ought to teach them 
 out in the moonlight at three o'clock in the morning." 
 
 " Then come under the lemon trees," I suggested. 
 " There's no moonlight there. Stephanie, you can't 
 imagine how I want to talk to you every time I've 
 seen you I've left all the things I've wanted to say." 
 
 " If you wouldn't be rude " she hesitated. 
 
 "If you mean you're afraid I'll kiss you, why, I 
 won't." 
 
 " I don't see why you must always say everything 
 men are so so " 
 
 " Yes, of course they are ; but you've got to teach 
 me better. Come out and teach me. Do ! " 
 
 " You ask so nicely that " 
 
 "You'll come?" 
 
 " That I think you must have had a good deal of 
 practice," said Stephanie shrewdly. 
 
 I lied bravely, of course, but continued to beg. 
 And in a little while she came. 
 
 " Only because I know Papa will wake up if you go 
 on whispering like a steam-escape valve down
 
 WHEN THE RED GODS CALL 195 
 
 there," she said. " Go away and wait out of the 
 light, so that you can't be seen, and I'll come in two 
 minutes for just a second." 
 
 All the same I had some little time to wait before 
 she appeared, got up in some pretty silk thing with 
 ribbons on it and looking almost as she did in the day 
 time. ( Steel curling pins, I understand, will do much 
 in ten minutes, if you can endure some pain in a good 
 cause.) She came straight to me in the shadow of 
 the trees, and put her hand in mine like a child. The 
 moonlight and the magic of the hour seemed almost to 
 have transfigured her : she shone like a fairy eyes, 
 wavy hair, white neck and arms half uncovered by the 
 floating gown, white teeth that glittered as she smiled 
 the very nails on her little fingers were sparkly and 
 starry in the crystal light, and her step was almost a 
 dance. 
 
 " You look like nothing human you look as if you 
 would spread your wings and fly away if I touched 
 you," I said. 
 
 " So I would," assented the sprite-like figure, illog- 
 ically leaving its hand in mine. " I would fly with- 
 out that I would give a bit of my soul to have 
 wings to-night. Hugh, do you ever wish on moon- 
 light nights when you hear the sea calling as it some- 
 times does you know ? " 
 
 " Aye, I know," said I. 
 
 " Or when the wind that gets up at night, and blows 
 down from the mountains and the wonderful places 
 where no one's ever been when that wind comes in 
 at your window, waking you up, and whispering to you
 
 196 WHEN THE RED GODS CALL 
 
 don't you long to go and follow it, away under the 
 moon, and find . . . What is that one wants to 
 find, Hugh?" 
 
 " Dear girl, if I could tell you that, I'd be able to 
 tell you what all the God-forsaken lot of us gypsy fel- 
 lows have wanted to know ever since the days of 
 Ulysses, and haven't discovered yet." 
 
 ** Does no one find it, Hugh ? " 
 
 " No," I said. " But we go on looking and on 
 the way, we find new countries and gold and 
 diamonds and Stephanies. And we never own the 
 countries, and the gold runs through our hands. But 
 the Stephanies " 
 
 "Well?" The small hand slid very softly away 
 from mine, and the dark head bent down till I could 
 only see a neck and a coil of hair. 
 
 " The Stephanies we keep," I said, and lifted her 
 head so that her eyes met mine. 
 
 " You promised ! " 
 
 " I did, and I'm keeping my promise," I said. " But 
 Stephanie don't you think this thing has gone on 
 long enough ? " 
 
 "What thing? " she parried. 
 
 " This tormenting," I said, letting free the bird- 
 like little head. " This playing fast-and-loose and 
 flirting and refusing when you know " 
 
 "What?" 
 
 She had drawn deeper into the shade, and I could 
 not see her face, but the laces on the breast of her 
 gown were fluttering like imprisoned butterflies,
 
 WHEN THE RED GODS CALL 197 
 
 though here, in the shelter of the tree, there was not 
 a breath of wind. 
 
 " You know," I said, scarcely able to find words, 
 but determined to have it out once for all " that you 
 will have to marry me." 
 
 No statue could have been stiller save for that 
 beating of the light laces above her heart. 
 
 " It's not not worthy of you," I said. " It's not 
 the best in you that's behaving like this, Stephanie, 
 it's the worst the nasty little streak of cruelty that 
 women all have it " 
 
 I stopped for want of breath, and then went on 
 
 " It all comes to this when are we to be mar- 
 ried?" 
 
 Dead silence: the scent of the lemon blossoms 
 heavy-sweet above our heads: very far away, in 
 the dark hill-ranges, the wood-cutter bird, that wakes 
 at dead of night, sounding its sharp chip, chip. 
 
 Then the least rustle on the grass, and a foot- 
 step. . . 
 
 " No, you don't ! " I said, reaching out in the dusk 
 of the lemon tree, and filling my hands with cold slip- 
 pery silk, and something warm and alive inside it. 
 ' You've got to answer now or go, and never come 
 back." 
 
 " How can I go ? " asked a faint whisper, " when 
 you are holding my dress and me ? " 
 
 I loosed her and stepped back. 
 
 " Go now, if you wish," I said, " but if you do, it's 
 for good. This has got to come to an end one way
 
 198 WHEN THE RED GODS CALL 
 
 or the other. What do you think I'm made of? Say 
 when you'll marry me, or say good-by. I can stand 
 that, I guess. I can't stand what you've been giving 
 me," 
 
 " You know," said something invisible, with a 
 shake in its voice, " that Papa would never . . . 
 never . . ." 
 
 " You may leave Papa to me. Let's keep to the 
 point for once. Is it good-by, or is it not ? " 
 
 The wood-cutter bird had ceased, and the night 
 seemed holding its breath. The five great jewels of 
 the Southern Cross swung low among the leaves of 
 the lemon tree, and the moon was almost down. 
 Where had the moments flown to? The morning 
 must be near. 
 
 Somebody was sobbing a little in the dark; some- 
 body was stretching out soft hands round the trunk 
 of the tree. 
 
 " It's it's not," said Stephanie close at my side 
 and burst into a flood of tears. 
 
 I knew better than to break my promise now, though 
 never was lover more sorely tempted. I kept my arm 
 about her, while she hid her face on my shoulder, and 
 cried her heart out, supported by the strength she 
 loved. It was all her girlish life, I knew, that was 
 flowing away on that flood, all the old, and the tried, 
 and the dear : the familiar faces, and the England and 
 home that she would see no more all the sweet 
 solitude that girlhood loves, and the maiden dream- 
 flowers that spring between Diana's crescent moon,
 
 WHEN THE RED GODS CALL 199 
 
 but never blow within the hard gold circle of the wed- 
 ding ring. . . . 
 
 The storm ended as suddenly as it had begun. My 
 little white lady stood up and wiped her eyes, and 
 spoke in a steady tone. 
 
 " When you like, Hugh or when we can you 
 know there will be trouble ; but we won't talk of that 
 to-night." 
 
 And I knew, by something in her voice, that Ste- 
 phanie, the elf, the flirt, I should see no more. 
 
 A great wind sprang up as we moved towards the 
 house again: the leaves were whirling under our feet, 
 and it was dark with the darkness that comes at 
 night's ebb-tide. 
 
 " Tell me now," I begged " I have asked so often, 
 and you never would say did you see me those 
 nights when I saw you long ago? " 
 
 " Yes," said the now grave Stephanie. " I saw 
 you every night. Your face had a ring of light 
 round it, and it was asleep. But when I looked at it, 
 it used to wake, and vanish like a flash. And one 
 night, very late, when I had been alone and thinking, 
 I was so sorry when it disappeared, that I cried." 
 
 " I saw you then," I said. " I saw you every time. 
 . . . There's sorcery in New Guinea the air is 
 full of it. . . . I could believe anything might 
 happen here. But if there are strange powers, good 
 or bad, wandering loose in this queer country, they've 
 worked to bring us together."
 
 200 WHEN THE RED GODS CALL 
 
 " Oh, no, Hugh ! " she said, shivering. " That 
 would mean ill-luck." 
 
 " Ill-luck ! Don't you believe it," I answered. 
 . . . " Isn't it time to break my promise now ? " 
 
 And, getting no answer, I broke it. 
 
 " Now," I said, " get in and sleep well, and don't 
 dream of devils, or if you do, remember that all the 
 devils in Papua and hell together aren't going to come 
 between you and me."
 
 CHAPTER X 
 
 / "~|~ S HREE days later, I was on my way to the Owen 
 * Stanley Range. This is not the tale of my 
 gold-hunting experiences. If it were, I should have 
 a strange enough story to relate. But no one, now, 
 would care to hear how I found a wonderfully good- 
 paying creek up in the unknown ranges, that time I 
 went bird-shooting how I returned to it secretly, 
 after winning Stephanie's promise to marry me 
 how I took near a thousand pounds out of it in three 
 weeks' working from sunrise to dark, and got back to 
 Port Moresby when I had obtained all I could find 
 at the time, without anyone being a bit the wiser. No 
 one would care to hear it because the story is an 
 old one now. That happened which does not happen, 
 when a man finds good-paying gold, and cannot fol- 
 low it up. The birds of the air, or the natives of the 
 hills, " carried the matter " eventually, and well, 
 I believe there are quite a number of people doing 
 well on the Kukurukufield at present. But the dis- 
 coverer is not one, for reasons which I have already 
 mentioned. 
 
 Garia and I got back to port late one very warm 
 evening, with rain low-hanging in a purple sky. 
 Tararua, you may be sure, was at hand to welcome 
 her lord's return. She came up and danced in front 
 
 20 1
 
 202 WHEN THE RED GODS CALL 
 
 of Worboise's cottage, till her skirts stood out in a 
 horizontal circle round her big brown limbs, chanting 
 all the while in a loud, brassy voice the virtues, ad- 
 ventures and manly graces of Garia, the carriers and 
 myself. And the way that loving pair rubbed noses 
 when they met, was enough to make you understand 
 the flatness of Papuan features once and for all. 
 
 I had hardly patience to wait until they had let go, 
 before I deluged Tararua with eager inquiries about 
 Stephanie. But she had not much to tell. 
 
 " Sinuabada (the chieftainess) he all right," was 
 the gist of her news. " Sometime he go walk-about, 
 look out along mountain he tell, ' Tararua, you 
 wantum husband belong you, you sorry he go ? ' I 
 tell ' I no wantum fleir'y, wantum little fellow bit/ 
 Sinuabada he look all s;.:-ie he cly, he say 'Long 
 time him stop away ! ' 
 
 "Who?" I asked, "Gam?" 
 
 " No Garia, Taubada Lineti. ' Long time he stop/ 
 Misi Sefania he say * Too much long time ' ' 
 
 " Tararua, Misi Sefania doesn't use those words," 
 I remonstrated. 
 
 " I no savvy he talk strong, he breeve all same 
 dat " she heaves her tattoed bosom in a tremendous 
 sigh. " Sometime I go look out along track, little bit 
 I cly, Misi Sefania he say * Tararua, man belong 
 you, man belong me, he long way away, you me 
 all same sister/ I tell * Tararua liking you flenty, 
 you good along Tararua/ By-'n'-by Miss Sefania, me, 
 been little bit cly, by-'n'-by finish cly, walk along Gov- 
 amen' House, Misi Sefania he say ' You no tell/
 
 WHEN THE RED GODS CALL 203 
 
 he give me free stick tombacco, I no tell. Misi Sefania 
 he flighten along Govana, Tararua he flenty flighten 
 along Govana, he no tell nothing all-a-time, you got- 
 tum tombacco Tararua ? " 
 
 Worboise had nothing in the way of news to im- 
 part, save the fact that Carolan had been made Chief 
 Magistrate, the former holder of that post having 
 died while away on leave. This did not trouble me as 
 it might have done a little earlier. The position (vir- 
 tually that of a judge) was certainly a good one for a 
 young barrister, who had probably had no very rosy 
 prospects at home but if he had been made a Gov- 
 ernor-General of Australia, it could not have altered 
 his fortunes or mine, on the point where they clashed. 
 Things had gone a long way beyond that. 
 
 I met Carolan himself next morning, when I was 
 on my way up to Government House in full daylight, 
 to face out His Excellency, and demand consent to 
 my engagement. Something in my presence there at 
 that hour, I think, or possibly something in the festive 
 character of my dress (I don't deny that I have the 
 ugly man's weakness for a bit of finery) must have 
 told the new Chief Magistrate what my errand was, 
 for his face seemed literally to turn yellow as we 
 neared each other, under the historic rubber tree, and 
 I could see his throat working inside his collar as if 
 he were going to choke. I don't think one man was 
 ever better hated by another, than I by Carolan. As 
 for me, I did not hate him at all ; in truth, I rather 
 prided myself on the fact that I could see quite a
 
 204 WHEN THE RED GODS CALL 
 
 number of good points about him. He was certainly 
 a handsome fellow, with his well-groomed black hair, 
 and his fine brown eyes, and his straight features and 
 neat black mustache he was an able official, and a 
 man without a lazy bone in his body he had the 
 good sense to be very fond of Stephanie, and the de- 
 cency not to tell tales about a successful rival; which, 
 after all, he might easily have done, if he liked. And 
 I had won against him all along the line, and I was 
 going to win yet a good deal more and really, I 
 could quite afford (I felt) to be patronizing and kind 
 to the good fellow, Carolan, in spite of his ugly looks 
 at me. 
 
 For all my conceit, for my patronage, my triumph, 
 Fate was later on to exact a full and bitter penalty. 
 No shadow of this, however, fell across my merry 
 mood of the morning, as I went on my way to demand 
 and win my own. 
 
 I checked Carolan in his walk though he did not 
 look as if he wanted to stop and congratulated him 
 on his recent promotion, rather with the air of a mil- 
 lionaire kindly felicitating a poor man on the acquire- 
 ment of a fortune of some few hundred pounds. 
 
 He turned yellower than ever (no one turns white 
 in New Guinea, the climate doesn't allow it) and 
 seemed as if he would pass on without reply. Then 
 suddenly he stopped. 
 
 " I suppose you're going to ask His Excellency's 
 consent," he said, without preface, his eyes so full of 
 pain the while, that I felt somebody or other ought to 
 be sorry for him as one feels that somebody or
 
 WHEN THE RED GODS CALL 205 
 
 other ought to take care of a lost dog in the street 
 no business of one's own, but still it's a pity. . . . 
 
 " Well, since you ask me, I am," I said. 
 
 " I suppose you know what he'll say? " 
 
 " Not so sure of that," I answered, with a smile 
 that meant " I don't much care." 
 
 " And you mean," said Carolan, pulling at his collar 
 as if it were throttling him, " you mean to take that 
 girl who might be, ought to be, a duchess and 
 bury her in a tin hut in the New Guinea bush a 
 girl just out of the schoolroom, who couldn't possibly 
 know her own' mind you've entrapped her, and 
 worked on her feelings, to that extent " 
 
 " Steady on," I said. " What you mean is that 
 I've been man enough to make her love me, and you 
 haven't ; but I'd advise you to put it in a less offensive 
 way. We aren't exactly intimates, you know." 
 
 " Oh, I know you well enough ! " cried Carolan, 
 breathing hard. " All you care about is your own 
 damned fancy for her. . . . I've loved her for 
 years before you ever knew she was alive and came 
 to this God- forsaken hole just to be near her and 
 kept myself from speaking because I cared for her 
 too much to do it till I'd something worth having 
 to offer her. I ... loved her. ... I'd 
 have" 
 
 He seemed about to choke in good earnest, or to 
 cry I didn't know which, but I was rather sorry for 
 the poor devil, so I got out my pipe, and occupied 
 myself in lighting it, to give him time. I thought it 
 as well to have the matter out then and there.
 
 206 WHEN THE RED GODS CALL 
 
 " Do you do you think you deserve her? " he said, 
 or rather gasped, at last. 
 
 " Why, no," I said. " I don't think any man does 
 or could so it may as well be me as another. May 
 I ask where this catechism is tending to ? " 
 
 " It's tending to this," said Carolan, who was grow- 
 ing hotter and hotter, " that I advise you to leave her 
 alone." 
 
 " You advise ? You do ? " I said, beginning to 
 smoke. " That's rather good, you know." 
 
 " You you're no more fit to tie her shoes for her 
 than than a nigger " 
 
 " Look here," I said, " there's enough of this. 
 You've sworn at me once. You've insulted me more 
 than once. You know I'm not the sort of man to take 
 much more. Only for her, I'd not have taken as 
 much. I don't know what you're driving at, or what 
 you mean, and I don't want to. You go. You go 
 quick, if you're wise." 
 
 " Oh, you don't know ! " said the Chief Magistrate, 
 stepping from one foot to the other in a most amazing 
 way as if he would and he wouldn't, he'd go and 
 he'd stop indecision and rage at war upon his face. 
 " You don't know ! Well, I know. I know a good 
 deal about you a d sight more than you " 
 
 " Good morning," I said, taking off my helmet with 
 a sweep, and walking on. If I had stayed, I should 
 have caught him neck and crop, and slung him over 
 the fence, in just about ten seconds more, and it was 
 not the time, or the place, for that sort of justice. I
 
 WHEN THE RED GODS CALL 207 
 
 did not look back till I got to the top of the hill, and 
 when I did turn, he was gone. 
 
 As for his talk, I minded it no more than I minded 
 the chattering of the parrots in the trees. Those 
 might laugh who won, and those might weep who 
 lost weep, or rage, or talk mysterious nonsense 
 it was all the same to me. 
 
 "Of course, you knew I would refuse," said His 
 Excellency. 
 
 It was half dusk in the inner room where we were 
 sitting; there were no windows, and the light that 
 slanted in through the open glass door was filtered 
 through heavy canvas sun-blinds lowered all along the 
 veranda, to shut off the intolerable glitter of the sea. 
 The Governor's study was painted in green; its 
 wooden walls were hung with native clubs and spears, 
 scarce distinguishable in the dusk; its furniture was 
 of the plainest just a writing-table piled high with 
 papers, two chairs, and a bookcase. At the table, close 
 to the glass door, sat His Excellency dressed in smart- 
 est white from collar to shoe-sole, neat and imper- 
 turbable as ever, and perfectly cool, to all appearance, 
 on a morning hot enough to fry an egg. 
 
 A man who has walked through the torrid heat of a 
 tropic day to proffer a request to someone sitting 
 Olympically apart in a shaded study, is at a marked 
 disadvantage as hundreds of suitors and petitioners 
 of one kind and another have been made to feel, in 
 other lands than New Guinea. Whatever condition
 
 208 WHEN THE RED GODS CALL 
 
 you may have started in, you are sure to arrive steam- 
 ing at every pore, your clean collar drooping like a 
 withered lily, your white shoes smeared with dust, 
 your carefully brushed hair composing itself into a 
 Tommy- Atkins " quiff " on your crimson forehead. 
 . . . Out of the glare and heat you come, smelling 
 of sun and dust, into the sanctuary where the Other 
 Man sits among his signs of office, cool and calm and 
 unperturbed. . . . You may be infinitely the 
 cooler of the two, in the sense that really matters; but 
 you don't look like it, and he does. 
 
 It may have been some consciousness of this un- 
 comfortable fact, or it may have been plain common 
 or garden nervousness, but I found it harder than I 
 could have believed to enter upon my business, after 
 the Papuan orderly had ushered me into the study, and 
 withdrawn his black halo, and blue and white uniform 
 tunic to the veranda outside after the Governor 
 had greeted me politely, offered me a chair, and set 
 himself down in an intolerably wooden attitude upon 
 his own. The more so, because I knew that he had 
 guessed my business at once, and I saw that he was 
 bent on using every advantage he possessed, of man- 
 ner, self-possession, or position, to " down " me be- 
 fore ever I opened my lips. 
 
 If he had not been Stephanie's father, and some- 
 what like her, I should have resented this; but my 
 heart was soft that morning, and I could not cherish 
 dislike towards a hard-faced naval officer of fifty, ob- 
 viously inclined to make himself disagreeable, when 
 the carriage of his head and the shape of his hands,
 
 WHEN THE RED GODS CALL 209 
 
 and the very curve of his eyebrows, were full of as- 
 sociations unspeakably moving to me. I suppose 
 daughters have been observed to resemble their 
 fathers before in the history of the world, but the fact 
 that a young girl with the face like a flower could be 
 visibly shadowed forth in the countenance of a tough, 
 middle-aged, teak-hearted, steel-eyed sailor, really 
 seemed to me a sort of miracle that day. And cer- 
 tainly, the likeness made my voice humbler, and my 
 speech more hesitating than I had pictured either, not 
 very long before. 
 
 I can't remember the words I used. Who can re- 
 call just what he may have said, in a moment of 
 strong emotion? There is a temperature of the mind 
 at which the metal of speech is fused. Out of the 
 mold of such hours, Fate, the great artificer, may cast 
 eternal figures of sorrow or of joy. But in the cast- 
 ing, the ingots are lost. 
 
 I remember the Governor's reply. It was as I have 
 written. 
 
 He had been sitting like his own memorial cut in 
 granite, while I spoke never moving a finger-nail 
 or a fold of his clothes; his gray eyes, with their 
 small inscrutable pupils, fixed hard upon me all the 
 time. Only an Englishman, and an official English- 
 man, can sit like that. I, Celt and gypsy through and 
 through, use gesture freely at all times perhaps I 
 did so more freely than usual just then but I felt 
 that he disliked and despised it, and deliberately chose 
 to underline the contrast offered by his own immo- 
 bility.
 
 210 WHEN THE RED GODS CALL 
 
 " Of course, you knew that I should refuse." 
 
 Well, I had known it. But I had hoped for, I 
 scarce knew what discussion, argument, objection 
 I was ready for all. I had put my case well enough 
 our mutual love; my capacity for making a good 
 trove; the nine hundred and odd pounds worth of gold 
 dust at present buried under the floor of my bedroom. 
 I had offered to build a comfortable home in Port 
 Moresby, and let Stephanie live near her father during 
 the numerous absences I should no doubt find neces- 
 sary from time to time. I had put forth every fact 
 that told in my favor, and prepared myself to com- 
 bat every possible objection that might be raised. 
 In short, I was wound up for the fray, and eager 
 for it. 
 
 And my opponent declined even to unsheathe his 
 sword. I was not worth so much as that. 
 
 It cost me a good deal to say, quietly and with due 
 restraint : 
 
 " I did know it, sir." 
 
 The Governor maintained his position unaltered. 
 The light from the door fell on his sleek, gray hair, 
 and slanted down upon the well-kept hands that lay 
 crossed on the table. 
 
 " Then, may I ask," he said, " to what I am in- 
 debted for the honor of this visit? " 
 
 If I had not seen by the whitening of his knuckles 
 as his hands pressed down on one another, that he was 
 really beginning to weaken, I should have turned my 
 back on him then and there, and slammed his inhos-- 
 pitable door behind me. But . . .
 
 WHEN THE RED GODS CALL 211 
 
 A man who lives as near to Nature as I have lived, 
 has curious intuitions. In that moment, I saw clear 
 through the wall of his stony demeanor, as if it had 
 been glass, and behind it crouched the figure of a man, 
 no longer young, never much loved, too cold for sym- 
 pathy, too proud for fellowship, unable to endure de- 
 feat, yet momentarily pushed nearer and nearer to the 
 grip of that dreaded necessity. 
 
 If I had felt the weight of his personality, he had 
 assuredly felt the weight of mine. He knew that he 
 was beaten. He knew, as well as if I had said it, 
 that his consent was in reality a dead letter; that the 
 silent, bitter sex struggle which sets the father against 
 the daughter's suitor, and the mother against the wife 
 of her son, had been fought, and lost. Youth, once 
 more, was to be served ; age, once more, was to swal- 
 low defeat. . . . Yet he struggled against the in- 
 evitable ; he refused to know that he was beaten. 
 
 This passed in an instant. There was but a brief 
 pause before I answered, hitting straight home: 
 
 " I came because I want to be on good terms if 
 possible with my wife's father. Now you have it, 
 sir." 
 
 There was no need to enlarge on that " if possible." 
 In the latter end of the nineteenth century, a girl who 
 is of age, and a man who knows his own mind, don't 
 eat out their hearts and wear away their youth waiting 
 for one another, simply because an early-Victorian 
 parent chooses to deny that intangible " blessing " so 
 dear to the soul of the novelist. They just manage to 
 get on without it, and the story closes at the second
 
 212 
 
 chapter, which would not do at all in a three-hundred- 
 page novel, but is quite satisfactory in real life. 
 
 . . . What is a man to do, who cannot give in, 
 and must? 
 
 Dead silence fell on the room. The Governor's 
 flinty eyes stared at me ; his hands pressed harder than 
 ever on one another; he swallowed in his throat, but 
 did not speak. 
 
 " Poor old devil ! " my thoughts wandered. " Poor 
 old devil, it's going to be rough on him. . . . 
 What a noise the wind makes in those palm-trees; 
 you'd think it was rain, if you didn't know. . . . 
 One of the little red king-birds, that note; they don't 
 often come so far down. . . . Look at that spider 
 on the wall; he'd stretch a dinner-plate. . i ;- 
 Surely, is that impossible ! by Jove, though, it 
 is!" 
 
 There was a rustle of drapery along the veranda, 
 a pat-pat of quick light footsteps, and in another mo- 
 ment a cyclone of white muslin had whirled into the 
 room, and across it, and the Governor was enveloped 
 in something like a breaking wave. 
 
 When things cleared a bit, it became apparent that 
 Stephanie was sitting on her father's knee, and that 
 her arms were round his neck, and her head on his 
 shoulder, and she was kissing him. . . . Oh, al- 
 together too much, with her unhappy lover, whom she 
 starved on one kiss a week, looking on! And she 
 was murmuring and coaxing and petting, cooing and 
 beseeching, in a way fit to melt the heart of a brass 
 belaying-pin. I could only catch a stray word here and
 
 WHEN THE RED GODS CALL 213 
 
 there, "Pappy darling Pappy!" (kiss), "Dearest 
 Papa!" (small hand cuddling itself coaxingly round 
 the back of a stiff sunburnt neck), "Dear Pappy, I 
 love you!" (brown head rubbed up and down a 
 starched coat lapel), "Darling, do be good to Sep- 
 pie! " and then the prettiest of baby talk, that I was 
 almost ashamed to hear, charged as it was with remi- 
 niscences of those days in which I had no share the 
 days that were the father's only. After all, how 
 very few were the years since this promised wife of 
 mine had been a little child ! 
 
 They were few indeed to her father's heart, in that 
 moment, I think. The soft young face laid so close 
 to his own time-beaten features were breaking down 
 his resolution inch by inch, as a shattered sea-wall 
 crumbles to the tide. I saw his head bend over her 
 brown curls, and his arms close tight about his baby, 
 as if to hold her fast against the world and then 
 I left the room quietly, and went out on to the ve- 
 randa. They did not see me go. 
 
 Up and down within the canvas shades I walked, 
 waiting for those two inside to make an end of their 
 difference, and a beginning of their good-by. There 
 were strange thoughts in my mind thoughts that 
 had never so much as neared it before. The world 
 was widening fast. ... As clearly as I had seen 
 Stephanie a moment before, I now saw another Ste- 
 phanie, somewhere far away in the unknown years of 
 the coming century; and she had brown hair with a 
 shade of red in it; and she looked at me with Ste- 
 phanie's blue eyes under someone else's straight heavy
 
 214 WHEN THE RED GODS CALL 
 
 brows, and she put her head on my shoulder, and told 
 me she was going away from me going for always 
 with a man who was no good. . . . 
 
 I declare, if the action had not been unthinkable, I 
 would have gone to the Governor then and there, and 
 told him that I gave him back his daughter. But 
 those are the things that one does not do. I only went 
 on walking up and down, and said to myself as I 
 walked 
 
 " May God send me to everlasting torment if 
 there is a God, and if there is a hell should I fail 
 to take care of her." 
 
 When I went back, my fiancee and her father were 
 seated apart, looking much as usual, save that Ste- 
 phanie's eyes were a little pink. She got up when she 
 saw me. 
 
 " I'll leave you together you will want to talk," 
 she said, escaping. Tararua was waiting on the ve- 
 randa, having that moment sprung mysteriously from 
 nowhere. Through the glass, I saw Stephanie, so to 
 speak, collect the Papuan, and whisk her away, with a 
 gesture of her ringer, and then the black and the white 
 were gone. 
 
 The Governor addressed me at once, and very 
 courteously. A brave man, he was bravest in de- 
 feat. 
 
 " I can't deny my daughter, Mr. Lynch," he said. 
 " Especially as it would be of no effect. It is to be 
 as you wish. ... I think I'm getting old; be 
 patient with me for a minute." 
 
 He put his hand across his face, and leaned on his
 
 WHEN THE RED GODS CALL 215 
 
 elbow, collecting himself in silence. Presently he 
 looked up. 
 
 " To make the best of what I can't call a good 
 bargain " he said, " I intend to help you into a some- 
 what better position. It's impossible that you should 
 go on picking up a living pearling and digging and 
 trading, if you are to marry my daughter. I don't 
 happen to fancy your personality, Mr. Lynch, but I 
 believe you are the right kind of man to break in a 
 rough country, and I am short of Resident Magis- 
 trates, so I am prepared to appoint you to the 
 charge of the Eastern Division. You can live at 
 Samarai in a decent house, and go out on patrol with 
 your police as often as necessary, leaving Stephanie 
 safe at home. The salary is four hundred; in this 
 country, you can live on that. I will allow my daugh- 
 ter something if I can, but I am comparatively a poor 
 man myself, or I shouldn't be here. You can use 
 your gold " the phrase seemed to stick in his 
 throat " to furnish the house : the Government will 
 provide you with a cutter, and you can have police 
 orderlies. There are a fair number of white people 
 in the East End now ; she won't be without society 
 of a kind. If the natives chance to get you on your 
 patrols they're a bad lot about the D'Entrecasteaux 
 and Milne Bay she could come back to me, and I 
 would look after her and any others there might 
 be." 
 
 I broke in with thanks for his kindness, and a word 
 or two as to what I hoped I could do with the ap- 
 pointment which indeed gratified me very much,
 
 216 WHEN THE RED GODS CALL 
 
 for a Papuan " R. M." is a little king in his own do- 
 main, and the exploring and fighting likely to be pro- 
 vided by the Eastern Division were entirely to my 
 taste. His Excellency waited till I had done, and 
 then went on as if I had not spoken: 
 
 " You had better go down to Australia for a little 
 while on your marriage she will be the better of a 
 change, and you will have the furniture to buy. You 
 can have the Merrie England to travel in I was in- 
 tending to send her shortly in any case, with de- 
 spatches. I can't leave the Eastern Division without 
 a magistrate much longer, so I suppose it will have to 
 be soon." 
 
 He rose to his feet. 
 
 " I'm sure you will excuse me now, Mr. Lynch. 
 It's tiring weather, and, as I said I grow old." 
 
 We had shaken hands, and I was out on the ve- 
 randa again, and the glass door was shut behind me, 
 and the blind was drawn. Middle age was alone with 
 itself and its sorrow. The curtain had risen on the 
 drama of Youth. 
 
 Of course, I found Stephanie waiting for me in the 
 sitting-room; and, of course, I made her pay me lib- 
 erally for the envy and jealousy she had aroused that 
 morning. When she had scolded me for untidying 
 her curls and her laces (I liked nothing better than to 
 have her scold me, and I think she knew it) and when 
 she had prinked and preened at the glass a little, we 
 came on other and graver matters. We were in a 
 cool inner room, shut away from light and heat, and 
 I was fanning her while I talked.
 
 WHEN THE RED GODS CALL 217 
 
 " Do you know," said I, *' that your father is going 
 to lend us the Merrie England? " 
 
 "What for?" asked Mademoiselle, lying back in 
 her hammock chair, and playing with a cluster of but- 
 terfly orchids she had fastened into the bosom of her 
 dress. 
 
 " To go down to Brisbane in, when we are mar- 
 ried." 
 
 Stephanie made a face. I should as soon have ex- 
 pected a lily of the valley to make faces, sometime 
 before, but the human nature of my moonlight lady 
 was becoming more apparent now. 
 
 " Why, the Merrie England is going down in about 
 three weeks ! " 
 
 " So I believe." 
 
 " Then that settles it, of course it's far too soon." 
 
 " Is it ? " I asked, dropping the fan, because my 
 hands were otherwise occupied. "Is it, Stephanie?" 
 
 Well, well! who is going to tell what he says, on 
 such an occasion as this? I shall tell what she said, 
 instead. 
 
 ". . . Impossible." 
 
 "... I don't want to hear another word about 
 it." 
 
 ". . . We couldn't, I couldn't, it couldn't 
 there!" 
 
 ". . . Not the least sorry for anyone so 
 silly." 
 
 ". . . No, no, no, no, no ! " 
 
 How can I speak when you're " 
 
 ". . . Hugh, stop!"
 
 218 WHEN THE RED GODS CALL 
 
 ". . . Oh, I'll say anything let go, you croco- 
 dile!" 
 
 ". . . I'll think about it perhaps " 
 
 ". . . Well, then, I will go away, please, im- 
 mediately I've had a great deal more than enough 
 of you this morning." 
 
 " I'm going," I said, taking up my sun-helmet 
 "But Stephanie" 
 
 "Well?" She was half way through the door. 
 
 " Tell me how did you manage to act the angel- 
 in-the-machine just at the right moment? Were you 
 listening? " 
 
 " Most certainly not," said His Excellency's daugh- 
 ter, with icy dignity. " How can you ask such a 
 thing?" 
 
 " I ask because miracles don't often happen, in New 
 Guinea or elsewhere," said I coolly. 
 
 " Well, then," said Stephanie, quite through the 
 door now, and putting back her head into the room, 
 * I didn't listen, of course, but " 
 
 "What?" 
 
 " Tararua was " 
 
 "Where?" 
 
 " Under the floor. Do you think you're invisible, 
 walking up the hill in a white suit, at eleven in the 
 morning? " 
 
 As she made herself invisible directly, there was 
 nothing left for me to do but go, and I went. 
 
 When does joy or sorrow meet us with the face 
 that we had pictured? Stephanie's father had con- 
 sented. Stephanie had given in to an early marriage.
 
 WHEN THE RED GODS CALL 219 
 
 Three weeks would see us made one, and sailing 
 south to Paradise, in the Merrie England. Only a 
 little while ago, I should have thought that my heart 
 would burst with happiness, were such a cornucopia 
 of good fortune to be poured out upon a single day. 
 But someone has to pay for everybody's joy; and I 
 had seen the price that two had had to pay for mine. 
 It was a tempered, almost a grave happiness that I 
 bore away with me that morning, though 
 
 " Never yet so sweetly ran my blood, 
 Calming itself to the long-wished for end, 
 Full to the banks, close on the promised good."
 
 CHAPTER XI 
 
 / "T" S HE news of my good fortune spread all over 
 * Port Moresby and the surrounding country, in a 
 day or two. Lynch was to marry the Governor's 
 daughter. Lynch had cut out Carolan, the Chief 
 Magistrate who was first cousin to an Earl, and had 
 enough of a " pull " at home to make him sure of 
 being Governor himself some day. Lynch was to be 
 made " R. M." of the Eastern Division. Lynch was 
 to have the loan of the Government steam yacht, to go 
 down to Brisbane for the honeymoon. Lynch, in 
 fine, was on the top of the wave of prosperity, float- 
 ing ahead at a rate that amazed everyone who knew 
 him, but none more than himself. 
 
 Of course Lynch was popular under these circum- 
 stances, though he had never been hail-fellow-well-met 
 with the Port Moresby crowd at any time witness 
 the fact that, in a land where every man was known 
 familiarly as Tommy This, Jack That, Bill the Other, 
 his Christian name was allowed to rest in obscurity, 
 except so far as Worboise was concerned. But then 
 Worboise was my " mate " a word that means much 
 to those who live under the Southern Cross. 
 
 Did I enjoy this sudden burst of popularity the 
 eagerness to treat at the " hotel," the number of new 
 intimates who came in the evenings to pass an hour 
 
 220
 
 WHEN THE RED GODS CALL 221 
 
 with Worboise and myself the ready smiles and 
 hand-shakes of the Government officials, who hitherto 
 had scarcely seemed aware of my existence? No. 
 
 It was not because I felt the whole affair was more 
 or less hollow most popularity is that, when you 
 come to think of it. It was because my pride was 
 hurt doubly hurt, in that everyone seemed to re- 
 gard me as suddenly raised in the social scale, whereas 
 I had self-respect enough to think myself no less a 
 man than the Governor, outside his official standing 
 and in the fact that I was to owe considerable ad- 
 vantage to my wife. 
 
 Rather, much rather, on the whole, would I have 
 kept her in my own way, had that been possible. The 
 advantages of the " R. M. "-ships were many, but it 
 carried its penalties too. Still, the matter was settled, 
 and who was I, to complain that Fortune's gifts 
 weighed over heavily? 
 
 I find myself unable to write much about those 
 brief weeks of our engagement. It is all nonsense 
 to say that " coming events cast their shadows be- 
 fore." They don't a man whose life has had as 
 many events in it as mine knows that. But when 
 one is living over past days in thought, events do cast 
 their shadows, so strongly that one can see little else 
 but the foreboding shadow. Those few weeks were 
 happy, but I cannot think of them as happy now, 
 remembering to what they led.
 
 222 WHEN THE RED GODS CALL 
 
 Th.e days and nights ran by suns rose above the 
 purple Astrolabe, and set beneath Port Moresby Bay, 
 in all the unimaginable splendor of New Guinea skies 
 and seas. The mangoes, pendent on long string-like 
 stalks beneath huge domes of fiery green, began to 
 swell and ripen; the great dark forest trees, with the 
 pale heliotrope-colored flowers, were putting forth 
 their poignantly-scented bloom. It was at the break 
 of the seasons: the burning days were close upon us 
 now. When they came, when those fast-ripening 
 fruits were dropping from the stem, and the flamboy- 
 ant flowered, and the f rangipanni was all white 
 Stephanie and I would not be there to see. We 
 should be dreaming side by side on the deck of the 
 Merrie England, under the shady awning, watching 
 the peridot greens and enamel blues of the Great Bar- 
 rier Reef grow pale beneath the 
 
 " Orange sunset waning low " 
 
 seeing the fivefold jewel of the Southern Cross 
 light up above the long dark Queensland shore, and 
 the sea-fires spray about our shearing bows, and the 
 fairy coral islands, all around our track, spread coasts 
 of ivory and pearl beneath the silver moon. . . . 
 A sailor's honeymoon, in truth a sailor's dream of 
 Paradise. 
 
 The days went by. It was the week before the 
 wedding now, and Stephanie was never to be found 
 without a needle in her hand, when I went to see her, 
 and mysterious cocoons of rufflings and frillings
 
 WHEN THE RED GODS CALL 223 
 
 seemed to involve the whole of Government House, 
 and almost escape down the avenue. My bride was 
 just a little nervous and a little fretful, too, and the 
 days when she kept me on short commons of kind 
 words were more numerous than the days when she 
 called me pretty, mischievous names of her own de- 
 vising, and coquetted with me on the veranda steps, 
 coming and going, after her own inimitable fashion. 
 I took the bitter and the sweet alike, and did not com- 
 plain. I could afford to be patient. 
 
 The days went on. Now it was the day before the 
 wedding, and Worboise, whose exultation had been 
 unspeakable from the beginning, was going about chok- 
 ing and chuckling to an extent that almost suggested 
 incipient apoplexy. When the evening came, nothing 
 would do him but he must let loose the sentiment with 
 which he was brimming over, by reading aloud to me 
 extracts from the idiotic novels he kept in huge accu- 
 mulations under his bed. I could not prevent him from 
 selecting the treacliest bits of these, and giving them 
 out with a tearful quiver in his fat voice that nearly 
 drove me insane. It was a moonlight evening with 
 a fresh wind ; I remember every palm about the house 
 was a tossing fountain of silver, and the coral beach 
 below the house shone like a marble floor. A night 
 on which no man with the wild drop in his blood 
 could rest quiet in a house, even had it not been 
 that " white night "of sleeplessness and nervous ten- 
 sion that is the usual forerunner of a wedding-day. 
 
 And on such a night as this, my mate sat at the 
 table, within range of the heat and reek of the dirty
 
 224 WHEN THE RED GODS CALL 
 
 kerosene lamp, reading from " The Martyrdom of 
 Marguerite." 
 
 " 'Erbert, my 'eart is yours and yours alone. The 
 'oly vows that I have vowed stand for hever be- 
 tween you and me, but think not, though separated 
 far from thee, the 'eart of Marguerite can wax cold 
 to 'im she loves. We meet no more on hearth, but 
 ho my 'Erbert, in 'eaven " 
 
 " It fair turns me inside out," broke off Worboise, 
 feeling for his pocket-handkerchief. " Lovers partin' 
 like that and the beautiful language. . . . Did 
 she ever use language like that to you, Hugh ? " 
 
 " Why the why should she ? " I said irritably. 
 " She's not going to be a nun, and go off into a con- 
 vent by mistake ; not much." 
 
 " I mean them sweet things about 'earts never wax- 
 in' cold, an' such like," said Worboise, wiping his 
 eyes unashamedly. " It's lovely writin' : it fair " 
 
 " Taubada, two fellow sailor belong Merrie Eng- 
 land he come," interrupted Garia, who was strapping 
 up my steel trunk on the veranda. 
 
 " Are you sending your things to-night ? " asked 
 Worboise, dropping down from the clouds. " Let 
 me go and see to them for you; I'll get them stowed 
 convenient and I'd like to do what I can for you 
 at the last, boy, even if it ain't much." 
 
 It sounded more like an offer to help with funeral, 
 than with wedding arrangements ; however, I accepted 
 it gratefully, for I was thirsting to be alone. Wor- 
 boise and the sailors went off down the track with my 
 modest luggage, and I left the house, and tramped
 
 WHEN THE RED GODS CALL 225 
 
 away down the shore in the moonlight, breathing 
 freely at last. 
 
 It was growing late when I came back, but I found 
 Worboise still away at the hotel, I had no doubt, 
 drinking my health not wisely but too well. Garia 
 was on the veranda, thoughtfully licking powdered 
 lime off the spatula of his betel-chewing outfit. 
 
 " You can go home now," I said. 
 
 " I go, Taubada," he answered, slinging back the 
 decorated gourd, with its boar-tusk stopper, and paus- 
 ing on the edge of the veranda. " Taubada " 
 
 "Well?" 
 
 "To-morrow, you marry Misi Sefania?" 
 
 " Yes, to-morrow." 
 
 Garia's eyes sparkled with interest. 
 
 " How mut' you pay for him ? " 
 
 " All I've got, Garia." 
 
 " E e, Taubada, I think you pay too mut'. 
 Plenty gold you got, flenty frying-pan, close, boot, 
 tin-meat, cartridge too mut' for pay one girl." 
 
 " But I'm not paying in frying-pans and boots, 
 Garia, I'm paying in something else." 
 
 "What you pay?" 
 
 " I pay thing I call heart, and she pay all same." 
 
 " I no savvy that-fellow talk. Misi Sefania, he got- 
 tum heart ? " 
 
 " Yes, and she gives it to me." 
 
 " All same big you giving? " 
 
 "Oh, I don't know don't worry," I said. The 
 conversation had begun to irritate me: I thought I 
 had better get in and try for some sleep.
 
 226 WHEN THE RED GODS CALL 
 
 " There, go," I said. " Go home to Tararua, and 
 turn up early in the morning." And I went in. 
 
 " All same big. . . ." The words haunted me. 
 O Stephanie, further removed from me now than the 
 stars from the lonely earth Stephanie, dainty Dres- 
 dan china lady of a dream was the pretty " pate 
 tendre " heart you gave to me in truth " all same big " 
 as the red, warm, living heart I gave to you? 
 
 "There she is!" 
 
 Something climbed up into my throat with a lump, 
 and I felt my breath begin to go faster. It was 
 going fast enough already. I had been standing be- 
 side the draped kitchen table that represented an altar, 
 in the tiny Mission Church, for full fifteen minutes, 
 under a raking fire of eyes from every white, and 
 most of the half-castes, in Port Moresby; and nerves 
 which I had never suspected myself to possess were 
 quivering into disagreeable activity. The little box 
 of a building scarce larger than a suburban draw- 
 ing-room was decorated with stiflingly sweet gar- 
 lands of frangipanni. The sky outside was hard and 
 fiercely blue. It was one of New Guinea's " diamond 
 days," when everything scintillates and stares, and the 
 sun-rays strike like a blow. . . . Hot? I loos- 
 ened my torturing collar for the twentieth time, and 
 helplessly regarded the collapsing freshness of my best 
 white suit. The stephanotis in my buttonhole, plucked 
 from the veranda but an hour before, was drooping 
 like a melted wax candle. Entrican, the missionary, 
 standing close at hand, seemed almost ready to faint
 
 WHEN THE RED GODS CALL 227 
 
 beneath the weight of his black clerical suit, and hand- 
 kerchiefs were hard at work mopping crimson faces, 
 all over the church. 
 
 If any reminiscence crossed my mind of another 
 wedding-day only a year or two ago, when Chalmers, 
 at that time in charge, had married me in his own 
 parlor to a black Papuan bride, I put it away easily 
 enough. That was done with done with buried 
 deep beneath fifty fathom of coral seas, it and all its 
 consequences. As for calling it a marriage why, 
 in the sight of heaven (if there be a heaven) it was 
 no marriage at all, whatever earthly laws might say. 
 This, and this only, was my true marriage day. 
 
 Every head was turned to the door. A susurrus 
 of whispers ran through the church as a breaking 
 wave runs along a beach. The natives outside began 
 to cackle excitedly. . . . She was coming. 
 
 Stephanie, Stephanie, lost star of my life, if ever 
 bride looked like an angel new-fallen from the sky, 
 so you looked, entering under the arch of frangipanni 
 blossom that day your sweet face spirit-pale be- 
 neath floating mist of white, your dark silk eyelashes 
 lying low on the delicate cheek ; your cloud-like, wing- 
 like dress floating to right and left as you moved; in 
 those little, little hands of yours the cluster of white 
 bush-lilies I had sent you. . . . O, what was I, 
 to deserve 
 
 " So pure a thing, so free from mortal taint ! " 
 
 Her father was with her, but I saw no more of him 
 than a gray-and-white blur somewhere in Stephanie's
 
 228 WHEN THE RED GODS CALL 
 
 neighborhood. I did not see the crowd now, nor the 
 missionary, nor the altar, nor the fierce blue sky that 
 burned at the windows, nor the gray-green, wander- 
 ing ringers of the eucalyptus trees outside. I saw 
 only one thing, and that was the face of Stephanie 
 my Stephanie, at last. 
 
 The service began. The Governor gave his daugh- 
 ter away without any sign of emotion, but his eye 
 was fixed on me as he spoke, and I read somewhat of 
 a threat in it. 
 
 " No fear, gray man ! " I thought. " You could 
 not be harder on me than I should be on myself, if I 
 brought the shadow of a shade of a grief on a hair 
 of her head. . . ." 
 
 . . . The ring? It was ready. No best man, 
 no bridesmaid, was at this marriage, but none was 
 needed. It was I myself who slipped the glove off 
 the little hand at the right moment how cold those 
 delicate fingers were, for all the heat of the day ! 
 and I who took the bouquet quietly away, and laid it 
 down on the table. Whatever I had been before, I 
 was not nervous now. 
 
 We knelt together; it was over, all but the bless- 
 ing. My little bride had been trembling so that I 
 almost feared she would faint, all through the cere- 
 mony, and if her father and myself and the mission- 
 ary heard the timid responses that barely moved her 
 lips, certainly no one else did. But she was calm and 
 quiet now the attitude of prayer had lifted her pure 
 heart to heaven, from which it was never far away, 
 and the words of blessing seemed to fall like dew
 
 WHEN THE RED GODS CALL 229 
 
 upon her soul. I, seeing and hearing nothing in the 
 ceremony but a pursy black-coated parson reciting 
 antiquated mummeries for a certain number of 
 pounds, could yet read her mind clearly enough to 
 follow its workings, and if a man's soul can laugh 
 and cry together, mine assuredly did. 
 
 " At the thought of those enchantments cold, 
 And (Stephanie) asleep in lap of legends old." 
 
 Well, she should always have her legends, as many 
 and as old as she liked I was not marrying her 
 to deny her anything she fancied. 
 
 We rose, and turned to walk down the tiny aisle 
 together. Port Moresby had lifted its head from the 
 book-rests, and abandoned its colorable imitation of 
 kneeling, and was sitting up, staring like one man. 
 Worboise, in the front seat, looking horribly fat in 
 a borrowed khaki suit much too small for him, was 
 wiping his eyes and nose with a purple " trade " 
 pocket-handkerchief, and sniffing more than was nec- 
 essary. The odor of the flowers was stifling; I shall 
 never smell frangipanni again without seeing it all 
 the white coats and red faces, the bare brown wooden 
 walls, the pattern of the pandanus mats on the floor, 
 the narrow arch of the doorway, giving on the palms 
 and the pink oleanders, and the green and blue of the 
 sea . . . the sea, where very far away one tiny, 
 white seed-pearl of evil gleamed out, just as we left 
 the church. 
 
 "Do you see the little sail?" was the first thing 
 Stephanie said.
 
 230 WHEN THE RED GODS CALL 
 
 " Yes, darling, I see it," I answered. " A fair 
 wind and a prosperous voyage, for her and us ! Let's 
 hope it's a good omen." 
 
 " But it's not a fair wind for her, with that north- 
 wester; you should choose your omens better, Hugh." 
 
 " Neither it is," I said carelessly, " I withdraw the 
 comparison; she won't be in port for another two 
 hours, and we're in port now, aren't we ? " 
 
 " Yes. . . . What is she, I wonder ? " asked 
 my bride, pausing on her way down the narrow coral 
 path to the buggy that was waiting below. 
 
 " Some trading cutter, I suppose. Look out for 
 your skirt on those thorns, dearest, and come along; 
 the sun's risky without a hat. ... In with you; 
 I'll pull up the hood. I suppose the others will walk." 
 
 " Why, of course ! " said Stephanie, bubbling over 
 with laughter. " You know as well as I do, that this 
 is the only wheeled vehicle in New Guinea ! " 
 
 Nothing could have been quieter than the break- 
 fast only the Governor, Stephanie and myself, 
 Worboise, the missionary, and some dozen officials 
 and traders, were present, waited on by Garia and 
 the houseboys. Carolan was not among the guests; 
 he had left Port Moresby some weeks earlier, to try 
 cases at the East End, and had not returned. 
 
 The Governor made a short, stilted speech of the 
 most conventional kind; I answered in half-a-dozen 
 sentences, being, like Mr. Sleary of the horse-riding, 
 " not much of a cackler " at any time. I knew that 
 Worboise would make a speech, and trembled at the 
 thought; however, it was by no means so bad as I
 
 231 
 
 had feared, when it came. The good old fellow began 
 with a rather absurd panegyric of myself, which, to 
 my utter astonishment, brought forth loudly assenting 
 claps and stamps from the other men. ... So 
 I had "builded better than I knew," in Papua, and 
 they really liked me, after all! 
 
 I feared the inevitable anthropophagic anecdote 
 would thrust its head up by and by; but luckily, 
 champagne and emotion overcame my mate before 
 he got so far, and he collapsed into his seat, on the very 
 apex of a touching description of Stephanie's beauties 
 and virtues, delivered with infinite feeling, and with- 
 out a single h. After which, we all fell to upon the 
 fresh turtle soup, and fatted fowls, and the tarts 
 and blanc manges, and the roast hind-quarters of 
 wallaby, and the giant Gaura pigeons, one each to a 
 pie, and the mango salad and stewed paw-paws, and 
 all the other delicacies provided by His Excellency's 
 native cook. 
 
 When the festivities began to languish, Stephanie 
 disappeared with Tararua, and came back before very 
 long in the prettiest of cotton traveling dresses 
 blue, or pink, or red, or some color of that kind 
 trimmed with things, and hung with things, and look- 
 ing very nice. She had a hat, too, with other things 
 on it, and a parasol, and Tararua was carrying her 
 dressing-bag. It was clear that the time had come. 
 
 In effect, there was Ogi, the coxswain of the whale- 
 boat crew, standing on the threshold, his immense 
 head wreathed with a perfect garden of ferns and 
 flowers, and his muscular brown limbs all braceleted
 
 232 WHEN THE RED GODS CALL 
 
 and ankleted with colored leaves. Behind him, the 
 blue sea burned, empty and still, save for the white 
 hull of the Merrie England lying long and low at 
 her anchorage, out in the bay, and the Governor's 
 boat, with its awning up, clinging to the jetty inshore. 
 The little seed-pearl of the distant sail was no more 
 to be seen. 
 
 They drank our health again, and they cheered us, 
 and they pelted Stephanie and me with all the flowers 
 from the table, as we passed down the narrow steps 
 of the veranda, out into the fierce gold sun. The 
 Governor came with us to the boat; the wedding 
 guests remained, and hung over the veranda rails, 
 shouting, waving hats and handkerchiefs, hurraying, 
 until we were below the slope on the hill. My last 
 sight of the house was a vision of white flapping 
 sleeves and crimsoned faces, crowding the rail till it 
 looked like the side of a ship leaving port, and the 
 last I heard was a confused chorus of " Auld Lang 
 Syne," "He's a Jolly Good Fellow," "Good Luck! 
 Good Luck! Hurray! " all overtopped by Worboise's 
 bloodhound bellow " Goad bless you ! Goad bless 
 you ! Goad-by ! " 
 
 The Governor tripped beside us, neater, cooler, 
 more dry and chiplike than ever, and I read in the 
 very set of his helmet that he connected these un- 
 seemly demonstrations directly and disgustedly with 
 myself. . . . 
 
 . . . Down the hill we went, beneath the mem- 
 orable rubber tree, along the bit of flat where the 
 bananas waved their huge green flags in the gathering
 
 WHEN THE RED GODS CALL 233 
 
 breeze, through the grove of dry, rattling palms, over 
 the black swamp, where the little skip-fish jumped 
 nervously out of the water at our approach, and leaped 
 away along the land out on to the coral stone jetty, 
 where the banded sea-snakes used to creep and bask in 
 the hot hours of afternoon to the end of the pier, 
 and the damp-green wooden stairs, and the boat 
 the boat at last ! God, but I was glad ! Was there 
 ever a bridegroom yet who did not in his heart re- 
 gard the wedding mummeries and the wedding fes- 
 tivities, from beginning to end, merely as the price 
 extorted for his bride by the tyrannical deities of 
 Societies and Custom? A price that has to be paid, 
 but is seldom paid willingly never with enjoyment. 
 
 With her white cushions and awnings, and her gay 
 decorations of flags, the whaleboat made a bright 
 patch of color, and she looked all the gayer when 
 Stephanie's pretty figure was settled in the stern- 
 sheets, overflowing the cushions with such a compli- 
 cation of draperies that there seemed to be very little 
 room left for me though indeed, that was a cir- 
 cumstance with which I was not likely to quarrel. 
 
 There had been a close, clinging embrace between 
 the father and the daughter, on the pier; the Gov- 
 ernor had turned as yellow-white as the faded palm- 
 fronds drifting out with the tide, but had not given 
 way by so much as a quiver of his war-worn, sea- 
 beaten features. Stephanie had clung and sobbed and 
 choked a little, and then broken away and stepped 
 into the boat, smiling as women can smile when their 
 hearts are near to breaking. ... I handed in my
 
 234 WHEN THE RED GODS CALL 
 
 bride, sprang up the steps again to wring the Gov- 
 ernor's unresponsive hand, sprang down and into my 
 seat, and cried " Shove off " to the crew. . . . 
 The sea breeze freshened as we shot beyond the pier ; 
 the Governor's straight stiff form grew smaller and 
 smaller. A long way out, we could see it still, stand- 
 ing there alone. 
 
 When I open my eyes, in the darkness of those 
 long nights, I can see the Merrie England and all on 
 board her, the sea, the hills, the town beyond, as 
 clearly as I saw them on that ill-fated day itself. 
 . . . I shall see them so, in the daytime and the 
 night, till the greater darkness shuts my eyes forever. 
 
 A picture painted in gems and fire, was the ship 
 that afternoon. The blinding sparkle of the sea 
 shone back from her brass fittings, all brightened up 
 with gold; from the new clean varnish of the bul- 
 warks, the great sash windows of the deck-houses, and 
 the smaller circles of the ports. Not even the colors 
 of the sky and sea and land, on that gorgeous day, 
 equaled the glow of the masses of flowers that had 
 been stacked and twined about hatchways, gratings, 
 ratlines and rails. The decks and awnings were white 
 as coral from the reef. Sparks of fire shot from 
 the gilded buttons and stripes of the officers' snowy 
 uniforms; the A. B.'s were in blue suits; the native 
 firemen and deck-hands in brilliant cotton kilts and 
 flowery wreaths. Below the hull, the grass-green 
 water surged and swung, and high above, a cloud of
 
 WHEN THE RED GODS CALL 235 
 
 flags, blue, yellow, white and red, was slatting and 
 straining in the rising breeze. 
 
 " Wind getting up, Captain," I remarked, as that of- 
 ficial handed Stephanie gallantly up the accommoda- 
 tion ladder, I holding her skirts for her. 
 
 " Aye, but it's changed; we'll have it aft, and she'll 
 run fairly steady. Not that Mrs. Lynch cares about 
 that ; she's a very fair sailor," smiled the captain. 
 
 " Not the wind one would expect at this time of the 
 year." 
 
 " No no but there's no depending on anything, 
 about the break of the seasons. Yon little cutter must 
 have had to beat all the way up the coast, though she's 
 got a slant now." 
 
 So she had ; the little seed-pearl of the horizon had 
 reappeared from behind an outlying island, and was 
 now plain to be seen as a cutter of some ten or twelve 
 tons, hurrying portward as fast as sail could carry 
 her. The wind was blowing strong from the south- 
 east, and a bank of cloud was rising over the Astro- 
 labe. 
 
 "With your leave, sir, we'll up anchor now," said 
 the captain, beckoning to the mate. " I'd as soon 
 clear the coast before dark; we find new reefs here 
 every trip." 
 
 The donkey-engine was got to work at once, and, 
 amid a hideous clattering and clanging, the chains 
 began to rise through the hawse-pipes. While we 
 were getting under way, Stephanie, gay as a child, in- 
 sisted on leading me by the hand all over the ship, 
 showing me the Governor's and secretaries' cabins on
 
 236 WHEN THE RED GODS CALL 
 
 deck; the dining-saloon below, with its smart white 
 and gold bulkheads, and its gay mirrors and carpeting, 
 oddly set off by the grim rack of rifles running right 
 across the forward end ; the high-up bridge deck, best 
 place in the world for lounging and looking about 
 you; the low, cool promenade deck; the pretty cabin 
 reserved for us, a real little sea boudoir, with pier- 
 glass and arm-chairs and a bookcase, and three bright 
 ports looking out upon the tumbling waves, above the 
 standing bed-place. In and out of every corner of 
 the ship went Stephanie's flying skirts, and after her 
 went I, for the moment as young as herself, ready 
 to laugh at nothing, eager to race her up and down 
 the alley-ways and companions snatching a stray 
 kiss behind a door, pinioning and imprisoning my 
 bride in a china-closet, and being punished by blows 
 like the pecks of a little angry bird, when she suc- 
 ceeded in freeing herself by an unsuspected exit at the 
 other side. . . . And all the time, the donkey- 
 engine clattered, and the anchor-chains rattled and 
 roared, and the rising sea struck soft white hands 
 upon the ports outside. ... It was going to be 
 a stormy night. 
 
 In a last wild rush up the main companion I chas- 
 ing Stephanie to pay her out for her latest impertinence, 
 she flying before me, breathless with mischief and 
 laughter the roaring of the chains ceased, and we 
 heard the stentorian voice of the mate sing out 
 " Come up from below, sir." 
 
 " We're off ! " cried Stephanie, standing still. 
 
 " We shall be in a minute," said I. A sudden quiet
 
 WHEN THE RED GODS CALL 237 
 
 fell upon our romp. I think we both felt older: 
 I know we looked at one another with changed faces. 
 Here and now we felt the new strange life began, 
 with the severance from wild, cruel New Guinea, 
 where first our destinies had met and touched 
 whence came the fate that had sent us out upon these 
 seas, together. 
 
 The sharp ting of the engine-room bell broke into 
 the silence. 
 
 " Stand by half speed full speed ahead," trans- 
 lated I. " Now we're away." 
 
 " Let's go on deck," said Stephanie, as the com- 
 panion trembled to the full beat of the screw. 
 
 The green and purple hills of Port Moresby were 
 already changing shape; the reaches of the bay were 
 unfolding. Behind the Merrie England a long white 
 wake began to show. The steamer pitched a little on 
 the incoming swell as we headed out. I put my arm 
 round Stephanie's waist to steady her, and my bride 
 nestled her head close to my shoulder, and leaned 
 against me, sighing with content. 
 
 Filled to the brim, and lifted to my lips, the cup 
 of existence ran over in that moment, and I who 
 never prayed, could have found it in my heart to 
 thank " whatever gods there be," for life, for love, 
 and Stephanie. 
 
 At that instant, the thunderbolt fell. 
 
 . . . When the captain came up to us, with an 
 apologetic smile, balancing himself lightly upon the 
 pitching deck, and offering some inaudible apology 
 for some indefinite necessity when the boatswain
 
 238 WHEN THE RED GODS CALL 
 
 and the mate, hanging over the weather-rail, turned 
 their faces from the whitening sea, and looked at us 
 with a sudden furtive interest I swear I knew it 
 all. Whether it was actual second sight whether 
 it was simply the rapid working of a mind keyed far 
 beyond its normal pitch by the emotions of the day 
 I cannot tell. But in that moment I knew, as 
 surely as if some supernatural messenger had told 
 me, that Carolan was returning upon his Eastern pa- 
 trol upon that cutter, that he was straining every 
 nerve to intercept the ship, and that Fate blind 
 Fate with a black-veiled face, and a skeleton hand 
 had arisen from the far recesses of the island archi- 
 pelagoes to follow me, and track me down, and tear 
 my darling from my arms. 
 
 I think I almost went mad for a second or two, 
 but I neither moved nor spoke. . . Then 
 . . . I could see that the captain was still standing 
 beside me, smiling and apologizing, and saying some- 
 thing about urgent signals displayed by the cutter 
 short time that would be occupied in stopping and 
 communicating possibilities illness on board, doc- 
 tor wanted from Queensland outbreak of native 
 troubles and so forth, and so forth. 
 
 I was quite cool now cool as a man fighting for 
 his life, with the very smallest of chances to see him 
 through. I took Stephanie to a sheltered seat, left 
 her there, and balanced my way back to the captain. 
 
 "Why stop?" I said, "It's a nasty sea, and the 
 cutter should have come earlier with her message, 
 if she has any. It's rather too much, to expect us to
 
 WHEN THE RED GODS CALL 239 
 
 heave to outside the reef, and probably lose our chance 
 of getting clear of land before dark. I've heard of 
 the Merrie England's reputation before now, and I'm 
 sailor enough, anyhow, to see that she'll nearly roll her 
 masts out in this sea, if we have to anchor anywhere for 
 the night and it's a toss-up now whether we don't. 
 Get along, Captain, and let the cutter go hang." 
 
 I spoke easily, and lit a cigar as I talked. .Captain 
 Nash looked puzzled, and the mate and .boatswain 
 stared, enjoying the dilemma. 
 
 " Well, really, sir'" said the captain, after a glance 
 to windward. " I don't know that I'm justified in 
 keeping on. That's one of the Government cutters 
 
 the Kapa-Kapa and Mr. Carolan, the Chief 
 Magistrate, will be in her, I think. She's signaling 
 ' Wish to communicate, urgent, heave to.' It's " 
 
 " I know the signals as well as you do," I said im- 
 patiently, " but I see no reason for stopping. No 
 doubt the people on the cutter think His Excellency 
 is on board, and want to speak to him. They'll find 
 out when they get to port that this isn't a Govern- 
 ment trip. Hang it all, Captain, what can they want 
 with us? Keep all on, and let them go to Jericho 
 
 with their signals." 
 
 All this time, the rising wind shrilled in the rigging, 
 and the screw beat steadily. A monstrous bat-winged 
 lakatoi, laden with sago from the Gulf, swept past 
 us on her way to port, her decks aswarm with wild 
 brown, naked men, crowding to gape at the steamer. 
 And out to windward, against our poor nine knots, 
 the cutter almost held her own.
 
 2 4 o WHEN THE RED GODS CALL 
 
 For a moment, the captain's slack smooth counte- 
 nance seemed to waver, and my soul swung plummet- 
 wise over dark abysses of agony, in the sickening up- 
 and-down that men call " suspense." Then his face 
 set harder. The plummet sank. 
 
 I caught him up before he could speak. 
 
 " Come into your cabin ! " I said ; and though he 
 was master there, he obeyed me. 
 
 It was fight to a finish now, and I had no scruples 
 left. I pulled a small box out of an inner pocket, 
 took off the lid and spilt the contents out on the quilt 
 of the captain's berth, three-and-twenty good pearls, 
 gathered through near seven years of fishing, trading, 
 and wandering; none of them fit for the ear or hand 
 of a queen, perhaps, but each worth a very respecta- 
 ble sum. I had meant them for a necklace for my 
 bride, after we should have reached Brisbane; but it 
 seemed that they were to be the price of my bride in- 
 stead. 
 
 The captain viewed the jewels eagerly. He was a 
 small rat-like creature, with a greedy eye. 
 
 I put them back in their box, and forced it into his 
 hands; I stared him in the eyes as I did so, and said 
 significantly : 
 
 " I don't want the cutter to catch us up." 
 
 If, in that rat-like countenance, I read weakness, 
 covetousness and fear if I played upon them one 
 and all, and bent them to my needs I make no ex- 
 cuse for it. What would another in my place have 
 done?
 
 WHEN THE RED GODS CALL 241 
 
 The captain gulped, smiled, and closed an eager 
 hand about the box. 
 
 " All right," he whispered. " I don't know your 
 game, but I'm on. Come out, and I'll speak to the 
 mate." 
 
 All this had taken but a few minutes. The cutter 
 still swept on beneath the blackening sky. The mate 
 and boatswain waited, leaning against the rail. 
 Stephanie, from her chair, watched us without much 
 interest. There was nothing exciting to her in the 
 appearance of a belated Government cutter that wanted 
 to talk. Officials always wanted to talk, in her ex- 
 perience. 
 
 Captain Nash marched up to the mate, with a blus- 
 tering expression. 
 
 " Keep all on," he said. " We can't be stopped by 
 every hooker that wants to change the time of day 
 with us ! " 
 
 " What ! " said the mate, disrespectfully. 
 
 " I gave you your orders, Mr. Blake," snapped the 
 captain. All British New Guinea knew that no love 
 was lost between these two the mate, an old Royal 
 Navy man, ambitious, fairly well educated, and eager 
 to rise : ready at any time to catch his superior trip- 
 ping the captain, weak, ignorant, boastful, bluster- 
 ous, and holding the reins of authority with a very 
 uncertain grip. The one was drowned off Orokolo 
 not three weeks later a good man lost the other 
 left the ship one day in Cooktown, and never re- 
 turned. I have never seen their successors; they do
 
 242 WHEN THE RED GODS CALL 
 
 not (I understand^ hold social intercourse with the 
 jail. 
 
 " Am I to answer the signal the urgent signal 
 displayed by that cutter, sir ? " asked the mate. 
 
 " No, Mr. Blake, you are not. Am I captain here, 
 or are you ? " Captain Nash swung round theatric- 
 ally, and turned to stride across the deck. His foot 
 slipped on a wet patch of planking as he did so, and 
 he fell full length. The box of pearls shot out of his 
 hand, and in another instant the deck was scattered 
 with flying, rolling specks of white, worth many a 
 month's wage to the unlucky wretch who had dropped 
 them. He clutched at them with a scream, but the 
 mate stepped forward, and hauled him roughly to his 
 feet. 
 
 " Let be ! " he said. " There's work going on here 
 I don't care about. He " pointing to me " gave 
 you those in your cabin just now. I saw you come 
 out with the box. What for? Why aren't we to 
 heave to? This'll look well when it all comes out 
 later on, won't it?" 
 
 " D you ! " yelled the captain, " you've been try- 
 ing to oust me ever since you joined, and this is all a 
 piece of it! Have it your own way, then mutiny, 
 you dog, you, and see what you'll get ! " He was down 
 on the deck again, crawling and clawing after the 
 pearls, and really seemed half demented. Stephanie 
 had risen from her chair, and was clinging to me 
 in terror, not understanding, but badly frightened, 
 at she knew not what. The boatswain, chewing to- 
 bacco, watched the scene with the calm relish of a
 
 WHEN THE RED GODS CALL 243 
 
 servant enjoying a row among his masters. Outside, 
 the white seas roared along our swinging hull, and 
 the black and purple coast of Papua slipped past. 
 
 "I'm not mutineer!" roared the mate. "I ask 
 you, sir, as your chief officer, what order I'm to give 
 the engine-room ? " 
 
 The captain, evidently shaken by the discovery that 
 had fallen on him, made no articulate answer, but held 
 to his pearls. 
 
 " Do I understand you to say, sir, that I am to ring 
 ' Stop ' ? " persisted the mate. 
 
 " Ring her to hell if you like! " howled Nash, and 
 slammed himself into his cabin. 
 
 The mate went at once to the bridge-ladder, and as 
 he mounted, I loosened Stephanie's clinging arms, 
 and put her in her chair, with a word or two of as- 
 surance. Before the officer had reached the tele- 
 graph, I was on the bridge-deck beside him. I sup- 
 pose I looked ugly. I know I felt like murder. 
 
 " If you ring," I said, " I'll heave your rotten 
 carcase over the side, and the sharks won't wait for a 
 boat to be lowered." 
 
 He fixed a pair of gooseberry eyes on me. 
 
 " I'm seein' this through," he said. " Heave me 
 over if you like, but I ask you to ask yourself, what 
 good that's going to do you." 
 
 My hands fell to my sides. What good indeed? 
 Sick at heart, I sat down on a grating, and there was 
 no more spirit left in me. 
 
 The mate took hold of the telegraph. 
 
 "Standby! Stop!"
 
 244 WHEN THE RED GODS CALL 
 
 " Stop it is." 
 
 The engines slowed, and stopped. The Merrie 
 England wallowed sickeningly on the swell. Ste- 
 phanie, pale and frightened, came staggering up the 
 companion and caught at my arm. 
 
 " Hugh, why are we stopping? What's the matter? 
 What have they all quarreled about ? Tell me ! " 
 
 I took her in my arms, and clasped her as one 
 clasps the dying, when the sands of life are almost 
 run, and the shadow of eternal severance falls dark 
 and very near. 
 
 "Hugh, you're shaking! Oh, I'm frightened! 
 What is it?" 
 
 " Darling," I said, lying boldly, " it's only a dispute 
 between the captain and the mate about stopping for 
 the cutter ; you've nothing to be afraid of. Go down 
 to your cabin, and stay there for a little: they may 
 use rough language, and in any case you're better off 
 the deck, with all this spray flying." 
 
 I do not think she was quite deceived, for her eyes 
 asked questions that I could not answer ; but she turned 
 away silently, and crept down the companion, held up 
 by my arm. I took her to her berth and left her lying 
 there, wedged in with pillows for steadiness ; the ship 
 was rolling very badly now. 
 
 Then I returned to the deck. 
 
 The cutter had been doing near as much as our- 
 selves (the Merrie England is by no means an ocean 
 grayhound) and was now overhauling us rapidly. 
 The mate was inspecting our pursuer through a glass ; 
 he handed it to me, silently, as I came up. I steadied
 
 WHEN THE RED GODS CALL 245 
 
 myself against the water-tank, and looked. Carolan's 
 figure, hauling hard on a sheet, leapt into sudden 
 clearness inside the ring of the lens. His police, in 
 their blue and red tunics, were squatting about the 
 deck of the cutter, holding on to the weather-gun- 
 wale as the boat heeled over to the wind. There 
 seemed to be about a dozen of them. 
 
 " You see I was right," said the mate. He had 
 dropped the " sir " now, and was casting suspicious 
 glances at me out of his gooseberry eyes. Plainly, 
 he did not like the way things had been going. Cap- 
 tain Nash remained in his cabin, with the door shut. 
 
 In a very few minutes the Kapa-Kapa was right 
 alongside us, recklessly braving the ugly chop of our 
 pitching bows. The line thrown out by the mate 
 was smartly caught by a constable. Carolan seized 
 the Jacob's ladder as the cutter swung past, and 
 clambered on deck with some difficulty a damp, be- 
 draggled figure, hair on end, face unshaved, duck 
 clothing dirty and wet the very ghost of the trim 
 official that Port Moresby knew. His face was gray 
 and mottled as the back of a lizard ; his eyes burned 
 black and fierce at the bottom of two dark caverns. 
 He was a full stone lighter than on the day I had 
 met him under the rubber-tree the day on which I 
 had mocked and triumphed over him. . . . To- 
 day, it was his turn. 
 
 He came up to me where I stood in the middle of 
 the deck. The pitching of the ship made him stagger, 
 and he almost flung himself upon me, as he reached 
 out to touch my arm.
 
 246 WHEN THE RED GODS CALL 
 
 " Lynch," he said and there was something like 
 a rim of foam about his lips as he spoke " I arrest 
 you for the murder of Herbert Sanderson, in Rossel 
 Island, last April year." 
 
 The mate whistled shrilly. 
 
 " Oho ! " said he. " So that's the milk of the cocoa- 
 nut?" 
 
 The boatswain, glued to the bulwark, chewed like 
 a machine, and stared hard, lest he should miss a 
 movement or a word. From the cutter below, the 
 shock-headed native police were climbing one by one 
 to the deck, every man with his rifle over his shoulder, 
 and his bandolier across his naked chest. Evidently, 
 Carolan meant to take no chances. I did not move 
 from where I stood, but I cursed Carolan once. I 
 should not care to write what I said. 
 
 The mate looked at me with interest. The captain 
 peered out of his half -opened port (whence, no doubt, 
 he had heard everything) and drew back his head. 
 The police grounded their arms on deck, leaned upon 
 their rifles, and fixed their brown-china eyes on me. 
 
 Carolan cleared his throat, and put on' his official 
 manner. 
 
 "Well?" he said, jingling something in his pocket. 
 
 "I I wouldn't, sir, if I was you," warned the 
 mate, in an audible aside. " I know his sort ; they go 
 * kava-kava ' right away, if you tie 'em up. Ask him 
 if he'll go quiet, sir, do. Blame me," he added, wip- 
 ing his mouth with the back of his hand embar- 
 rassedly, " if I'm not more than half sorry for the 
 poor devil and he a sailor-man himself and all."
 
 WHEN THE RED GODS CALL 247 
 
 "Lynch, if I don't handcuff you, will you return 
 quietly?" asked the Chief Magistrate. 
 
 I did not speak, because I could not. I took a turn 
 across the deck, and snatched at a water-bottle I saw 
 standing in one of the deck cabins. My mouth and 
 throat were as dry and burning as the furnaces of the 
 ship. I tossed half the water down, and faced Caro- 
 lan again. 
 
 " I did it," I said. " I'd do it again to-morrow 
 and I'd kill you here on the deck with my bare hands 
 only only for " 
 
 I broke off and cursed him again. The captain's 
 face, very pale, showed like an apparition behind the 
 glass of his port ; he had screwed it tight, and his door 
 was shut. The police drew together like a bunch of 
 frightened beasts, and fingered the locks of their Win- 
 chesters. 
 
 " Yes, I know you'd serve me as you served poor 
 Sanderson, if you dared," said Carolan, keeping his 
 ground and his temper as if he had been in his 
 own court-house ashore. " I know that but even 
 you wouldn't do murder again with her on 
 board." 
 
 "If you lay your lips to the name of my wife " 
 I began. 
 
 The mate stepped forward, and put his hand on 
 Carolan's arm. 
 
 " Sir, they were married this morning did you 
 know?" he asked. And those green eyes of his 
 looked at me almost pitifully. 
 
 There was no pity in Carolan's face: he glowed
 
 248 WHEN THE RED GODS CALL 
 
 like an Elizabethan true believer haling a discovered 
 priest to the hanging and quartering. 
 
 " I heard the wedding was fixed for this week, of 
 course," he said, " and when I saw the Merrie Eng- 
 land under steam, I knew it had taken place. . . . 
 I've scarcely slept or eaten for a week, trying to get 
 that cursed cutter up the coast in time. It was chance 
 took me down to Rossel a row among the natives 
 but something I heard there set me at work, and I 
 got it all clear in a few days. ... If you don't 
 hang for what you've done, Hugh Lynch, there's no 
 law or justice in a British Crown Colony. Now are 
 you coming quietly, or are you not? " 
 
 There was not much law, or justice either, about 
 his method of making the arrest; but I did not care to 
 quarrel over trifles that could make no difference in 
 the end. 
 
 Before I could answer, the mate intervened again. 
 
 " Sir, if we've got to go back to port, we might as 
 well get her under way again, and tow the cutter," 
 he said. It seemed to me that he was trying to save 
 me from the necessity of speaking. 
 
 " Where's the captain ? " demanded Carolan. 
 
 " He's in his cabin . . . sick," grinned the 
 mate, rolling over to Nash's door. He knocked till 
 it was opened, and then went in. What he said to the 
 captain I do not know, nor did I ever care to ask. In 
 truth, I never saw Nash, or the necklace, again. 
 
 The mate came out, went on the bridge, and rang 
 the telegraph. The screw began to beat ; the ship tore 
 up the waves as she turned. In another minute she
 
 WHEN THE RED GODS CALL 249 
 
 had swung round upon her former track, and was 
 pitching through the seas to Port Moresby. 
 
 We got into still water in about half-an-hour, and 
 opposite the pier, the engines were stopped, and the 
 anchor chains roared down. I had been hoping 
 against hope that Stephanie might stay in her cabin 
 until I had been taken away, so that she might be 
 spared as much as possible; but the letting go of the 
 anchor roused her from the troubled sleep into which 
 she had fallen, and she came on deck. 
 
 I saw her catch at the rigging, and almost fall, as 
 she caught sight of the crowd collected there the 
 twelve police grouped close about me, Carolan's hag- 
 gard figure keeping guard, the mate shouting orders 
 to the sailors in the bow, and the captain nowhere 
 visible. 
 
 " Hugh ! " she said, with almost a shriek. " Mr. 
 Carolan ! Oh, what has happened ? " 
 
 I sat down on the skylight, and buried my head in 
 my hands, for I could not look at her. All my 
 strength seemed turned to water at the sight of her 
 face hers, upon whom I had brought a sorrow 
 worse than death. I heard Carolan speaking, and 
 then a scream from Stephanie tore the air. 
 
 " Liar ! " she cried, and her feet flew across the 
 deck. Her arms were around me, her fingers tear- 
 ing away my hands from my face. 
 
 " Hugh ! he's telling lies he says you are a mur- 
 derer look at me, darling, I don't believe him I 
 wouldn't if he was dying you never did it! Hugh, 
 speak to me I believe you before all the world ! "
 
 250 WHEN THE RED GODS CALL 
 
 I looked up, and she turned gray gray as the 
 dusk now falling fast on sea and town. 
 
 " I killed him," I said. 
 
 " You killed him " she said, with glassy eyes. 
 "Will they kill you?" 
 
 " I hope so," I answered her, and dropped my head 
 in my hands again. 
 
 When I looked up, Stephanie was gone. 
 
 A brown woman stood before me, a woman decked 
 in beads and feathers Tararua. The Governor's 
 boat was lying alongside the ship empty, save for 
 the crew. Carolan was sitting on the bulwark by the 
 accommodation ladder, guarding the opening with his 
 police. 
 
 " Where is she ? " I asked. I was past all surprise 
 past feeling, mercifully, for the moment. 
 
 " Misi Sefania he stop 'long cabin," answered Tara- 
 rua. " Misi Sefania he cly flenty. Govana he been 
 come, he stop, 'long Misi Sefania." 
 
 "Ask her to come and see me before I go," I 
 said. * 
 
 There was another interval, I do not know how 
 long. Then Tararua was standing before me again, 
 and I heard her say 
 
 " Misi Sefania, he tell ' Good-by.' " 
 
 I " went quietly." The police boat came alongside, 
 and Carolan and I and the twelve constables got into 
 it. The night falls quickly in New Guinea; there 
 was scarce a spark of the orange after-glow remain-
 
 WHEN THE RED GODS CALL 251 
 
 ing in the west, as we tramped across the flat to the 
 jail. The wind thrashed fiercely among the palms, 
 and tore the blossoms from the oleanders, flinging 
 them down upon the track, as if in mockery of the 
 flower-strewn path that Stephanie and I had trodden 
 together, that morning only that morning, when the 
 sun was in the heavens, and love and life and happi- 
 ness were mine. Now it was night, and the stars 
 had fallen from the sky, and I was in the dark 
 alone. 
 
 I might write a good deal about the trial, but I do 
 not care to. I have grown tired tired of writing, 
 tired of remembering, tired almost, of living. What 
 does it matter, in the end? 
 
 " What is it all but a trouble of ants, in the gleam of a 
 million, million suns ? " 
 
 A hundred years hence, it will not matter to any- 
 one that Stephanie and I once lived, loved, parted and 
 died. There'll be a grave in an English cemetery, 
 a grave with marble and ironwork that cost someone 
 money to put up, before it rotted and crumbled away : 
 there'll be a pinch of fat earth under the fathom-deep 
 leaf-mold of the ten thousand foot ranges, or a hand- 
 ful of phosphate at the bottom of the coral seas, that 
 once was I ... instead of a double headstone 
 in the swampy Port Moresby graveyard, with two 
 sets of bones beneath it gone back to earth side by 
 side, as there would have been, if . . . 
 
 That will be all the difference then.
 
 252 WHEN THE RED GODS CALL 
 
 I believe the trial was fair enough, according to the 
 peculiar laws of British New Guinea. There were 
 plenty of witnesses the Resident Magistrate from 
 Nivani Island, who had seen Sanderson's schooner go 
 by on its way to Rossel, and had afterwards seen my- 
 self, and given me directions about Horakiraki 
 Passage a couple of Rossel natives who had drifted 
 down to Nivani in a canoe, driven there by a storm, 
 and told the story of the white men's fight five of 
 the guides who had accompanied me through the for- 
 est, and Garia. 
 
 Yes, Garia was in it, and an important witness too. 
 The mind of the Papuan native is almost the mind 
 of a child; my servant could scarcely have been made 
 to understand even had anyone tried that his 
 boastful account of my prowess in hunting down San- 
 derson was likely to do me a mischief. He told all 
 he could readily and fluently and though he never 
 knew it drove not a few good nails into the coffin 
 of my dying freedom. 
 
 I refused to plead; indeed, I do not think I spoke 
 at all during the trial. Carolan, in discharge of his 
 office as Chief Magistrate, tried me, without a jury, 
 after the preliminary hearing by the Resident Magis- 
 trate of Port Moresby. That is the law of the col- 
 ony: I do not say that it is a good law, or that the 
 proposed alterations will not be for the better; but I 
 have, personally, no just cause for complaint. 
 
 Carolan was quite prepared to hang me, I think, 
 and would not have been sorry for the necessity 
 his judicial horror over my killing of the man who
 
 WHEN THE RED GODS CALL 253 
 
 took my girl from me, seemed to be kept in a sort of 
 water-tight compartment, quite unconnected with his 
 strong personal desire to kill me for an exactly similar 
 reason. 
 
 But the magisterial inquiry turned somewhat in my 
 favor, and so did the native evidence, during the trial 
 itself. I could have wished that the real facts of 
 the fight in the glen had been made a little clearer; 
 as it was, Carolan, in his address before passing sen- 
 tence, saw fit to charge me with meanness and treach- 
 ery, in " hunting down an unarmed man by means of 
 a superior force," and obliging him to fight me. My 
 strength, he was pleased to say, made a fight between 
 myself and any ordinary man a mere murder under 
 another name; the intent to kill had been plainly 
 proved, and nothing but the want of clearness in the 
 interpreted evidence as to who struck the first blow, 
 prevented his passing a sentence that would, once for 
 all, put an end to lawless violence among the whites 
 of the Territory. As it was, he did not feel justified 
 in treating the case otherwise than as manslaughter, 
 or in passing sentence of more than four years im- 
 prisonment, to be served in Port Moresby jail. He 
 hoped that even this comparatively light punishment 
 might have some effect on the deplorably lawless spirit 
 that he had long been pained to observe was preva- 
 lent in British New Guinea. 
 
 Well to give him justice, he might have done 
 worse. I had killed Sanderson of set design, and he 
 knew it. A little stretching of the evidence a lit- 
 tle intimidating of the wild Rossel islanders who were
 
 254 WHEN THE RED GODS CALL 
 
 terrified nearly sick by their strange surroundings and 
 ready to say almost anything put into their mouths, 
 a little more stress laid on the half -spoken acknowl- 
 edgment I had made to Garia of my intentions 
 and the knot that tangled all our lives would have 
 been shorn through once for all. 
 
 Carolan, I say, could have done this, and done it 
 without, in real truth, defeating the ultimate ends of 
 justice, as it is understood by popular opinion. But 
 he did not. With all he valued on earth as the prize 
 of a very little chicanery with Stephanie herself in 
 the balance (for he must have had hopes, had I been 
 out of the way) he still held the balance fairly, and 
 flung the British Constitution, nothing less, into the 
 scale that weighed against him. Professional honor, 
 tried by this fearful test, held fast. I shall not cease 
 to hate him till the grave closes over us both but 
 ever since then, I have respected Carolan. 
 
 The trial lasted three days, and the tin match-box 
 they call a Court-House was packed with almost every 
 soul in Port Moresby, all the while. It is curious, 
 but true, that I did not suffer much during that time. 
 The ceaseless fire of staring eyes, the interminable 
 question and answer, interpreting and re-interpreting, 
 of the evidence, seemed to hynotize me into a kind of 
 stupor, and I sat hour after hour in my corner, look- 
 ing at my great weather-browned hands lying on my 
 knees, or watching the flicker of the slim shadeless 
 eucalyptus foliage against the flare of the sky, scarcely 
 conscious of what was going on. I think that half- 
 hour of unspeakable agony on board the Merrie Eng-
 
 WHEN THE RED GODS CALL 255 
 
 land had broken some nerve of suffering. It may not 
 be good physiology, but it is good fact, to say that 
 something " gives " in hours like those, as often as 
 not, and that life and reason may be saved by the 
 deadness that follows for a time. Afterwards, the 
 torturers may be let loose in good earnest, and on the 
 shrinking soul may be laid, as on cowering bodies in 
 the days of the " peine forte et dure " " as much 
 iron . . . as it can bear and more." But of 
 that since I do not wish to go mad through mere re- 
 membrance I shall not write. 
 
 As I have said, I felt little at the trial. I remem- 
 ber that the wild mint smelt fresh and pungent all day 
 outside the windows, and that as the afternoon wore 
 on, a hot sweet odor of sandalwood used to rise up 
 from the steamer-jetty, where they were loading ships 
 with the brown scented logs won by wandering trad- 
 ers in the depths of unknown forests, and on the banks 
 of unexplored great streams. I remember how the 
 orange-breasted honey-bird used to hang about the 
 red blooms of the hibiscus that grew near the door 
 diving and skimming, dipping and fluttering close to 
 the lintel, in their happy flights the wild free wan- 
 dering creatures, whom no man caged or held. I 
 remember the atmosphere of hot humanity in the 
 Court-House, and the whispering and fidgeting, and 
 the shuffling of feet, as one man after another from 
 time to time rose and slipped out, down the hill, 
 through the mint and the yellow-pink lantana, and the 
 fallen hibiscus bells lying in the powdery scarlet dust, 
 to the iron-built " hotel " on the flat, for a drink.
 
 256 WHEN THE RED GODS CALL 
 
 . . . Carolan let me smoke, and I smoked almost 
 all day long, heavy stupefying trade tobacco. It 
 helped me to pass the time, and that was all I cared 
 for. Whether they hanged me or not, mattered ex- 
 tremely little to me, but it did seem to matter that 
 they should get the thing over one way or another, as 
 soon as might be. 
 
 The Governor came every day, and sat close to 
 Carolan, a silent, wooden, watchful figure. There 
 was more white in the gray of his hair than there had 
 been a few weeks before, and the two straight lines on 
 either side of his mouth were cut deeper, but his face, 
 on the whole, told little of what he felt. 
 
 He spoke to me once only, on the last day of the 
 trial, when my sentence had been pronounced, and 
 the jailer was waiting to take me away. Then he 
 came up to me, looking frail and old, and addressed 
 me in what was evidently a prepared speech. I don't 
 remember all he said, but it was in general, to the ef- 
 fect that Stephanie desired never to hear of me again, 
 that she had been ill, but was getting better, and that 
 he (the Governor) had only been waiting the end of 
 the trial to take her down to Queensland at once. As 
 soon as the cable could set him free, he said, he would 
 resign his post, and start for England, taking his 
 daughter with him. 
 
 " And if there's law in the British Empire," he 
 added, his voice shaking a little, " I'll have her freed 
 from you." 
 
 " Don't buoy yourself up with false hopes, sir," 
 began Carolan; but the Governor interrupted him.
 
 WHEN THE RED GODS CALL 257 
 
 " I must hope, Carolan ! There will be ways 
 there must be all the interest the family has got 
 Lord Lillaby " 
 
 " Well! " said Carolan, and walked away, shrugging 
 his shoulders. My father-in-law was about to leave, 
 having said his say; but I stopped him. 
 
 " Sir," I said, " you have spoken ; now, it's my 
 turn. I killed Sanderson; everyone knows that. I'm 
 not sorry for it : but I never expected your daughter 
 to understand, and I'd have kept it from her all her 
 life, if I could. I didn't suppose, either, at the time, 
 that I was putting myself in peril of what has hap- 
 pened there was no law to speak of in the old days 
 here but if I'd known that this was really hanging 
 over me, I'd have put a bullet through my head before 
 I'd have dared to look at her." 
 
 I stopped a moment ; it was hard to speak. Wilks 
 waited. The Governor waited. The honey-birds 
 fluttered and twittered in the doorway against the 
 blue : the hot wind beat in the eucalyptus trees. 
 
 " I want you to believe," I went on, " that I'd free 
 her, now, if I could. You may do anything you 
 wish; I'll not oppose you, and I'll never try 
 to see her again " 
 
 I had to stop a second time. 
 
 " I have a message," I said presently, speaking with 
 some difficulty now, for I seemed strangely short of 
 breath. "Will you give it to her?" 
 
 " It will make no difference, I warn you," said the 
 Governor, coldly. 
 
 " It's not meant to," said I. " You will tell her
 
 258 WHEN THE RED GODS CALL 
 
 this, if you please, from her husband She vowed, 
 before the altar of the God she believes in, to keep to 
 me for better or worse, till death. The worst came, 
 and she failed me. She may have been right accord- 
 ing to her lights and yours I don't know but I 
 shall not forgive her living or dead or in the 
 hereafter, if there is one. Tell her that and go." 
 I do not know how he went, for the red fit was 
 on me, and for the moment I could scarcely breathe 
 or see. When I came to myself, I was alone with the 
 jailer. I stretched out my wrists for the handcuffs, 
 without a word, and went away. 
 
 
 
 I can write no more.
 
 PART II 
 STEPHANIE'S STORY 
 
 CHAPTER XII 
 
 TF I had not gone into the church, that spring after- 
 " noon, it would never have happened. 
 
 Spring-time is so hard, when you are unhappy. It 
 was spring just then ; the parks were green, and there 
 were lilac-buds peeping out between the bars of the 
 squares. I used to wonder, walking under the sweet 
 bunches of the blossom, how many people hated them 
 in spite of all their beauty as I did. You may for- 
 get about miserable things more or less, in the summer 
 and the winter; but in the spring, when you see the 
 green leaves breaking out again, and the laburnum 
 turning gold again, and the lilac buds coming out 
 again while you are still, still unhappy you hate 
 the innocent flowers so much that you could break 
 them down and trample on them. I can't explain: 
 I am not clever but I know it to be true. 
 
 That afternoon, the lilacs were just beginning to 
 bud; I saw them pushing their tiny pale points of 
 blossom up through the leaves as I walked across 
 Haviland Square; and if every point had been a 
 needle, and every needle turned against my heart, they 
 could not have hurt me more. 
 
 259
 
 2<5o WHEN THE RED GODS CALL 
 
 It was the tenth spring since the days of my trouble, 
 and I wondered, that day, if the old pain was going to 
 come back again every spring, for thirty or forty years 
 more, or whether it would wear me out sooner. I 
 hoped it would. 
 
 No one, of course, is unhappy all the time. Since 
 I spoiled my life for good, long ago in New Guinea, 
 I had had quite a fair share of happy days when I 
 was taking care of my dear father, in the years be- 
 fore he died; when I was traveling with my aunt, 
 Lady Lillaby, on the Continent, and seeing many won- 
 derful and beautiful sights (though nothing, I think, 
 as beautiful as the land I had left forever) when 
 I was ill, most of all, as I was once, and could not 
 think or trouble about anything. That was happi- 
 ness, or peace. I suppose they are the same. 
 
 Many of my happy days had been given me by 
 Walter, who followed us to England, and settled down 
 to practice at the Bar, and who was always, always 
 kind. . . . Poor Walter! when I thought how 
 his life had been spoiled (for I knew he had remained 
 unmarried because of me) it hurt me worse than my 
 own loneliness. He had done everything for me that 
 a true friend could do. He kept the whole miserable 
 story out of the papers, home and colonial, how, I 
 do not know, but I was most thankful, for it saved me 
 from talk that I could not have endured. Papa, be- 
 sides, had such hopes of getting me set free, that he 
 would not allow me to use any name but Hammond. 
 And when he found, after consulting ever so many 
 London lawyers, that there was not the least hope of
 
 WHEN. THE RED GODS CALL 261 
 
 breaking the marriage, it seemed too late to begin 
 explanations. For myself, I did not care. I nearly 
 went mad with wretchedness during that long voyage 
 home (the passengers thought I was broken down 
 with New Guinea fever, and as I really had had an 
 attack, I let them think so) and for months and 
 months I only wanted to be let die. 
 
 I used to kneel against my bed at night, trying to 
 say my prayers, but all I could say was " I have got 
 to live oh, I have got to live ! " And I could not 
 even fall into a decline, as they do in books. I grew 
 thin and nervous, and lost some of my looks, but I 
 was able to dress and dance, and go to parties, just as 
 I had done two years before, when I had never seen 
 New Guinea, or got my heart broken. My aunt, Lady 
 Lillaby, Walter, and Papa, were the only people who 
 knew, and they all insisted on my going out. I used 
 to dance all night, in those years, dance myself tired, 
 and take away the other girls' admirers, and not mind 
 at all I did not care for anyone else's troubles 
 why should other people not suffer, when I did? 
 Then I would go home, and my maid would come up 
 and unhook my dress, and I would begin to think of 
 another maid, thousands of miles away Tararua, 
 the half -naked New Guinea girl with the red flowers 
 in her hair, who used to bring me notes, and tell me 
 news. . . . 
 
 When Dickenson had gone, I would drop down on 
 the hearth-rug beside the dying ashy fire left for me 
 to undress by, and cry myself nearly ill. And in the 
 rain beating outside the tight-shut window-panes, and
 
 262 WHEN THE RED GODS CALL 
 
 the cold London wind roaming among black roofs 
 and lonely spires, I would hear, again and again, those 
 words spoken long ago under the jeweled skies of 
 Papua, above Port Moresby Bay. . . . "I killed 
 him." . . . 
 
 And the last, dreadful message, brought me by my 
 father 
 
 " I shall not forgive her, living, or dead, or in the 
 hereafter." 
 
 Hugh had said that Hugh, who would have been 
 tortured to death to save me a moment's pain 
 once. . . . But that was the other Hugh, who ex- 
 isted no longer. The other was not a murderer 
 (as I put it to myself in those days). The other had 
 not been married to a black. The other was just the 
 best and bravest and most loving heart in all the world, 
 and I would have died for him. , . 
 
 That hanging by a broken thread, what torture it is ! 
 The Hugh who never was, disturbed me more than 
 the Hugh who really existed. I used to find myself 
 helplessly thinking that I would tell him how unhappy 
 I was, and that it would all be right he was my 
 special providence, always able to come to my aid, 
 and eager to do it. And then, with a horrible wrench, 
 I would realize that it was he himself who was the 
 trouble, and nobody, not even God, could make things 
 as they were before. Hugh would never, never help 
 me again. 
 
 If he had not sent that message, and if I had not 
 gone away knowing that his love was turned to hate, 
 I might I might I do not know what I might
 
 WHEN THE RED GODS CALL 263 
 
 not have done later, when he was free, and I was 
 older, and knew more of the world. The shock of 
 hearing that he had killed the man who carried away 
 his native wife, came upon me so suddenly that I 
 had no time to think. I was only terrified. I had 
 always felt that there was something untameable, 
 formidable, even, in my lover something that made 
 other men fear him; perhaps I did not love him the 
 less for that. But when it suddenly leaped into day- 
 light, and showed him red with slaughter, I cowered 
 away before it. It was the natural impulse of a young 
 and innocent girl, whose life had been sheltered from 
 every wind that blew. It might, as I say, have worn 
 out with time, and given way to the passionate love 
 I still felt for Hugh, had I only been sure that good 
 or bad, bond or free, he cared for me. 
 
 But he hated me. He had said as much. 
 
 And Papa, and Walter, and Aunt Lillaby, all took 
 it so much for granted that I never could wish to see 
 him again. And I let them do as they liked, for I 
 was heart-sick life-sick. 
 
 I am sure we all thought that " something would 
 happen." It seemed unbelievable that year after year 
 would go by, and make no change, except for the 
 death of dear Papa that I should go to live with 
 my aunt, and continue going out, and traveling, and 
 reading, and hearing concerts, and seeing Walter al- 
 most every day that I should get older and older, 
 and less and less miserable (except in those dreadful 
 days of spring), and that still, still, still, nothing would 
 happen! Papa and Aunt Florence had thought the
 
 264 WHEN THE RED GODS CALL 
 
 marriage would be got rid of somehow that it 
 would be found illegal, or that Hugh's native wife 
 would reappear, since he had not actually seen her 
 drown, or that Hugh, when he was free, might at 
 least get a separation order which I understand he 
 could have done, though I could not. As for Wal- 
 ter, I am afraid he counted on the chances of the New 
 Guinea climate, and the unhealthiness of prison life 
 ' later, on the wild inland tribes and the dangers of 
 the coasts to free me. For myself, I counted on 
 . . . I never quite cared to acknowledge what. 
 But we were both alive, and soon, both free . . . 
 and it was hard to believe that so much love could 
 altogether die. 
 
 But we all counted fruitlessly, in our separate ways. 
 Nothing happened nothing ever happened. I was 
 Stephanie Hammond to all my friends, Stephanie 
 Lynch to myself, at the end of nine years, just as be- 
 fore. I had worn through one gold chain, and marked 
 another, carrying a little plain ring, that no one ever 
 saw, round my neck, under my dress. My girl 
 friends were happily married, nearly all, and they had 
 children, darling children three, four, five, six of 
 them sometimes little boys of seven or eight, with 
 manly, brave faces, and fine strong limbs dear tiny 
 girls of two and three little babies, so soft and 
 lovesome. . . . 
 
 . . . I don't know if my friends ever suspected 
 why I would not play with their little ones. I do 
 not think they did; they seemed to suppose that I did 
 not care for children. I let them think so.
 
 WHEN THE RED GODS CALL 265 
 
 And my thirtieth birthday came and I was not a 
 girl any more. I had not lost my looks; if I had 
 doubted that, the little incidents that used to occur 
 now and then, when men were stupid and would not 
 understand, would have reassured me. But I began 
 to feel in a way I could scarcely explain, that the 
 world belonged to others. It does belong to girls 
 one takes that quite naturally, while one is still a girl ; 
 but once thirty is past, it comes with something of a 
 shock to realize that your inheritance had, somehow or 
 other, slipped out of your hands. . . . You don't 
 want the world to belong to you, of course, and yet 
 somehow, you miss it, when it does not, any more. 
 
 So it came to the afternoon when the lilacs were 
 out, and I was unhappy because of spring. 
 
 There is a church at the corner of the square : it is 
 gray and black and ugly, but it has a shining gold 
 cross on the spire, pointing to heaven. I saw the 
 cross as I came up the square, and it seemed to call 
 to me. I opened the little swing door in the middle of 
 the big one, and went in. 
 
 It was a Catholic church. My mother was a Cath- 
 olic, and I have always had a love for Catholic things 
 and people, because of her. The church pleased me. 
 There was a cool twilight under the great nave, and 
 little stars of candles twinkled somewhere away at 
 the far end. Soft muffled echoes came and went as 
 people swung the padded doors; the scent of the sun- 
 shine and the spring would flow in for a moment 
 through the opening, and then it would be dark and
 
 266 WHEN THE RED GODS CALL 
 
 quiet again, with the smell of cold incense in the air, 
 and the sound of the traffic faint and far away. 
 
 Hardly anyone was about just one or two peo- 
 ple praying near the high altar, and a nun in a black 
 habit kneeling in a side chapel. I saw her face as she 
 prayed; it was not pale and ecstatically beautiful, as 
 people draw the faces of nuns in pictures, only round 
 and pink and commonplace, and rather plain but it 
 was full of peace. 
 
 -Standing near her, and looking about the church 
 (nothing was new to me, for I had often been in 
 Catholic churches before) I was seized, all in a mo- 
 ment, with an indescribable weariness. To me, whose 
 life was poisoned with unrest, that look of peace was 
 as the gleam of water very far away, to one who lies 
 perishing of thirst in a desert. 
 
 She rose from her knees by and by, and went over 
 to one of the confessional boxes, her flat shoes clap- 
 ping on the pavement, her veil floating back above a 
 high ungraceful forehead and over- full round cheeks. 
 . . . For a moment, I saw my own face as in a 
 glass, and I knew it to be worn and bitter and unlovely 
 beside that of the nun, though I have what men call 
 beauty. 
 
 It seemed to me that there was only one thing in 
 the world I could possibly do. . . . I sat down 
 on a chair, and waited. 
 
 The nun went away, and I lifted the curtain, and 
 knelt in her place. The priest had his ear to the lat- 
 tice; I could see his wrinkled cheek and his soft white 
 hair as I spoke.
 
 WHEN THE RED GODS CALL 267 
 
 I told him I was not a Catholic, and had not come 
 to confess, but that I was very, very unhappy, and 
 that I would give all the world to be a nun. And I 
 asked him what I was to do. 
 
 He did not seem to be at all surprised. He threw 
 a glance at me through the lattice I saw his face 
 then, and it seemed old and gentle, and very wise. 
 He told me that he could not talk to me there, but 
 that I had better come to the presbytery next day, 
 and see him. Then he said good-by, and blessed me, 
 and asked me to pray for him. 
 
 There is not much to tell about Father Ferrer. I 
 met him only twice that day and the day after. 
 But of what he did, there is a great deal to tell, for 
 he changed all my life. 
 
 Next day I went to the presbytery. I had to wait 
 a little while in the parlor before he came. It was a 
 neat little room, waxed and clean and cold, with pic- 
 tures of saints on the wall, and a " Souvenir of 
 Lourdes " on the center table, arranged in a triangle 
 with two books of Meditations. 
 
 One heard the noise of London very faintly, for the 
 window looked out upon a graveled, shut-in back gar- 
 den, where trees were growing green within black 
 walls, and sparrows chirped and flew. There was 
 not a sound within the house itself, and nothing in the 
 little room seemed ever to have been disturbed, or 
 ever to need cleaning. ... A peaceful, cloistral 
 spot, wherein the only jarring note was myself. 
 
 Yes, of that there could be no doubt. There was 
 a tall glass- fronted bookcase in the corner, which re-
 
 268 WHEN THE RED GODS CALL 
 
 fleeted my figure almost like a mirror. I had dressed 
 for the afternoon, since I was to go out with my aunt 
 later on, and my dress of blue chiffon and white Span- 
 ish lace, daringly touched with rose, and topped by 
 a toque of roses, looked the very uniform of the 
 world, the flesh, and the devil. I must confess to 
 loving my clothes they were certainly more of a 
 consolation to me during those nine years than any of 
 the machine-made philanthropic schemes into which 
 Aunt Florence dragged me, by way of distraction; 
 and I am sure they gave quite as much pleasure to the 
 world in general. But that afternoon, I felt I would 
 rather have had a black veil on my head than any of 
 Desiree's masterpieces, and the dainty pink petticoat 
 that showed itself just above one Louis shoe, almost 
 seemed improper when I thought of the nun in 
 her simple woolen robe. 
 
 A bunch of frivolities a bouquet of artificial 
 flowers an embittered woman, taking to dress as 
 to drink, that she might still the aching of an empty 
 heart so I saw myself in the glass. And, as I had 
 wondered about the lilac the day before, I wondered 
 now to how many exquisitely-clothed women in 
 great, unhappy London, were their pretty things just 
 - drink? 
 
 Sitting there in my Paris dress, beside the window 
 looking out on the gray and green little English gar- 
 den, I fell a-musing on the old Papuan days. ... If 
 it had never happened if Hugh and I had had a little 
 house in the forest, and lived there ever since, away 
 from all this world of dressing and dancing and keep-
 
 WHEN THE RED GODS CALL 269 
 
 ing up with the fads of the hour away where the seas 
 are colored like the gems in the gates of the Heavenly 
 City, and flowers never fade, and birds of Paradise 
 fly like crimson comets through trees that are always 
 bright and green where life is long and simple, and 
 the small things of the world take their proper place, 
 and the great things friendship, and courage, and 
 love, and death are the only ones that matter 
 if I had lived thus, should I have been the woman that 
 I was? 
 
 So I mused. And the bitter, handsome face under 
 the splendid hat looked back at me from the glass, and 
 answered, " No ! " 
 
 Oh, to leave it all! London and the life I had 
 grown to hate Papua and its memories that burned 
 like fire everything I had ever known and wearied 
 of and suffered by just to leave the world, and rest 
 in the cloister or the grave but rest ! 
 
 . . . " My dear child, I am afraid you are very 
 unhappy." 
 
 He wore soft shoes, and I had not heard him enter, 
 nor had I seen him, for I was leaning my face on my 
 hand. I looked up. The priest Father Ferrer, as 
 I afterwards learned his name was standing beside 
 me a small, plump, silver-haired figure, with eyes 
 that were extraordinarily soft and shrewd, and a 
 mouth that seemed to hold all the wisdom of all the 
 world in its humorous corners. 
 
 " I am most unhappy," I said. 
 
 He took a seat. 
 
 " Well what can I do? " he asked, with a sort of
 
 2/o WHEN THE RED GODS CALL 
 
 brisk kindliness. Somehow, he made me think of a 
 doctor of souls with a large practice, examining a 
 case. 
 
 " I am tired of the world," I said. " My mother 
 was a Catholic. ... I don't know that I have 
 any objection to joining her church, if necessary. I 
 want to become a nun; they are so peaceful and happy, 
 and I have never been either." 
 
 The little priest felt in the pocket of his gown, and 
 pulled out a snuff-box. Snuffing with relish, he re- 
 marked: 
 
 " My dear lady, a convent isn't a moral casualty 
 ward. And a call to the religious life is not granted 
 to everyone. Pardon me, but I don't think you show 
 any special signs of such a grace even if you were a 
 Catholic a detail, by the way, of some importance. 
 
 " Suppose we keep to the point that you are un- 
 happy," he went on, " and that you want to tell some- 
 one all about it: well, I'm ready to listen and help if 
 I can very ready, my child." 
 
 His small round face creased into a kindly smile. 
 I liked the smile, but I didn't like the assumption that 
 I was a slack-lipped creature who could not keep her 
 troubles to herself I who had kept my own secrets 
 for ten years, and asked help from none. 
 
 " My troubles are my troubles," I said. " I have 
 been, metre or less, discontented and unhappy for ten 
 years. I want to get away from it all from every- 
 thing. Will any convent take me ? " 
 
 " Certainly not," said the little Father, still smiling. 
 " If you wish to be instructed with a view to joining
 
 WHEN THE RED GODS CALL 271 
 
 the Church, you can receive instruction. If it should 
 appear, eventually, that you have a vocation to any 
 special order, you could become, first, a postulant, 
 then a novice, and finally, if you persevered, a pro- 
 fessed nun. That is all that anyone can say." 
 
 It was not quite what I had expected, and I scarcely 
 knew what to answer. Instruction vocation 
 these were new terms to me, and they left me cold. 
 To plunge into the oblivion of the cloister as one might 
 plunge into a river, and for the same reason that 
 was all I had thought of. It seemed that this was not 
 to be done, and I began to lose interest. 
 
 The little father's manner changed. He put both 
 hands on his plump knees, and leaned forward. 
 
 " My child, you need help," he said, looking at me 
 with a keenness that took in every detail of my ap- 
 pearance. " You are not of my flock, and never may 
 be, but a soul is a soul. Who is troubling you 
 you, a woman cursed with beauty, and alone ? " 
 
 It did not seem strange to me that he should know 
 what was in my heart better than I knew it myself 
 for in truth, not until that instant had I understood 
 that the name of the greatest difficulty in my path was 
 Walter. He had the gift of inspiring confidence ; 
 I answered him as simply as if I had known him all 
 my life. 
 
 " A man I cannot marry," I said. " I don't ex- 
 actly love him ; but I am very, very fond of him, 
 and he is so good; you cannot think how good he 
 is" 
 
 The priest took snuff rather sharply, and ran an eye
 
 272 WHEN THE RED GODS CALL 
 
 over my face and figure. Then he snuffed again. It 
 was almost as if he had spoken, and I answered him. 
 
 " He is good," I repeated " only I cannot tell 
 you how it hurts me to see him unhappy and I 
 grow so tired " 
 
 I do not know what can have come over me, for I 
 am reserved and self-possessed as a rule, but I began 
 to cry. ... I felt frightened. It was as if 
 someone, something, had flashed a light on my path, 
 and shown me an unsuspected precipice, close to my 
 feet. I did not believe it, I fought against the knowl- 
 edge, but it forced itself home. 
 
 " I ! I ! Impossible ! It could never have been ! " 
 I kept saying to myself, in a kind of cold horror. 
 
 I do not know whether I spoke aloud, but if I did, 
 Father Ferrer made no sign. He waited till I was 
 calm, and then said 
 
 " This man you cannot marry, my child he is 
 already married ? " 
 
 " No," I said faintly. Was my secret going to es- 
 cape me after all? 
 
 " Then ? " The Father's eyes dropped to my glove. 
 It was thin and tight-fitting, and showed the outline 
 of my hand. 
 
 I cannot tell what spirit it was that moved me, but 
 I put my fingers inside the collar of my dress, and 
 drew out the chain that held my wedding ring. I 
 always wore it why, it would be hard to say, except 
 that I had a curious feeling of wickedness if I took it 
 off. While that bright little circlet lay on my breast,
 
 WHEN THE RED GODS CALL 273 
 
 I felt that I was guarded. . . . Until to-day, I 
 had never asked myself, from what? 
 
 The priest looked at the ring, hanging on the front 
 of my dress. 
 
 " Is that so ? " he said. " You are not a widow, 
 my child?" 
 
 " No," I said. I got up and walked over to the 
 window, struggling for calmness. I saw that my se- 
 cret was all to be told at last, and it came hard. 
 
 I looked out of the window; there were a few 
 crocuses outside, lingering here and there in the brown 
 beds upon the tiny lawn. They shivered in the breeze 
 of late afternoon. I saw them then without seeing; 
 days after, I remembered them. But in the moment 
 itself, a flood of old recollections swept over me 
 the wondrous sunsets of Port Moresby Bay, turning 
 the west to a very Armageddon of flaming scarlet, as 
 the swift tropic night came down the scent of mint 
 and sandalwood and f rangipanni flowers the silver 
 glowing of the palms beneath the moon, on the slopes 
 that led to Government House the gleam of a man's 
 white suit, that used to glide like a ghost among the 
 eucalyptus and the lemons, when midnight lay upon 
 the bay and town, and all the world was still. . 
 
 When I returned to my seat, I had put down my 
 veil over my face, and if there were traces of tears 
 on my cheeks, they were hidden. 
 
 Sheltered by the film of gauze, and keeping my eyes 
 bent on the left hand that lay in my lap beside its fel- 
 low the hand all empty of the golden talisman it
 
 274 WHEN THE RED GODS CALL 
 
 should have worn these many years I spoke at last, 
 and told the Father all there was to tell. 
 
 It took a long time in the telling. The sun slipped 
 low down the smoky garden wall while I spoke; the 
 grimy sparrows gathered in the trees, chirping as they 
 chirp when day is on the wane. Sitting in the pol- 
 ished, unlived-in little room, I felt the afternoon grow 
 chill, and saw the young leaves begin to tremble, and 
 the thin grass shiver, and the crocuses shake in their 
 sunless beds, beneath the bitter wind of evening, before 
 I had made an end. 
 
 Father Ferrer sat silent in his chair all the while, 
 his keen blue eyes glancing now and then at my face. 
 When I had ended, he leant forward, and took my hand 
 in his. 
 
 " My dear child ! " he said, very kindly. " My dear 
 child!" 
 
 I was not crying now ; I had shed all my tears 
 but I was trembling, and very cold. 
 
 Father Ferrer rose to his feet, and rang a bell. 
 Someone came to the door, and returned almost im- 
 mediately, carrying a glass of wine on a tray. 
 
 " Drink that, and then we'll talk," said the priest. 
 
 It seemed to put new life into my shaken nerves, 
 and I was quite myself before long. 
 
 " And now, my child," said the good old man, 
 gravely but kindly, " I must ask you if you realize 
 though I fear you do not the great sin of which you 
 have been guilty." 
 
 " Sin ! " I exclaimed. 
 
 " Yes, sin," said the priest " You are not of our
 
 WHEN THE RED GODS CALL 275 
 
 church, and in consequence, you have not had the help 
 furnished by the true sacramental grace of marriage. 
 But marriage, in any church, is a holy and a binding 
 thing. You took most solemn vowsj only to break 
 them you wished to take vows of another kind, 
 quite as grave, which would have been, in your case, a 
 mere mockery. . . . Child, child, how did you 
 hope for happiness or rest, in a life that had gone so far 
 wrong? " 
 
 I scarcely knew how to answer ; I felt half stunned. 
 Everyone had always pitied me tried to compensate 
 me it was always Hugh who was to blame. I in 
 fault I! 
 
 " You think I should have waited stayed, " I 
 faltered. 
 
 " I do. My dear child, you have told me a great 
 deal about your ruined life. What about the life you 
 have ruined ? " 
 
 " But he had killed someone and he had 
 been married to that native woman and never told 
 me" 
 
 " Granted. From what you say, he had terrible 
 provocation for the crime, and he had been fully pun- 
 ished for it. As to the native wife well, my child, 
 it seems you knew very well you were marrying a man 
 of violent temper and unknown history; your people 
 objected to the match, and you defied them, and in- 
 sisted on having your own way. When the draw- 
 backs that you had always known were practically 
 brought home to you, you deserted the man who loved 
 you. Heartlessly wickedly, my child."
 
 276 WHEN THE RED GODS CALL 
 
 I felt as if stones were being rained about my head. 
 I wicked ! I, who had been the darling and plaything 
 of everyone all my life Father, Walter, Aunt Flor- 
 ence, Hugh himself who had never been blamed for 
 anything who had always found the looks and the 
 charm that Providence had been pleased to give me 
 a magic shield against hard words or harsh judgments. 
 . . . But to this wise old man with the calm un- 
 worldly face, I, Stephanie Hammond, loved, popular, 
 and pretty, was just a soul a sinful soul and nothing 
 more. 
 
 Heartless! Wicked! Had I then been blind, all 
 these years? 
 
 But he was going on. 
 
 " I think, my child, it was not so much his crime of 
 shedding blood, as his foolish, but not sinful action in 
 having formerly married a native girl, that was the 
 chief cause of your desertion. Was it not? " 
 
 " I think it had something to do with it," I an- 
 swered, very low. Indeed, it had gone hard with me 
 to think of that black wife, dead though she was. It 
 had hurt my pride, and my pride was always the 
 strongest part of my character. 
 
 " As to his message, I take that to have been the 
 bitter cry of a wounded man no more," said the 
 Father. " But even if that rash vow had been delib- 
 erately meant, and intended to be kept, it was never- 
 theless your duty to have offered to return. Had he 
 refused, you would then have enjoyed the peace of a 
 conscience satisfied - which peace, my child, you never 
 have had."
 
 WHEN THE RED GODS CALL 277 
 
 " Never," I said. The sun had faded altogether from 
 the garden ; clouds were darkening the pale spring sky. 
 I looked beyond the blackened walls, and saw the 
 gold New Guinea sun, and the palms, and the sap- 
 phire seas so far, so very far away, far as my 
 youth, my love. . . . What remained to me of 
 life? How could I unwind this tangle that held 
 in a hopeless coil the lives of all who were dear to 
 me? 
 
 Father Ferrer went on, after a short pause. 
 
 " Do you know whether your husband is still liv- 
 ing?" 
 
 "I I think so," I said. " My friend would have 
 asked me to marry him any time if news had 
 come that I. was free. He has never told me any- 
 thing but I am sure he would take pains to find that 
 out." 
 
 " Will it cost you much to part with your friend ? " 
 
 " To part with him ... ! " I cried, throwing 
 up my veil, and looking at the priest with dismayed 
 eyes. 
 
 " I see," said Father Ferrer, " then, there is all the 
 more reason that you should." 
 
 " And never see him again ! " I said. " But I 
 have no fear I am not bad, Father, and neither is 
 he." 
 
 " Let him that standeth take heed lest he fall," said 
 the priest. " Look into your own heart, my child." 
 
 There was quite a long silence in the room. I do 
 not think I should ever wish to write down all that 
 passed through my mind.
 
 278 WHEN THE RED GODS CALL 
 
 After a while, I turned to the priest, and said 
 dully - 
 
 "What should I do?" 
 
 " You have asked for my advice," he answered. 
 " I give it to you. Leave your friend. Communicate 
 with your husband, and ask him whether he is willing 
 to forget the past as you are. You have both 
 something to forgive, but believe me believe an old 
 man very near the grave he has the most. . . . 
 My child, we are both tired now. I hope to see you 
 again soon. Pray for yourself. Pray for me." 
 
 The sunset had broken through the clouds at last. 
 Its golden light fell through the wide uncurtained 
 window, full upon his face, and I saw him as in a 
 glory from heaven, while I said good-by. 
 
 . . . Friend of one day, I shall see you again 
 in heaven! 
 
 Father Ferrer died that night. 
 
 He had long been ill of heart disease, but no one 
 had thought the end to be so near. His last act on 
 earth was that deed of kindness done to me. 
 
 I heard of his death when I called again, a day or 
 two later. Of the shock it gave me, I need not speak. 
 But it set the seal on my already half-made resolu- 
 tion. One who was an angel in heaven had coun- 
 seled me I would abide by his counsel.
 
 CHAPTER XIII 
 
 T?OR days and days we had been creeping up the 
 * endless Queensland coast in the great Australian 
 liner, leaving parallel after parallel of latitude be- 
 hind us, and drawing nearer, with every revolution 
 of the screw, to the burning equatorial lands. Every 
 morning the winds that blew through the open ports 
 were warmer, the sparkle of the sea more brilliantly 
 jeweled; every night the stars were larger and softer. 
 Venus, rising from the sea at sunset, had grown so 
 bright that she flung a thread of silver across the calm 
 waters of the Barrier Reef. As yet, she cast no 
 shadow, but I knew well that when the New Guinea 
 boat dropped anchor under Paga Hill, I should see 
 as long ago my silhouette in gray, drawn out upon 
 the ivory deck by the queen star of the tropic world. 
 
 We had left off our furs at Brisbane it was June, 
 mid-winter in the South; but north of the jacaranda 
 tree Australia knows no cold. Townsville, Bowen, 
 Mackay were passed, strange sultry little towns dozing 
 in the dust under turquoise skies ; the coral islands of 
 the Great Barrier Reef were showing right and left 
 of us in the shallow, milky-green seas bright 
 bouquets of foliage set on tablets of sand like snow. 
 Muslins were in wear now, and white suits ; and the 
 punkah swung above iced fruits and dishes at table ; 
 
 279
 
 280 WHEN THE RED GODS CALL 
 
 and the many New Guinea passengers, at last, began 
 to wake up from their shivering hibernation in shel- 
 tered corners, and talk Papuan talk. . . . 
 
 How well I knew it all! What an overpowering 
 perfume of past days it held for me! The doings of 
 the mysterious Kukukuku that tribe of ghostly 
 marauders, whom no white man had seen in my day, 
 and who were still, after ten years (it seemed) no less 
 a mystery than of old the talk of gold and gold- 
 mining three ounces to the day on the Yodda, limit- 
 less hopes of the Waria; rumors of El Dorado in 
 the islands gossip, one might almost say scandal, 
 about the untraveled west and center who had 
 found and traced out what; whose name was un- 
 justly attached to the peaks of which semi-explored 
 great range pearl-shelling in the East; turtle-shell- 
 ing about the Gulf; what toll the alligators had lately 
 taken in the way of stock or native boys who was 
 to be R. M. of where; why someone had been re- 
 called, or sent out, or reprimanded all the old chat- 
 ter of the old days. . . . Was I indeed in the 
 twentieth century? 
 
 But with it all, there was much that was strange 
 to me. They spoke of white women and children 
 living in the country; of churches, hospitals and 
 stores; of three- weekly steamers; of dances and pic- 
 nics now and then; of many Government officials 
 under the new Australian regime and they spoke' 
 not at all of head-hunting raids, of schooners seized 
 and white crews massacred; of cannibal feasts held 
 defiantly on the very shores all of which had been
 
 WHEN THE RED GODS CALL 281 
 
 matter for almost every report that reached my father, 
 years ago. 
 
 There was much plantation talk, too, and this was 
 so new to me that I joined the most talkative group, 
 late one evening when the moon was up on deck, and 
 listened quietly to what they said. I had entered 
 myself in the passenger list as Miss Stephens, for rea- 
 sons of my own, and no one knew that I had ever 
 been to Papua. 
 
 Great tracts of country, it seemed, were now laid 
 in rubber and coffee and hemp. Fine plantation 
 houses, served by troops of woolly-headed " boys " 
 had sprung up everywhere. Tourists tourists in 
 New Guinea ! came up by every steamer to see the 
 plantation country, and visit the mines, and study the 
 absorbingly interesting life of the native villages. 
 
 . . Well, in my day, the villages would have 
 absorbed them with the aid of a cooking pot 
 and that would have been the end of the tour. Truly, 
 Papua was changed ! 
 
 I should not find what I had left that seemed 
 clear. Shouldn't I after all, find what I had come to 
 seek? 
 
 Walter Carolan, on the day when I broke the news 
 to him and to Aunt Lillaby oh, that wretched day! 
 Shall I ever forget the anger of consternation of my 
 aunt, the white dismay of my dearest friend! Wal- 
 ter had told me that, so far as he knew, Hugh was 
 living, and in New Guinea still whether British, 
 Dutch or German New Guinea he could not say. He
 
 282 WHEN THE RED GODS CALL 
 
 had long ago arranged with an old friend in one of 
 the missions to send him intelligence of Hugh's death 
 or disappearance, should either occur. From time to 
 time, at long intervals, a postcard had come, with the 
 words " no news ! " The last postcard had been sent 
 more than a year ago; since then, the missionary was 
 dead. 
 
 That was all he had to say. What it cost him to 
 tell me even so much, I could guess only too well. 
 
 Aunt Florence tried hard to prevent my going, when 
 I announced my intention of returning to New Guinea 
 to find out what had become of Hugh not neces- 
 sarily, of course, to join him. Poor aunt! she had 
 been very good to me all those years, my own tiny 
 income I had never needed to touch, and she had 
 openly expressed her intention of making me her 
 heiress eventually, since she was a childless widow, 
 with few relations. Walter Carolan was a connection 
 of hers, and had certainly some claim on her; but I 
 think she hoped poor aunt that both claims might 
 be united. She loved him dearly, and counted him 
 almost as a son. 
 
 I think she was really more grieved for him than 
 for herself, when I plucked up my courage, after many 
 weeks of secret thought, to tell her of my resolve. 
 She had quite made up her mind that fevers, or na- 
 tives, or alligators, would set me free some day or 
 other, and bring about the fulfillment of her wishes. 
 Aunt Florence, dear woman, was one of the old-fash- 
 ioned kind who tenaciously believe through all dis-
 
 WHEN THE RED. GODS CALL 283 
 
 couragement, that " two and two will always make 
 four, if only one cries enough about it." 
 
 Walter himself took the news so badly, at first, 
 that I was frightened. I almost feared he would do 
 something desperate; I had never suspected him of 
 such strength of feeling. But it helped me to see 
 the real necessity of what I was doing, and to crush 
 down the dangerous compassion for him, of which 
 I could not but feel conscious, in those days of dis- 
 turbance and emotion. I still loved the memory of 
 Hugh, but 
 
 How shall I put it ? A woman is a woman ; her 
 heart, sometimes, will turn to what is nearest, while 
 her soul, the best and truest part of her, still points 
 like the magnetic needle steadily to its own pole. But 
 life is lived more by heart than by soul more in little 
 things than great. 
 
 In fine I felt it was best for me to go, and Walter, 
 though perhaps he could not feel it, knew it, and acted 
 accordingly. 
 
 It was he, in the end, who helped me out. It was 
 he who prevented my aunt from calling in a Harley 
 Street specialist to examine into my state of mind 
 as she intended who stopped her, afterwards, in 
 full career for the office of a Continental railway, 
 to buy Riviera tickets, and carry me away willy-nilly. 
 He could not prevent her sending for her solicitor, and 
 altering her will; but that I did not care about. I 
 had enough money of my own to carry out my in- 
 tentions, by dint of selling out a little capital, and I
 
 284 WHEN THE RED GODS CALL 
 
 did not fear the future. To live in any way even 
 to suffer in poverty seemed better than the dead 
 stagnation of those long, long years, stifled in luxury 
 and ease, yet starved of growth, of usefulness, of 
 meaning. 
 
 At the last, when my outfit was bought, and my 
 trunks ready, and the P. & O. liner that was to take 
 me to Sydney, was due to sail next day, Walter called 
 to see me alone. I had scarce had time to speak to 
 him during those last few days, but he seemed to be 
 taking my departure better than I could have hoped. 
 
 That day, however, I knew the truth. He looked 
 like death when he came in. He sat slowly down in 
 his chair, as if he were tired or old Walter, who 
 was far under forty yet and looked at me with eyes 
 that seemed almost too wearied to be sad. 
 
 " Stephanie," he said, " I've come to say good- 
 by." 
 
 I could not answer him. 
 
 " I think I'd better not see you off to-morrow," he 
 went on. " I don't think I could quite stand that, 
 though I could stand parting since it has to be. 
 It isn't any fault of yours, my dear, but you are rather 
 cruel to men." 
 
 " *. . . Is it good-by ? I could stand that, I 
 guess, but I can't stand what you're giving me. . . J 
 It's the cruelty that's in you in women. . . ." 
 
 Across the years that other voice came back to me, 
 speaking in almost the same words. . . 
 
 " Oh, Walter, indeed I couldn't help it I never 
 could ! " I cried.
 
 WHEN THE RED GODS CALL 285 
 
 " No, my dear," he said, with those kind eyes of 
 his shining as they had always shone on me as they 
 would never shine again, in all the coming years 
 " After all, you know 
 
 " ' Why should a heart have been there, 
 In the way of a fair woman's foot ? ' ! 
 
 He got up, and began to walk restlessly about the 
 room. 
 
 " See here, Stephanie," he said. " I wanted to tell 
 you that, strange though it may seem, I'm almost 
 glad this has happened. I don't think Lynch de- 
 serves a reconciliation, I don't believe he'd ever make 
 you happy. But you will feel differently when you 
 have done what you could and after all, something 
 had to happen sometime. And I know this life is 
 nearly killing you. Aunt Florence is a pretty wearing 
 sort of person, though you never would allow it, and 
 as for me, well, the better friend I am to you, per- 
 haps" 
 
 He stopped, and began fingering the geraniums in 
 the window stand. 
 
 " Perhaps," he went on, looking away from me, 
 " the worse I've got to learn to live my life without 
 you that's all." 
 
 It seemed much, to judge by his voice; his face I 
 could not see, for he was still plucking cruelly at the 
 geranium buds and leaves, and casting them on the 
 floor. 
 
 " And you've got to learn to do without my friend- 
 ship. Well, that won't cost you very much, I dare say."
 
 286 WHEN THE RED GODS CALL 
 
 More than you thought, my friend, my friend! I 
 was made so that I could give love to very few 
 but what I gave to you was almost the twin flower to 
 the flower of love itself. 
 
 " In short," he went on, " it's best to break 
 anyhow but break. I've helped you out, because I 
 thought so. Not because I didn't care, Stephanie." 
 
 He turned round now, and faced me as I sat in my 
 chair. It was a warm day ; the window was open, and 
 mignonette, wet with a recent shower, smelled sweetly 
 from the balcony outside. I heard the humming of 
 motor-cars, and the short clip-clip of hoofs on the 
 wood pavement below. 
 
 " I have done all I could," he said. " I still think 
 it a wild-goose chase, but I know of old what it is 
 to cross you when your mind is set on anything. You 
 wouldn't have me write letters to the Government 
 lot well, I have got some for you to present, if you 
 change your mind. New Guinea is not what it was; 
 you will be perfectly safe in the towns, and of course, 
 there will be no need for you to go beyond them. If 
 things turn out badly, your aunt will be only too 
 glad to have you back. As for me in that case, I 
 think it would still be good-by, Stephanie. I've 
 done all I can. All I can now and forever." He 
 took my hands in his. The light fell clear on his 
 dear brown eyes, and his straight, strong, handsome 
 features. , . . Oh, if one could but love best the 
 best man one has ever met ! 
 
 "You'll marry won't you, Walter?" was all I
 
 WHEN THE RED GODS CALL 287 
 
 could say. I wonder was it very little-minded of me 
 to feel pain as I did at his reply ? 
 
 " Yes, I hope I shall, some day. I shan't love her 
 very much, whoever she may be; but I'll treat her 
 decently, please God. It's better I should marry 
 when I can but that won't be just yet. And now 
 Stephanie, my darling " 
 
 There was no need of more words. I am not 
 ashamed to say that I put my arms round his neck, 
 and clung to him, crying bitterly. He did not kiss 
 me he never had kissed me. He held me very 
 tight for a moment, and then let me go. 
 
 " God bless you God bless you," I heard him 
 say; and then the door shut, and I dropped back into 
 my chair, blind with crying. 
 
 Next day the Macedonia sailed from Tilbury. No 
 one saw me off but Aunt Florence's maid. Aunt 
 Florence herself had a headache, she said. I think, 
 poor dear, the truth was that she had cried herself 
 nearly as sick as I had. We parted at the house, 
 knowing well what neither of us cared to say that 
 come what might, I never should return. 
 
 I had my plans clear in my head. I meant to stay 
 in Port Moresby for a while, under my assumed name 
 of Stephens simply as a lady traveling for pleasure. 
 There are many things a woman of thirty can do 
 without remark, that would be impossible to a young 
 girl. While there, I would try to find out, secretly, 
 whether Hugh was living, and where he was. I 
 feared the thought of this somewhat; there was no
 
 288 WHEN THE RED GODS CALL 
 
 knowing what he might not have sunk to, in those 
 lonely, desperate years. 
 
 Yes I knew what Father Ferrer would have said, 
 as well as if I had heard him say it, 
 
 " Whatever he is, is your fault yours, who left 
 him in his need." 
 
 As to what was to happen after, I made no plans, 
 knowing that circumstances must guide me. One 
 thing only was clear I must find him. 
 
 I had no wish to be recognized by any stray ac- 
 quaintances who might be remaining in the country, 
 but there was little chance of that. Ten years had 
 changed me a good deal, and I trusted much to the 
 effect of altered fashions. The young girl of one- 
 and-twenty, dressed always in flowing muslins, with 
 close plaited hair, was not in any case very like the 
 society woman of one-and-thirty, who wore fashion- 
 ably scanty tailor-mades of linen and silk and holland, 
 and filled up the brim of her big picture hats with a 
 " halo " coiffure as big as a melon. . . . No, on 
 the whole, I did not fear recognition, especially as 
 there was scarce one of my former acquaintances left 
 in New Guinea. 
 
 That night on the Queensland coast, as we thrashed 
 through the warm black water, drawing nearer and 
 nearer to the wild uncivilized lands that are so mys- 
 terious and so cruel, yet so compelling in their sum- 
 mons to all who have ever known them, a feeling of 
 rest and freedom began to take possession of me. 
 The P. & O. voyage, with its dressing and dancing 
 and bridge playing, and its society sets and rivalries,
 
 WHEN THE RED GODS CALL 289 
 
 for all the world like that weary London I had left 
 behind, was over. I could forget that I was one of 
 " the best people." I was going where " the best is 
 like the worst " where life is real, naked even, and 
 the elemental powers of nature press close round the 
 little strongholds of civilization. ... I was 
 afraid of it, but I loved it, just as in the days gone 
 by I had both feared and loved the man who was 
 so completely one with the wild places of the earth. 
 After all those years, I felt that I was going home. 
 
 The Red Gods' call ! It was what Hugh had spoken 
 of that night among the lemon trees; I had not un- 
 derstood him then, but I knew it now as thousands 
 of others, men and women, must know it all the world 
 over. We women, I think, hear it for the most part 
 through the voice of the man we love but we hear 
 it. Else, how would England's Empire ever have 
 been made? 
 
 Next day we reached Cooktown, the last Australian 
 port, and took ship on the Port Moresby boat, a 
 smaller vessel than the Australian coastal liner, but 
 nevertheless a marvelous improvement on the wander- 
 ing schooners and stray cargo steamers of my day. 
 Two evenings later, near to sunset, the immense 
 blue coasts of Papua rose out of the sea, and all night 
 long, in the silence and the dark, we ran past the sleep- 
 ing shores of the Great Unknown Land. 
 
 I was the very first on deck next morning. The 
 washing-down was just over, and not a passenger 
 was to be seen, as I came out of my deck-cabin on the 
 starboard side, and hurried round to port. . .
 
 290 WHEN THE RED GODS CALL 
 
 Yes, there they were, the magnificent domes and ram- 
 parts of the Owen Stanley Range the splendid spire 
 of Mount Yule Mount Victoria, far inland, rising, 
 wave after wave, thirteen thousand feet into the ice- 
 blue sky the huge humps and saddlebacks of the 
 inner ranges, peaks without a name, where no man 
 yet had trod. . . . 
 
 From all I heard on board, it seemed, that despite 
 the amazing development of the Central and Eastern 
 provinces, the outer divisions of Papua remained 
 much as they had been ten years ago. Much of the 
 country was known only in part ; great tracts remained 
 quite unexplored. . . . 
 
 I was glad to hear this ; it made me much more cer- 
 tain of finding what I had come to seek. A Ceylon 
 of the Pacific (which I had almost feared to find in 
 Papua, after all the plantation talks on the liner) 
 would never have kept my lover. 
 
 In the early afternoon, we cast anchor under the 
 shadow of Paga Hill. 
 
 Save for the increased number of houses in the 
 township, there was little change. The peaky goblin 
 hills, like the background of some mediaeval tapestry 
 the dark-leaved mangroves running far out into 
 the water the palm-trees circling about the curve 
 of the wide blue bay the stilt-legged native village, 
 built out over the flaming shallows ; all were the same. 
 I only was changed. . . . For the first time, I 
 felt the cruel wrench that one suffers, looking on the 
 senseless stones and paths and trees that saw one 
 young, but yesterday, and that see one growing old,
 
 WHEN THE RED GODS CALU 291 
 
 while not a crack in the stones, not a shade of green 
 in the hills is altered. . . O changeless Nature, 
 how cruelly you laugh at our fleeting lives of dust and 
 shadow ! 
 
 Tears filled my eyes as Government House came into 
 view the long, white house above the coco-palms, 
 where the little-girl Stephanie, who was dead so long 
 ago, used to come down the hill in her French shoes 
 and frivolous muslins, to meet her lover under the 
 rubber-tree. . . . Unchanged, that forest-like 
 mass spread out in the little valley; ten years are as 
 a day in the life of those giant trees. . . . But 
 little-girl Stephanie, who had known and suffered 
 nothing, what had you in common with the tired, 
 lonely woman who watched your ghost that day? 
 
 Ghosts! the whole place was full of them. When 
 I landed from the steamer's boat, and passed along 
 the jetty, I scarcely knew whether I was living in the 
 present or the past. True, Port Moresby was 
 changed; it was now quite a fair-sized little town, 
 with several big Government offices, and quite a num- 
 ber of white-washed iron bungalows standing on tall 
 black piles, instead of the mere handful of huts I 
 remembered. But the grassy streets, the green over- 
 hanging hills, dotted with shrub-like eucalyptus trees 
 that never seemed to grow a day older (I used to say 
 they were like the French knots in a piece of em- 
 broidery), the piecrust-colored rocks with their car- 
 nelian veinings, the dusty red pathways, the giant- 
 headed natives in beads and calicoes, chewing betel 
 nut in the shade of the frangipannis, the hot glare
 
 292 WHEN THE RED GODS CALL 
 
 of sea and sky and sun-beaten earth how unchanged 
 it all was ! 
 
 Every bit of waste ground about Port Moresby is 
 covered with wild mint; the air is always full of the 
 warm aromatic scent. I do not know that I had ever 
 taken special notice of it in the old days, but now, 
 each breath I drew was full of memories, wakened by 
 the odor of the fresh green leaves. . . . Surely, 
 by and by, if I stood upon the slope and watched, a 
 white-sailed cutter would come sweeping into the bay, 
 with a sailorly figure at the tiller the open doof 
 of the little tin house on the beach would whiten with 
 an emerging figure in spotless drill, and Somebody 
 with an auburn head and broad shoulders would ap- 
 pear on the shore, and begin to walk, far faster than 
 anyone should walk in Port Moresby under the full 
 afternoon sun, towards a corner in the track that 
 would intercept me on my way home. . . . 
 
 Home! how foolish! that white bungalow across 
 the bay was not my home now. It was the home 
 of the new Australian Lieutenant Governor to whom 
 my letters of introduction were addressed those 
 letters that I had torn up and cast through the port- 
 hole of my cabin, the night after we left Tilbury. I 
 might have saved myself the trouble; His Excellency 
 was holidaying in Queensland. 
 
 I was glad that he was away. It was hard enough 
 to know that the dear old place was in other hands ; to 
 have seen it occupied by strangers would have been 
 harder still. 
 
 I had engaged a room at the hotel but I was in
 
 WHEN THE RED GODS CALL 293 
 
 no hurry to occupy it, not much liking the look of the 
 place. The day was still young; I put up my sun 
 umbrella, and started for a stroll along the beach be- 
 hind the town, towards the little iron hut that had 
 once been more interesting and attractive than any 
 place, to me. Who lived in it now, I wondered? 
 and did he, or she, or they, remember the former oc- 
 cupant ? Probably not. From all I had heard on the 
 ship, there was not a single one of my former ac- 
 quaintances remaining in Port Moresby. 
 
 I had an odd sense of freedom in roaming about 
 like this, due, I suppose, to the re-awaking of the old 
 New Guinea feeling that " nobody cared." I suppose 
 there never was a country in the world where every- 
 one was, and is, so completely free to do what seems 
 good in his or her own eyes, without remark. 
 
 Papua seems to attract strange and eccentric charac- 
 ters as honey attracts flies; independence of thought 
 and action is the very air of the place. In any other 
 small, out-of-the-way community, a woman, still 
 young and not unattractive, well-dressed, with the 
 manners of society, traveling unaccompanied and ap- 
 parently without object, might have excited a good 
 deal of comment. I knew my Papua, and knew that 
 I should not. 
 
 The little cottage stood dozing in the sun, the big 
 palm-trees above making penciled shadows on its roof. 
 The door was open, the place apparently empty. 
 . . . Should I venture? 
 
 My heels made a clapping noise on the veranda as 
 I approached the door. Somebody stirred inside. I
 
 294 WHEN. THE RED GODS CALL 
 
 hastily prepared a sentence asking for a direction to 
 the native village, and waited. The door filled up 
 with a massive form in a suit of pink pyjamas, and a 
 pair of white sand-shoes, and an elderly man, tall, 
 stout, white-haired, and amiable of countenance, ad- 
 vanced. 
 
 I knew him at once ; my heart gave a jump that al- 
 most turned me faint. It was Mr. Worboise. 
 
 Was he alone? And if he were not? . . . 
 
 I glanced wildly at the grove of palm-trees, with 
 some mad thought of running away and hiding my- 
 self, but it was too late to think of that. He had 
 seen me, and he knew me. 
 
 " It's Mrs. Hugh," he said quite calmly, as if I had 
 gone away about a week before, and just returned. 
 Once more, I realized that I was in the country where 
 no one ever is surprised. 
 
 " Yes, Mr. Worboise," I answered, feeling all on 
 a sudden one enormous blush. ... It seemed as 
 if it were written in letters of fire on my forehead 
 that I had come to find my husband my husband, 
 who perhaps did not even want me. . . . 
 
 " Come in, come in," he said. " I'm livin' all alone 
 here (' Thank heaven!' I whispered to myself), and 
 the place ain't what you'd call tidy, but you'll excuse 
 it. Come in, come in I'm very glad to see you." 
 
 He still spoke exactly as he might have done ten 
 years ago, and was really so very little changed, that 
 I felt my head swimming w.ith confusion, as I followed 
 him into the house, which I had once or twice visited 
 with Hugh. If anyone had told me then that I had
 
 WHEN THE RED GODS CALL 295 
 
 just waked up from a long dream, and that it was 
 nearly time for me to hurry back to Government House 
 for tea, lest Papa should suspect that I had been out by 
 myself, down to the beach to meet Hugh I think 
 I should have believed it. 
 
 We went into the little front room, and Mr. Wor- 
 boise gave me a chair, and set about boiling water 
 over the very old Primus lamp with the broken leg 
 that I knew he had had ten years ago. I don't know if 
 the purple trade pocket-handkerchief hanging out of 
 his pocket was the same, but I really think it was. 
 The sound of the sea-waves creaming on the beach 
 below, and the soft singing of the reef far away, al- 
 most made me cry. ... It was all so like old 
 days, and yet . . . ! 
 
 " Well, Mrs. Hugh," said Mr. Worboise, busying 
 himself with tea-pot and pannikins " and 'ow's your- 
 self?" 
 
 His accent was quite as terrible as I had remem- 
 bered it, but it did not annoy me. ... I have 
 known people who would have shrunk from a mur- 
 dered " h " as from a murdered body, yet from whom 
 I should never have expected one-half the delicate 
 consideration and reticence that I knew might be 
 looked for from Mr. Worboise. If I stayed in Port 
 Moresby a year, I knew I should never be troubled 
 with questions from him. 
 
 " I am very well," I answered. " I have come to re- 
 visit New Guinea, Mr. Worboise ; I had a fancy to see 
 the old places again." 
 
 " Aye, aye," he replied rather wheezily, pouring the
 
 296 WHEN THE RED GODS CALL 
 
 water into the tea-pot. " You'll find cHanges, Mrs. 
 Hugh changes." 
 
 I was so terribly afraid that he would begin to 
 speak of the one subject that really interested me, that 
 I hurriedly commenced talking of the political changes 
 that had occurred during the last few years the 
 taking over of the colony by Australia the new 
 land laws that had thrown open the country for settle- 
 ment the number of planters now in Papua the 
 rubber-boom that seemed to be on its way. 
 
 Mr. Worboise listened to me patiently, pouring out 
 the tea, but made no remark. 
 
 " 'Is Excellency's away," was all he said, when I 
 had done. " I'm afraid there's no place in Port where 
 you'll be comfortable like. The drinkin' that goes on 
 at the hotel, when the schooner fellers come in to 'ave 
 a good time, makes it not what you would say a very 
 heligible place to stop." 
 
 " I thought so," I answered, " but I really didn't 
 see . . ." 
 
 " Why not come 'ere, if you can put up with the 
 likes of it, and me ? " asked Mr. Worboise. " It ain't 
 much of a place but there, Papua's Papua yet, in spite 
 of the la-di-da plantation crowd, and all the roughing 
 it ain't over. You'd be a deal quieter 'ere, Mrs. Hugh, 
 and that little room at the back ain't too bad it used 
 to be" 
 
 "What a lovely view there is from the door!" I 
 interrupted, getting up hurriedly to look at it. I can- 
 not say I saw very much of the view. 
 
 " That tea's too 'ot for you, let me put some more
 
 WHEN THE RED GODS CALL 297 
 
 Hideal into it," observed my old friend calmly. 
 " Well, to go back to what I was sayin', what do you 
 think of comin' 'ere? " 
 
 There is no Mrs. Grundy in Papua; both of us 
 knew that I could stay alone with Mr. Worboise as 
 long as I liked, without making anyone talk. His age 
 and character were sufficient protection, in a country 
 where the absence of the stone-walled English priva- 
 cies insures that everyone shall be known for ex- 
 actly what he is. I have often thought though it 
 is one of the things one would not care to say to the 
 first comer that " virtue " is necessarily its own 
 reward in civilized countries, but something much 
 more, in the unbroken lands. There, it is a sort of 
 check-book which allows you to draw on public coun- 
 tenance and good will, without question, while the 
 " fast " or dishonest person who would easily pass 
 muster at home, finds his or her checks dishonored. 
 Both then and later, I did many things in Papua that 
 would have set every scion of the Grundy family 
 shrieking, in another country and passed, I know, 
 without a word of criticism. If Papua, as Hugh used 
 to say, is the country of the Infinitely Impossible, it is 
 also the country of the Finitely Possible ; and therein, 
 I think, lies much of its charm. 
 
 Not to make a long story of a short one, I may 
 say that I agreed to Mr. Worboise's proposal, sent 
 for my things, and took up my quarters in the quiet 
 back room that had once been Hugh's. There was 
 no sitting-room, but as all Port Moresby lives on ve- 
 randas, that made no difference.
 
 298 WHEN THE RED GODS CALL 
 
 I arranged to pay my share of the housekeeping, 
 rather against the will of my kind host; but, with his 
 usual good-feeling, he gave in when he saw I was bent 
 on it; I knew that the little annuity on which he 
 lived (the product of some years' successful pearling, 
 and an amazing fit of prudence) was not enough for 
 the support of two, and I feared nothing so much as 
 to become a burden on anyone I, who after so many 
 years of sheltered dependence, was learning at last, 
 slowly and painfully, to stand alone. . . . 
 
 The steamer was gone, leaving behind her the 
 " calm after storm " that follows the call of a ship, 
 in the far-away countries. I had spent a day in the 
 little beach-cottage ; it was sunset now, and the native 
 boys were making a clinking noise with the tea-things 
 in the cook-house outside. Above the roof three 
 leather-necks mocked and clattered in the palm-tops 
 " Ki-ou! Wee-ka! Wakatipu! " just as they used 
 to do in the evenings long ago, and the sea was turn- 
 ing from opal-blue to ink-blue, over Basilisk Reef. 
 
 Mr. Worboise and I were sitting in canvas-chairs 
 on the veranda, enjoying the freshness of sundown. 
 Neither of us had spoken for some minutes ; our con- 
 versation had ranged over a few small items of local 
 gossip, and then dropped exhausted. I think we each 
 knew that a different subject was in the other's mind, 
 unspoken. 
 
 There was not much light from the sky, but the 
 hurricane lamp on the table indoors shone out across
 
 WHEN THE RED GODS CALL 299 
 
 the veranda, and by its rays I could see Mr. Wor- 
 boise scanning my face so earnestly that I felt quite 
 embarrassed. 
 
 " Am I much changed ? " I asked. 
 
 " Mrs. Hugh," he answered earnestly, " I'd not be 
 tellin' the 'ole truth and nothin' but the truth, so 'elp 
 me God, if I said you wasn't. When you was here 
 first, you was a young lady like a w'ite rosebud. 
 You're a lady like a w'ite rose that's open-blowed, 
 now. One ain't the other, but one's as good as the 
 other and maybe better." 
 
 I said nothing. 
 
 " And maybe better," he repeated, significantly. 
 " There's things people comes to think differently 
 about when they've 'ad but law, don't you mind 
 my gab, Mrs. Hugh, I ain't askin' questions," he broke 
 off. " Come in and 'ave your tea ; I've a reel nice bit 
 of wallaby 'ind-quarter for you." 
 
 And during the whole meal he avoided, with the 
 most scrupulous care, any approach to a comment on 
 myself or my doings. If I remember rightly, he told 
 me a good deal about a cannibal tribe of the far 
 North, that had lately appealed to the Government for 
 protection from its neighbors, on the grounds that 
 the latter committed (I think) something like a breach 
 of etiquette, in devouring the complainant's relatives 
 alive. 
 
 ' Dyin' was only what a man had to do, some 
 time or hother ' that's what they said," Mr. Wor- 
 boise explained. " Bein' eat was a thing that might 
 'appen to anyone; they didn't complain of that neither.
 
 300 WHEN THE RED GODS CALL 
 
 But the Orokiva, they said, was eatin' them alive, 
 cuttin' them " 
 
 " Mr. Worboise please ! " I entreated. 
 
 " Don't you like to 'ear it ? I'm sorry, Mrs. Hugh ; 
 I didn't think you was sensitive about them things, 
 knowing the country and all." 
 
 He fell silent, and the meal was finished without a 
 word. Out on the veranda afterwards, in the star- 
 light, the silence still continued. There we sat, we 
 two, who had loved Hugh better than anyone else in 
 the world, one longing to speak, the other to hear, and 
 yet both dumb. The mopokes moaned in the little 
 strip of bush behind the sand; the black wings of the 
 fly ing- foxes beat now and then like sails of aerial ca- 
 noes across the silver face of the rising moon. The 
 winking lights of the fishing boats out on the reef 
 died one by one, as the brown folk of Hanuabada and 
 Elivara ended their evening's sport, and went home. 
 And still we were silent, as if some unholy spell had 
 been laid on both. 
 
 Mr. Worboise got up at last, with a heavy sigh, 
 and I rose with him. It was bedtime. We turned to 
 go into the house. The light of the lamp on the table 
 inside fell on both our faces, and we saw each other 
 clearly. 
 
 I don't know what he read in mine, but what I saw 
 in his broke the spell at last. I could not bear that look 
 of bitter disappointment. It seemed to me that I had 
 caused enough disappointment to all who cared for 
 me, without laying that burden also on those who cared 
 for Hugh.
 
 WHEN THE RED GODS CALL 301 
 
 " Mr. Worboise," I said, summoning all my cour- 
 age and forcing the words out " where is he ? " 
 
 We talked till long after midnight; both had much 
 to say. The whole story of Sanderson and his fate 
 
 the tale of the terrible four years' imprisonment 
 
 Worboise's vain attempts to gain any news of me 
 
 his conviction that Hugh had had news all the 
 time, but would not tell it, and that, whatever it was, 
 it fanned his anger against me to a hotter flame 
 this, and much more (a great deal more, for my good 
 old friend was not one who could keep to the point) 
 Mr. Worboise told me,, out in the dusk of the star- 
 light, with the night-wind blowing down from the 
 far-away unknown ranges, and the mopokes crying 
 and calling over Paga Hill. He told it to me as to 
 one who had a right to know all, and I listened with- 
 out comment for the most part. I had given up pre- 
 tending to myself or to anyone else, now, that I had 
 come to New Guinea with any other purpose than that 
 of being reconciled to Hugh. I had been ashamed 
 before why ashamed, I could hardly have told ; but 
 it certainly was the case. Now, listening to the tale 
 of Hugh's truest friend, I knew that my husband 
 needed me, with a greater need than he himself could 
 understand, and all thought of injured pride died 
 down. Mr. Worboise told me of bitter words that 
 Hugh had spoken against me, in his long imprison- 
 ment; of a nature that seemed warped and soured, 
 after he was free again; of the hatred that he showed 
 to all women, more especially the white wives and sis-
 
 3Q2 WHEN THE RED GODS CALL 
 
 ters and daughters who had by this time begun to take 
 up their residence in the country; of his life in the 
 mountains and the unexplored interior, growing year 
 by year more lonely and self-dependent; of the mes- 
 sages received by Mr. Worboise at long intervals, ask- 
 ing for clothes or cartridges, or tinned goods to be 
 sent to some half-way spot where his boys could come 
 down and take them; of the wandering livelihood he 
 picked up, gold-digging, sago-getting, bird-shooting 
 this, and much more he told me. He had not seen 
 Hugh for two years; it was as long as that since he 
 had come down within the limits of the known and 
 civilized country and in the interval there had been 
 no news. The truth was, that no one knew where he 
 was. 
 
 " But don't you be took down at that, Mrs. Hugh," 
 added Mr. Worboise earnestly, " for there's a way of 
 findin' out, I think, and I'll do everythin' I can to get 
 at it." 
 
 Of myself, extraordinarily little was said. Mr. 
 Worboise did not seem to want to know how those 
 ten years had passed with me ; it was evidently a mat- 
 ter of secondary importance, to him. . . . Once 
 more I was made to realize and indeed, I think it 
 may have been good for me to realize that I was 
 not any longer the center of the universe. The tables 
 were turned, most truly. If Aunt Florence and Wal- 
 ter and Papa had taken my view too exclusively, cer- 
 tainly Hugh's friend held his. I was simply Hugh 
 Lynch's wife, to him something of which his friend 
 had been deprived, but which it might be possible to
 
 give back to him and should be possible, if any ex- 
 ertions of Mr. Worboise's could bring it about. I 
 really believe, if he had thought that Hugh would tie 
 me up in a cellar and feed me on bread and water, or 
 serve me up with sago-sticks and pick my bones, can- 
 nibal-fashion, he would none the less have tried to 
 contrive the restoration of his friend's legal property 
 to his friend, provided that he was sure it was for the 
 good of Hugh. 
 
 Somehow or other, all the limelight died out of the 
 affair after that evening. There had been a good deal 
 before; I had felt my position to be rather that of the 
 goddess stooping from the car the martyr to duty 
 nobly carrying out a sacrifice the heroine of a trag- 
 edy coming forward to the footlights, with the orches- 
 tra playing, and the audience applauding. . . . 
 After . . . well, I had not thought very much 
 about that. Whatever happened, I should have done 
 my duty. If Hugh refused to have anything to do 
 with me, I should go away somewhere and devote my 
 life to good works, in a Sister of Mercy sort of dress, 
 or perhaps become a hospital nurse. If he wanted me 
 to share his miserable cottage, wherever it was, and 
 reform him from the very bad ways into which he 
 might have fallen, I should certainly do it. In either 
 case, I and my duty were secure. . . . 
 
 But Mr. Worboise didn't seem to think my duty 
 and my sacrifice mattered the worth of a pin's head. 
 The limelight and the orchestra were all for Hugh, so 
 far as he was concerned. 
 
 Well I swallowed that, as I had swallowed a
 
 304 WHEN THE RED GODS CALL 
 
 good deal more, and went to bed, to sleep a little, and 
 think a great deal. Mr. Worboise kept no vigil, at 
 all events; every corner of the resounding, little iron 
 house had ample evidence of that. 
 
 The next few days were very quiet. I had devel- 
 oped a morbid dread of being recognized by some stray 
 acquaintance of old times, and scarcely left the house, 
 except at dusk. Mr. Worboise was away a great deal, 
 asking questions here, there and everywhere; going 
 down the coast in a cutter to various plantations where 
 they obtained labor from the far inland districts, and 
 could therefore give news of the interior; intercept- 
 ing trading schooners; interviewing Government of- 
 ficials. At first there seemed to be little result. The 
 whole country was mad on rubber, and no one seemed 
 to have a thought to spare beyond the coastal and 
 nearer inland districts where the money-bearing trees 
 could be planted; the unknown interior was less 
 thought of and spoken of than during any part of the 
 past ten years. 
 
 But at last a clue was obtained, and Mr. Worboise 
 brought it to me beaming with delight. 
 
 " A gold sovereign to a red 'errin' e's in the Gulf 
 country, Mrs. Hugh," he declared. " We'll find 'im 
 soon now, you may be sure. Barnes Peters, the 
 tradin' firm, they says they've been sellin' stores to a 
 Kiwai what come up from the West in a white man's 
 cutter; the stores was white man's stores, and Barnes 
 Peters' manager, 'e says the boy lied proper when 'e 
 said that the stuff was for a Malay tradin' down Oro- 
 kolo way; there ain't no such feller there."
 
 WHEN THE RED GODS CALL 305 
 
 " Where do you think he is? " I asked. 
 
 " I'd put my finger on the Purari Delta, if you ast 
 me," answered Mr. Worboise. 
 
 " Can I get a letter there? " 
 
 " A letter? " repeated Mr. Worboise blankly. " A 
 letter? Was you thinkin' of writin' a letter, Mrs. 
 Hugh?" 
 
 "Why not?" I asked nervously. 
 
 " Mrs. Hugh," he answered, breathing heavily, and 
 fixing his round eyes on me, " don't you trust to no let- 
 ters. You know 'im, and I know 'im, and we both know 
 'e ain't all milk and water. 'E's been nursin' anger 
 again you all these years, and if you write, supposin' 
 'e gets the letter, which ain't certain, more like Vll 
 tear it up, and stamp on the bits of it, rather nor an- 
 swer it. But if you goes to him personal, 'e won't 
 tear you up. . . . Not likely," said the old man, 
 taking a long look at me. 
 
 " How can I ? " I said, trembling. " I always was 
 afraid of Hugh, and I'm far more so now and if 
 he's angry with me, how could I ever dare face him? 
 Oh, I'd rather go home again and yet I can't go 
 home I wish I could just die and have done with it 
 all!" 
 
 " Now look-a-here, Mrs. Hugh, don't you talk none 
 of dyin'," said Mr. Worboise, earnestly. " It'll be all 
 right, you take my word for it. But if you 'aven't the 
 'eart to face goin' to a place like the Delta which is 
 a bad place, I don't deny it and if you're too afraid 
 to face 'im neither, why then," he said slowly, " I'll 
 do what I can to find him and bring him back myself.
 
 306 WHEN THE RED GODS CALL 
 
 But don't you count on it. Seein's one thing, readin' 
 and hearin's another." 
 
 There was a pause. ... I wonder, does God 
 allow his angels to show one visions sometimes for 
 our guidance? Waking visions, as well as sleeping? 
 I think he does ; I think I had one then. 
 
 I saw a man, no longer young bitter, hard, and 
 lonely, half-savage, living in a lonely palm-hut among 
 fierce cannibal-natives, without friends, without help 
 or hope. ... I saw myself, who had linked my 
 lot with his, living a life of sheltered luxury, far from 
 him and his troubles hearing him constantly blamed, 
 and defending him only in the secret tribunal of my 
 own mind leaning on another man for help and 
 comfort, living my narrow, little, self-satisfied life of 
 luxury and flattery until, pitying the friend who had 
 so much of life's best things, and pitying scarce at all 
 the man who was eating his heart out with bitterness 
 and loneliness in the New Guinea bush, uncared for 
 and unhelped, he, 
 
 " Not Lancelot, nor another," 
 
 whom I had loved and married whom God had 
 given to me. 
 
 I saw the two pictures as clearly as if they had been 
 painted on the wall before me. I saw more my 
 duty. Not my duty to myself any longer; I thought 
 no longer of that. I had seen my duty to him. 
 
 " Mr. Worboise," I said, " I will go with you and 
 find him."
 
 WHEN THE RED GODS CALL 307 
 
 Sitting on the narrow deck of the little steam-launch 
 Ela, as it rocked about in the swell of the dreaded 
 Gulf, I looked at the coast-line ahead, and wondered 
 if I could still be in Papua Papua of the fine plan- 
 tation houses, and rich rubber lands; of the jeweled 
 seas and enameled skies; of the stately pillared palms 
 and bright coral beaches. I had never imagined or 
 heard of anything even remotely resembling what I 
 saw before me ; and I must confess it struck me with a 
 sensation of something very like fear. 
 
 We were right down in the Gulf country now, 
 among the uncharted coasts, and the unknown 
 rivers, within touch of an area as large as all England 
 wherein no white man had ever yet set foot. A little 
 way up one or two cf the rivers a few miles inland 
 from the shores, here and there armed expeditions 
 had cautiously penetrated, at rare intervals, and had 
 returned not always as they went. Most of the coun- 
 try, however, was unvisited and unknown, inhabited 
 only by the notoriously wild and fierce cannibal tribes 
 of the West; and determinedly hostile to any invasion 
 from outside. 
 
 Mr. Worboise had told me all this during the run 
 down from Port Moresby, which had taken the best 
 part of a week, he sleeping under the deck awning 
 with our six native " boys," I inhabiting the tiny, un- 
 comfortable, beetle-haunted cabin of the launch. He 
 had told me also that he had good reason to suppose 
 Hugh was somewhere in the Purari Delta country, 
 since he and Worboise himself had gone through it 
 on a sago-getting expedition a good many years ago,
 
 3 o8 WHEN THE RED GODS CALL 
 
 and they were the only white men in New Guinea who 
 really knew the place, or could find their way about in 
 it. The natives, it seemed, had treated them favor- 
 ably on the whole, and were not likely to attack us, if 
 we took good care of what we said and did espe- 
 cially as my presence would be interpreted as a sign 
 of peaceful intent. 
 
 " There's never no mischief about when they 'ave 
 their own women out," said Mr. Worboise, the day 
 before we started, " and they take it to be the same 
 way with us, I reckon, or would take it there's 
 never been a white woman seen within a 'undred 
 miles of this place. I'll get you through all right, 
 Mrs. Hugh; what I don't know about them man- 
 eaters ain't worth knowing, and I tell you, as no doubt 
 I've told you hoften " (he had) "that they ain't 'alf 
 bad fellers when you get to know them. But you'll 
 'ave to be guided by me in heverything, once we get 
 down into the Delter, and don't you be frightened at 
 nothin' you see; most times there's no need of bein' 
 frightened, and hall times there's no good." 
 
 I promised courage with a shrinking heart, for in- 
 deed, the account of the Delta terrified me, and the 
 preparations Mr. Worboise made for our start in Port 
 Moresby alarmed me still more. The steam-launch 
 which we hired was an old one, and badly in need of 
 repair here and there, but my guide chose her in pref- 
 erence to an oil launch of superior make and speed, 
 partly because we could use wood fuel in case of 
 emergency, and partly (to my dismay)' because she 
 had been fitted at one time with high sheet-iron bul-
 
 WHEN THE RED GODS CALL 309 
 
 warks, designed as a protection against arrows, on 
 some such trip as this. 
 
 Then, when our stores were on board, and my one 
 tiny box was placed in the cabin, he embarked six 
 Papuans to act as crew and guard, all armed with 
 rifles and bandoliers of cartridges, that gave the expe- 
 dition an unpleasantly war-like appearance. His own 
 rifle, loaded, was kept in the cabin; he warned me to 
 be careful in handling it; and he brought down a re- 
 volver on the day of our start, which he hung beside 
 my mirror. 
 
 " That's for you, Mrs. Hugh," he said. " I'll teach 
 you to use it on the way down; it's an 'undred to one 
 you'll never want it, but still, one doesn't take no 
 chances, not even 'undred to ones, on this kind of a 
 trip." 
 
 Withal, he was so perfectly cool and unexcited about 
 the whole business, that I, remembering I was now in 
 a pioneer country, where much more was expected of 
 women than in the safe, settled lands far away on the 
 other side of the world remembering, too, that I 
 was married to a brave man, and must not prove my- 
 self unworthy of him did the best I could to con- 
 ceal the terrors from which I certainly suffered. It 
 was not difficult : Mr. Worboise's spirit, old as he was, 
 was that of the true Empire-maker and breaker-in of 
 new lands it counted cowardice as a thing impos- 
 sible, either in himself or others, given sufficient cause 
 for the display of courage. 
 
 But that afternoon, when we lay outside the mouths 
 of the great Purari River, waiting for the flood tide
 
 310 WHEN THE RED GODS CALL 
 
 to take us over the bar, I had need of all my new 
 spirit, and perhaps a little more. For the place 
 weighed strangely on my mind. 
 
 We were lying in the center of a huge plain of livid 
 yellow water, with a livid yellow sky, hot as burning 
 brass, above us. In front of us, a long way off, 
 stretched a level-topped, unbroken rampart, black 
 against the sky, and dropping sheer into the sea with- 
 out a trace of shore-line. This colossal wall, appar- 
 ently a hundred feet in height or more, wound in and 
 out as far as the eye could reach, following every 
 curve of the island, and hiding everything that lay 
 behind. I cannot describe the appearance of secrecy 
 and defiance that it gave to this unknown, unvisited 
 coast whither our strange errand had led us. 
 
 " What is it, Mr. Worboise ? " I asked nervously. 
 " That great wall I don't understand it and 
 where is the river?" 
 
 " Lord bless you, Mrs. Hugh, that's nothin' but the 
 mangroves," answered Mr. Worboise, lifting his head 
 from the engine-hole (I cannot call it a room) where 
 he was busy tinkering away at the little engine. " All 
 this coast is mangrove and swamp. Trees, you under- 
 stand. They grows as close as 'airs in an 'air-brush, 
 and the towns, they're 'id among the trees and the 
 swamps, and the rivers, so's you'd never know there 
 wasn't none there, if you didn't 'ave the luck to 'it 
 them." 
 
 " Is that inhabited ? " I asked in amazement, looking 
 at the lifeless, stirless wall and the far-reaching table- 
 land of closely massed tree tops behind.
 
 WHEN THE RED GODS CALL 311 
 
 " In'abited ? Why, it's the most in'abited place in 
 the country; wait till you see." 
 
 The engine was going now, and the tide had risen 
 almost to flood ; we were steaming cautiously over the 
 shallow waters of the bar, getting nearer to the mighty 
 mangrove wall. As we approached, an opening began 
 to show itself right in our course widening and 
 growing with every revolution of the screw the 
 opening of the tremendous stream from which poured 
 out the yellow flood that colored the sea for miles and 
 miles, and turned the salt waters of the Gulf to fresh, 
 out of sight of land. 
 
 " That's one of the Purari mouths," said Mr. Wor- 
 boise. 
 
 A Papuan was driving the engine now, and my guide 
 was at the wheel, keeping a cautious eye ahead for the 
 floating tree-trunks, immense masses of timber as solid 
 as steel, that came charging out into the bay on the 
 current of the river, constantly threatening to ram the 
 sides of our fragile little vessel. We were getting 
 into the stream ; the mangrove wall was parting right 
 and left of us, as the sea parted before the Israelites, 
 and almost as miraculously. A hundred feet on each 
 side of us it stood up, close-massed trunks set in black 
 gleaming water, without a sign of land. Beyond the 
 wall, clumps of a strange water-palm sprang straight 
 up out of the river, like bunches of ostrich plumes 
 twenty and thirty feet high. These, and the man- 
 groves, and the skimming logs, and the white cockatoos 
 that flew screaming out of the trees at our approach, 
 were all mirrored line for line in the wide glit-
 
 3 i2 WHEN THE RED GODS CALL 
 
 taring stretch of water, which was colored citron- 
 green. 
 
 To my astonishment, I found it beautiful, and said 
 so. We crept steadily up the river, against the im- 
 mense, invisible current, and now there was something 
 like land to be seen black, swampy stuff, sloping ab- 
 ruptly down to the stream, with the gleam of water 
 behind and through it in a million places. Wherever 
 this land appeared, the display of foliage was so mar- 
 velous that I could find no words to express my won- 
 der. Rank with an unwholesome luxuriance, green with 
 a venomous brilliance of color, it fairly flung itself at 
 the water a tangle of leaves sword-like, fan-like, 
 snake-like, fern-like, finger-like, flag-like; an army of 
 trunks scaled like alligators, or spined like porcupines, 
 or splashed with gouts of unaccountable blood-like 
 hues; a tangle of reptilian creepers, twisting and chok- 
 ing and coiling round every branch and no flowers, 
 no colors, nothing but the poisonous green of the for- 
 est, and the liquid green of the river, and over all, the 
 thunderous, low-hanging, threatening sky. 
 
 All that morning we steamed up the endless river 
 reaches, our panting little engine breaking the deadly 
 silences with its steady throb, our screw leaving a 
 sharply marked wake across the unbroken mirror of 
 the stream. I could not imagine how my companion 
 found his way, for the place was like nothing on earth 
 but Hampton Court Maze magnified a million times, 
 and turned to colossal rivers, separated by walls of 
 primeval forest. Here and there a great lagoon 
 opened out, with scores of rivers and streams debouch-
 
 WHEN THE RED GODS CALL 313 
 
 ing into it on every side, all apparently alike, and 
 steaming black flats of mud, where more than once we 
 caught a glimpse of an alligator sliding his huge body 
 into the concealing water, without a sound or a splash. 
 Across the open spaces the Ela made her way without 
 hesitation, my guide appearing to know by instinct the 
 right opening to take, where all looked alike, and all 
 were equally unsuggestive of leading to anywhere at 
 all. And still, never a sound save the crying of the 
 cockatoos, or a sign of life in all the forests, or on all 
 the lonely banks. We seemed to have found chaos 
 again the earth as it was before the creation of 
 man, or before the land was separated from the waters. 
 
 In the afternoon the steamy heat, shut in by dense 
 walls of foliage, grew so overpowering that I lay 
 down in the shade of the awning, and half dozed away. 
 I do not know how long I lay there, but I was roused 
 very suddenly, and sprang to my feet half awake. 
 What I saw drove every vestige of sleep from my eyes 
 at once. 
 
 Out of a mere narrow trench in the greenery of the 
 banks, from somewhere in the interior of the swamp, 
 two long canoes had shot, filled with naked men who 
 were howling like demons. Each of them wore an im- 
 mense halo of colored parrot plumes set upright about 
 his head, and all the faces were horribly painted, with 
 staring block circles about the eyes, and scarlet streaks 
 and patches on the features. A peculiarly fierce and 
 beast-like expression was produced by the white tusks 
 they wore thrust through their noses. They were 
 Gne, muscular men, and paddled far faster than the
 
 3H WHEN THE RED GODS CALL 
 
 launch could go, in their narrow dug-out canoes which 
 were painted to imitate a huge water-snake. They all 
 carried bows and arrows, and looked the wildest and 
 wickedest creatures that any imagination could pic- 
 ture outside of hell. 
 
 " Mr. Worboise ! " I said, scarce able to speak, and 
 clutching tightly to the rail. 
 
 But he had seen them as soon as myself. 
 
 " They're all right, Mrs. Hugh," he said, cheer- 
 fully. " That's not their war-bows and spears they've 
 got, only their 'untin' houtfit." 
 
 " .Why are they howling so ? " I gasped, as the 
 canoes came nearer and nearer to the Ela, making a 
 noise like a dog-show in full swing. 
 
 " Why, they're 'owlin' at you ; they've never seen 
 a white woman before, and they're mazed," he ex- 
 plained. " Come a little nearer and show yourself, 
 if you don't mind." 
 
 I minded extremely, but I approached the side on 
 which the canoes were following, and looked over the 
 rail. The effect was amazing. One canoe- full of 
 warriors, whose feathers and equipments were slightly 
 different from those of the others, stopped yelling for 
 a moment, fixed a concentrated and unanimous glare 
 upon my face, and then, raising a yelp that could have 
 been heard a mile away, turned tail and darted up a 
 small side stream into the recesses of the swamp, pad- 
 dling for their lives. For a long time after, dismal 
 wails from the swamp mingled with shrieks of fiendish 
 laughter, delivered by the men of the remaining canoe. 
 Old Mr. Worboise joined heartily in the laughter.
 
 WHEN THE RED GODS CALL 315 
 
 " Just wot I thought," he said, wiping his eyes. 
 " Them's a reel wild bushman lot, and the sight of 
 you 'as frightened them out of their lives. This lot's 
 Maipuans ; we're gettin' in to the town." 
 
 "What town?" 
 
 " Why, Maipua ; it's the best place to begin inquirin' 
 about. Last year, the Maipuans would have eat you 
 and me as sure as I'd heat a hoyster ; but the new Gov- 
 ernment, it's 'ad a couple of patrols down here lately, 
 and the Maipuans, which is as cute as pet foxes, is 
 seein' what way the cat jumps now, and they'd not 
 touch us, without we were to hannoy them. There, 
 didn't I tell you? there's Maipua. Now if we don't 
 'ear some sort of news here, it'll be all out of my 
 reckonin'. Reel gossips these Maipuans is ; there ain't 
 a halligator speared in the Delter, or a skull 'ung up 
 in a temple, but they knows all about it." 
 
 I hardly heard him, for my eyes were struck at the 
 moment by the strangest sight, indeed, they are ever 
 likely to view before the grave darkens down upon 
 them forever. 
 
 Maipua lay before us. For nearly a mile, the great 
 still river, with its banks of oozy mud, and its back- 
 ground of flaming green, was hemmed in by the build- 
 ings of the chief town of the Purari Delta such 
 buildings as no language could describe, no pen do 
 justice to. The place was like a nightmare of the 
 wildest and most terrifying kind that, and nothing 
 else. 
 
 Under the black, lowering sky that so constantly 
 hangs above the Delta country, the houses sprang from
 
 316 WHEN THE RED GODS CALL 
 
 the slimy ooze to an enormous height fifty, seventy, 
 a hundred feet, each one flinging up a huge pointed 
 horn-like gable right into the thunderous purple clouds. 
 Beneath these gables the open fronts of the houses 
 gaped like jaws of some lurking beast of prey, sloping 
 backwards and inwards with an angle exactly like that 
 of a throat. Behind, the long trailing body of the 
 house slipped back to hide itself among the swamps 
 and creeks of the banks. It was just as if a company 
 of hideous monsters, open-mouthed for prey, had 
 camped themselves close along the shores of the river 
 ready to snap up anything that passed. The resem- 
 blance was too close to be accidental; I am sure it is 
 part of the fierce humor of these people to build their 
 houses in this amazing form. 
 
 In front of almost every house was a platform, 
 overhanging the river bank, and on each of these plat- 
 forms stood and squatted crowds of brown naked men, 
 gayly painted and feathered. A few women, clad only 
 in bark aprons, were to be seen passing to and fro 
 through the morass on which all the houses were built, 
 walking with wonderful ease and lightness over the 
 fragile stick bridges that connected the different parts 
 of the town. I remembered what Mr. Worboise had 
 said about the presence of the women denoting safety, 
 and felt much relieved to see these ugly, unwoman- 
 like creatures, for, in spite of my guide's assurances, 
 I found it hard to believe that the companies of feath- 
 ered and painted warriors drawn up on the platforms 
 of the houses were not to be feared. 
 
 We anchored for the night out in the middle of the
 
 WHEN THE RED GODS CALL 317 
 
 stream, and Mr. Worboise and the Port Moresby na- 
 tives took turns keeping watch till dawn. I slept ill 
 in spite of fatigue ; every splash in the river suggested 
 horrors to me, and I was unspeakably relieved to see 
 the dawn a red and angry one creep through the 
 windows of the cabin, and spill like a stream of blood 
 over my white dressing gown, while the parrots waked 
 in the dense marshy forests outside, and came scream- 
 ing and flying up out of the lurid east. 
 
 After breakfast we went ashore together, leaving 
 the boys in charge of the launch. Fortunately, the 
 natives had shown themselves very shy of approaching 
 it, being evidently of the opinion that it was some kind 
 of a devil, spitting fire and smoke. Even the brave 
 paddlers who had escorted us into Maipua the evening 
 before, had been careful to keep at least fifty or sixty 
 yards away. 
 
 We landed on a bank of black slime, bridged by 
 rough logs, and took our way through the swamp to 
 the largest of the houses. My wonder grew with 
 every step. It was in such a land as this, then, that 
 Hugh had hidden himself away in surroundings 
 such as these and he had not gone mad, or died of 
 horror. . . . Should I be able to say as much, if 
 our search proved to be a long one ? I doubted it. 
 
 The first house that we entered stood on piles about 
 ten feet high, and was reached by a steep ladder of 
 tree-branches. The formidable crew collected on the 
 platform made no objection to letting us pass. Mr. 
 Worboise spoke to them in their tongue ; they seemed 
 to know him, and had evidently no ill intent.
 
 3 i8 WHEN THE RED GODS CALL 
 
 We entered under the tremendous arch of the hun- 
 dred foot gable, accompanied by a tall man who seemed 
 to be something of a chief, and passed out of the 
 rays of the burning sun into a sudden dim coolness 
 that was very refreshing. I looked about me with 
 wonder and fear. The house seemed to run back for 
 a very long distance, three or four hundred feet, at 
 least, rapidly sloping downwards. Long curtains of 
 brown fiber hid the farther end. The nearer part 
 was decorated with every kind of horror that an im- 
 agination crazed with drink or fear could have sug- 
 gested only these things were real. Human skulls 
 hung in strings from the supporting pillars of the 
 house. Grinning jaws of alligators met the eye in 
 every dusky corner. Black shields carved with skele- 
 ton-white figures of monstrous things with faces half 
 human, half crab or shark or pig, flanked the center 
 pathway in serried rows. Daggers made of human 
 thigh-bones hung upon the walls, war-bows, arrows, 
 and ebony-wood spears hideously-barbed, were stacked 
 in the corners. The skull of a man, carved into fret- 
 work patterns, and fitted with an artificial snout of 
 bone that made it look half pig, half devil, was sus- 
 pended by a string in our pathway. A large cooking- 
 bowl of dark fire-clay, heavily stained with grease, 
 rolled right over my foot as I passed it, and I almost 
 screamed. . . . 
 
 We stopped before the great drop-curtain that cut 
 off the inner part of the house ; beyond that, Mr. Wor- 
 boise told me, no white man would be permitted to ad- 
 vance. What might lie in the Unholy of Unholies at
 
 WHEN THE RED GODS CALL 319 
 
 the end, could only be guessed. Instant death would 
 probably be the penalty of trying to find out. 
 
 Here, then, we held our talk. My guide presented 
 the chief with several sticks of tobacco, a tomahawk, 
 and a yard or two of red calico, gifts that seemed to 
 please him greatly. Some of them were passed 
 through my hands, for Mr. Worboise said that the 
 natives regarded me with fear and horror, as an un- 
 natural thing that they had never seen nor heard of, 
 and it was as well to dissipate the impression, if we 
 were to win their good will. 
 
 . . . Shall I confess that I actually felt a throb 
 of mortified vanity at this? It was indeed a new ex- 
 perience for me to find every eye turned away from 
 me, or regarding me, at best, with disgusted curiosity. 
 These malodorous savages, with their truculent faces 
 and gory, betel-stained jaws, drew back as from some 
 unknown horror when I passed near them. . . 
 If they had only known how very much more afraid 
 I was of them, than they could possibly be of me! 
 
 Mr. Worboise talked and talked on, and the men 
 of Maipua answered, slowly and sullenly for the most 
 part. I could not understand a word, but my instinct 
 told me that things were not going as well as might 
 be wished. The questions grew longer, the answers 
 sullener and shorter. Outside, beyond the cool shadow 
 of the great " ravi " (as the houses were named) the 
 sun beat down upon the fathomless black slime and 
 the poisonous green creepers and trailers, raising hor- 
 rible exhalations into the dead, damp, heat-soaked air. 
 A long way off, a thin metallic sound of voices chant-
 
 320 WHEN THE RED GODS CALL 
 
 ing made itself heard, coming slowly nearer and 
 nearer. 
 
 Mr. Worboise stopped at last, and rubbed his hand 
 across his dripping forehead. 
 
 " No good, Mrs. Hugh," he said. " Let's be get- 
 tin' on." 
 
 They did not stand aside to let us pass, and we had 
 to push a way to the platform outside, through their 
 evil-smelling painted bodies. I did not much like this, 
 nor, I saw, did my companion. The truth was, I was 
 sick with terror, and had been so all the morning. 
 This last touch was almost too much, and I started to 
 run across the platform to the dingy. But Mr. Wor- 
 boise gripped my arm. 
 
 " Don't do that; there's no trouble, if you don't go 
 for to make it," he said. 
 
 The chanting sound was coming nearer, round the 
 bend of the river. It was close at hand now. We 
 got into the dingy quickly, but without haste, and 
 pushed off, both, I think, heaving a sigh of relief when 
 it became evident that no objection to our departure 
 would be made. And at that moment, the source of 
 the music became visible. 
 
 Down the river came a huge raft, so freighted with 
 waving leaves and branches that it looked like a piece 
 of forest afloat. It had a crowd of wild-eyed naked 
 men aboard, decked out in feathers and grasses, so that 
 they fluttered all over with every movement. In the 
 center of the raft was a kind of pyre, upon which lay 
 something wrapped up in leaves something long and 
 shapeless. The warriors, urging the raft along, sang
 
 WHEN THE RED GODS CALL 321 
 
 a wild, fierce, brassy chant as they swung to their pad- 
 dles, and paused at rhythmic intervals to shake a spear 
 or a bunch of bristling arrows at the formless thing 
 they ferried. 
 
 "In God's name, what is it?" I asked, my hand 
 clenched tight on my companion's sleeve. 
 
 No answer came for a minute. Then I heard Mr. 
 Worboise heave a sigh of relief. 
 
 " It's only a pig this time," he said. " Don't be 
 afraid to look. It ain't always . . ." 
 
 For the first time since I had known him, he bit a 
 cannibal reference off before it had reached his lips. 
 
 The raft passed quite near us as we rowed out 
 to the launch again, but not a soul on board took the 
 slightest notice of us. They seemed rapt in a kind of 
 hideous ecstasy, absorbed in the booming bellow of 
 their chant. For a long time after the raft passed us, 
 and disappeared round the next bend of the stream, 
 we could hear the horrid sound, growing gradually 
 faint in the distance. 
 
 Mr. Worboise got up steam at once, and in a few 
 minutes we were panting down the river again, with 
 the great devil-horns of the Maipuan houses pricking 
 into the brassy sky behind us, and the wide green 
 reaches of the Purari opening out before. 
 
 I came to him where he was standing at the wheel. 
 
 ' You got no good news," I said. 
 
 " No," he answered heavily. " Truth is, Mrs. 
 Hugh, the Delter seems hup a bit. They was rather 
 sorry in the ravi, and they wouldn't tork about Hugh, 
 except to say they 'adn't 'card nothing about him,
 
 322 WHEN THE RED GODS CALL 
 
 which is a lie on the face of it. Never you mind, we'll 
 'ear somethin' to-morrow, if I can find the place I 
 want." 
 
 He turned the wheel in his hands, and swept round 
 the bend. A waft of cool air from the wider reaches 
 blew across the deck, and the natives who were squat- 
 ted near us, ostentatiously cleaning their rifles, raised 
 their heads and snuffed the freshness with delight. 
 
 It was good to be out in the free, safe river again ; 
 but my mind felt heavy.
 
 CHAPTER XIV. 
 
 T \ 7HEN I look back upon that time of adventure 
 ^' and peril in the Delta, I almost wonder if, in 
 truth, it ever happened if the whole tale is more 
 than the recollection of a dream, dreamed in the thun- 
 derous midnight hours of the hot season, when the tide 
 of life runs low, and the mind is attuned to strange 
 and terrible fancies. Even while we were traveling 
 through it, the whole country seemed to me incredible 
 and unreal. Nothing was actual but the little handful 
 of known and familiar things contained within the 
 oval of the Eltfs bulwarks, the ill-smelling, beetle- 
 haunted cabin, our six Papuan boys, who sat singing 
 and drum-beating on the deck all day long, to pass the 
 time, the puffing funnel and the chattering engine 
 these were the only rocks to which my mind could cling 
 in a shifting sea of things unheard-of, incomprehensi- 
 ble, terrifying. And yet, in a way, I became used to 
 he life. 
 
 When we had been three days tracking and thread- 
 ing the mazes of this most wonderful place, I felt as 
 if the Stephanie of London days, who used to be seen 
 in and out of cabs, and met at suburban railway sta- 
 tions, never had existed, and as if this new Stephanie 
 who periled her life so readily, went ashore with a 
 loaded revolver stuck in the belt of her dress, and 
 
 323
 
 324 WHEN THE RED GODS CALL 
 
 looked without emotion at garlands of human skulls 
 and necklaces of human teeth, was the real woman 
 after all. Something of what Carlyle would call 
 " husks and wrappages " had been stripped away in 
 those few days; what was left was the real me, and 
 I knew that, being thus found, it would never be lost 
 again. 
 
 We had trouble finding Doravi, the town to which 
 Mr. Worboise wanted to go, after leaving Maipua. It 
 was in the center of the sago country, and for this 
 reason he thought we were likely to find Hugh there, 
 or at least to hear of him, since sago-getting was the 
 only source of income in the Purari. We knew now 
 for certain that he was in the Delta: the determined 
 silence of the natives had told us so much. 
 
 I was puzzled to know why Mr. Worboise had not 
 tried to obtain information from the men on the raft; 
 but he told me that was impossible. 
 
 " Not when you know as much of these people as I 
 do, you wouldn't hinterrupt them in the middle of a 
 religious ceremony," he said, " which that was one we 
 seen, or part of one without you was pretty tired of 
 livin'. And hanyway, judgin' by the way they Mai- 
 puans be'aved in that there ravi, we'd 'ave 'card 
 nothin'. Seems as if the word 'as gone out in the 
 Delter not to talk to houtsiders about hanything." 
 
 "What does that mean?" I asked, with beating 
 heart. 
 
 " Might mean anythin', or nothin', Now look there, 
 Mrs. Hugh, there's somethin' reel pretty for you," 
 evaded my guide, pointing to the bank, and though I
 
 WHEN THE RED GODS CALL 325 
 
 feared he was concealing something from me, I al- 
 lowed my attention to be distracted for the mo- 
 ment. 
 
 " That's the D'Alberti creeper," he said. " See it 
 comin' down like a waterfall that's bin turned to big 
 red flowers, right from the top of the trees to the 
 water; 'undred feet and over, I'd guess it. There 
 ain't many flowers 'ere, but what there is is worth 
 lookin' at." 
 
 All morning and all afternoon the Ela ran on just as 
 she had run the day before, panting noisily through the 
 breathless silences of the tangled river-maze, where 
 never another sound broke the deathly stillness, save the 
 sudden screaming of a frightened bird, or far in the 
 distance, down some unknown water-lane, the boom- 
 ing bellow of an alligator. The beauty of the foliage 
 on the banks, and the mirror-like reflections in the cit- 
 ron-green water; the exquisite passing glimpses of in- 
 ner lake sanctuaries, reached by arcades of palm and 
 orchid, and strewn with feathery green islets the 
 magnificent stretch and sweep of the great main cur- 
 rents, Amazons, Mississippis, Danubes, Zambesis, all 
 flowing within a few hundred yards of one another, 
 and joined by countless lesser channels I could never 
 hope to describe. Dimly and wonderingly, I began to 
 understand how this amazing place must have called to 
 the wild instincts of the man with whose strange fate 
 my fragile, frivolous life had been so incongruously 
 linked. . . . Surely, in a country that is the very 
 home of the impossible, nothing more astonishing than 
 the tale of our love had ever come about !
 
 326 WHEN THE RED GODS CALL 
 
 Sago palms grew thickly on the banks tall, hand- 
 some trees with coronets of green fronds, and scaly 
 trunks marked like the skin of a snake. I asked Mr. 
 Worboise about the tree, and he told me of its wonder- 
 ful stores of nourishment of the white mass of pith 
 that was concealed by the shell-like trunk, food for a 
 man for many months, once it was taken out, beaten, 
 washed and dried, so as to extract the nourishing 
 starch and leave the fiber behind, of the fine-flavored 
 jellies that could be made from it, perfect in taste and 
 in strengthening properties, when eaten with cocoanut 
 cream; of the total unlikeness of the real article to the 
 insipid stuff sold in civilized shops. 
 
 " What the trade does with the sago they buys I 
 wouldn't hundertake to say," he observed. " Likely 
 mixes a hounce of it to a ton of pertater starch, and 
 passes it off as reel. But us who lives in sago coun- 
 tries, we knows what good food it is. You'd never 
 starve in the Delter, not so long as you'd a tommy'awk 
 and your two 'ands. I've always known there was 
 money in it, and so has others, but where the sago is, 
 there's the cannibal lot too, and they're not heasy to 
 trade with, let alone that you never know they won't 
 turn on you and make a stoo of you, if they takes a 
 prejudice again you. 
 
 " Don't you forget, dealin' with cannibals," he went 
 on, " that they're as nervish as a school-gurl of six- 
 teen, and as scary as a young 'orse that isn't broke 
 more so; you'd find it 'ard to think of anything, ani- 
 mal or 'uman, that is as nervish and scary. You seen 
 that before ; they was all on the jump all the time the
 
 WHEN THE RED GODS CALL 327 
 
 bother day. You see, when a feller lives constant in 
 fear of bein' clubbed and put in the cookin' pot, it de- 
 stroys 'is carmness, like, and 'e gets into a state that 
 would mean Fellers's Surrup, and no tobacco nor 
 drinks, and go to bed at height, if 'e was a white man 
 and consulted a doctor about it. When a cannibal 
 kills someone, 'e does it for one of two reasons 
 either because 'e's frit of bein' killed 'imself, or be- 
 cause 'e's got into such a peculiar nervish state that 
 'e don't know what he's doin' any'ow, and goes for 
 the first thing he sees. There's other reasons now 
 and then, but they 'appen so seldom you may leave 
 them out. . . ." 
 
 The speech was never finished. From out a nar- 
 row waterway, almost invisible in the dense tangle of 
 greenery, flashed the nose of a canoe out, and back 
 again, almost before it had been seen. There was 
 just the least ripple of the glass-green water, just the 
 slightest quiver of the overhanging fronds of palm, 
 and then not a sign, not a sound. The river was 
 void of life once more. 
 
 " That's as good as a map of the districk and tour- 
 ists' guide to the towns," said Mr. Worboise with some 
 satisfaction. " Now I'm beginnin' to guess where we 
 are. 'Tisn't that I don't know the channels, or some 
 of them, but they doesn't stay the same; lots of them 
 has altered since Hugh and I was here together, and 
 Doravi seems as if it's been and lost itself. But it 
 can't be far off now; them fellers in the canoe who 
 scooted so quick was comm' out by one of the back 
 doors. The 'ole Delter's full of towns you can't see
 
 328 WHEN THE RED GODS CALL 
 
 and wouldn't suspicion; it's not 'alf as dead as it looks. 
 You see, we'll make Doravi before sundown." 
 
 We did. It was still quite light when the steam- 
 launch swept round a corner masked by an immense 
 clump of nipa or water-palms, and came into view of 
 a town that, in its own way, was still more wonderful 
 than Maipua. 
 
 Nothing less than a New Guinea Venice lay before 
 us. The river on which the town was built was very 
 wide, and dark green with depth. There was no real 
 land at all; only an occasional gleam of black, semi- 
 liquid mud among the lianas and water-palms at the 
 edges of forest, showed where the trees took root. 
 The houses were of the same extraordinary, alligator- 
 mouth shape as those of Maipua, but smaller; they 
 stood on high piles right in the clear green water, and 
 the streets and alleys were all water-paved. Curious 
 verandas clung to the sides of these quaint brown 
 houses, and their horn-shaped gables were lost in the 
 thick of the over-hanging boughs above. From place 
 to place, over principal side streams, light bridges of 
 woven vines and creepers were thrown. It was the 
 greenest, wateriest, leafiest, stillest place we had yet 
 seen. Not a sound broke the ghostly quiet. The plat- 
 forms of the ravis were filled with warriors, painted, 
 feathered and armed to the teeth; but they squatted 
 there like lifeless images, each in his own place, and 
 moved nothing but their beady eyes. Children in 
 canoes paddled soundlessly in and out of the dusk side 
 streams over which the liana bridges swayed and 
 shook; a gleaming streak upon the black water of a
 
 WHEN THE RED GODS CALL 329 
 
 scarcely seen lagoon showed where an alligator swam, 
 all hidden but the cruel eyes ; from the branches of one 
 of the heaviest and darkest trees a pendulous snake 
 head, joined to ten feet of diamond-patterned body, 
 swung to and fro above the stream. . . . Beauti- 
 ful, silent, evil, the creature seemed the very spirit of 
 the place. 
 
 We came to a halt, keeping well out in the middle 
 of the river, and Mr. Worboise began to look about 
 him. 
 
 " It's Doravi right enough," he said, with a hand 
 on the steering-wheel, " but I must say the Doravi fel- 
 lers don't look much like what I seen them last. Nerv- 
 ish they was to what you couldn't describe it, worse 
 than them Maipuans skippin' and 'owlin' and run- 
 nin' away in canoes, when they see Hugh and me ; now 
 to-day they looks as if they was all drunk on betel-nut, 
 or all gone dotty, or somethink ; I can't himagine ' 
 
 At that moment his eyes fell on an object promi- 
 nently displayed on one of the platforms overhanging 
 the water, and for the first time, I saw him change 
 color. 
 
 I looked at the thing, and did not like it, though it 
 was simply a wickerwork figure, of a kind I had not 
 seen in any of the houses yet a huge, dragon-like 
 creature, with red eyes, a trailing tail, and short, 
 stumpy legs. It had an enormous mouth, gaping wide 
 open, and there seemed to be something inside what, 
 I could not see. 
 
 I turned to Mr. Worboise, with a new kind of fear 
 creeping over me. (I had known little save fear since
 
 330 WHEN THE RED GODS CALL 
 
 we entered this awful country of the Purari, but never 
 till now had I felt such a crawling of the roots of the 
 hair, such a grip of the heart, as seized me when I 
 looked at that grisly thing on the platform.) 
 
 " Mr. Worboise," I whispered, for I was afraid to 
 speak aloud " what is it ? " 
 
 He turned on me a face that had suddenly grown 
 pale. 
 
 " God forgive me, Mrs. Hugh," he whispered in 
 reply, " but who could 'a thought of this ? Doravi's 
 makin' the ' sempsi.' ' 
 
 "What?" 
 
 " The * sempsi.' No one rightly knows what it is, 
 but it's one of their devil ceremonies that takes place 
 only once in seven years, and if they was as peaceable 
 as lambs at hother times, they'd be wolves then, for 
 they don't allow no white folks to see any of it and 
 live. . . . My eyes isn't quite what they was, Mrs. 
 Hugh; will you look about and tell me if you sees any 
 women or girl children in them canoes ? " 
 
 I saw none, and told him so, with the tide of cold 
 fear creeping ever higher and higher about my heart. 
 All the figures on the platforms were men ; all the chil- 
 dren gliding about in the canoes were boys boys with 
 dark, devilish little faces, and not a trace of childish- 
 ness about them, full as cruel as their seniors. Fas- 
 cinated with horror, but as yet unable to realize the 
 danger, I glanced once more at the sinister thing on 
 the platform nearest to us. ... What did it con- 
 ceal in those gaping jaws? 
 
 The answer was not long in coming.
 
 WHEN THE RED GODS CALL 331 
 
 Something was dripping into the river from under 
 the wickerwork monster's stumpy limbs. Something 
 was trickling down its hideous belly, staining the plat- 
 form red. . . . 
 
 I knew. 
 
 Mr. Worboise had seen it too. His large flat face 
 showed no fear, but the livid color increased as he 
 made a quick gesture with his hand to the boy who 
 acted as engineer. Then he gripped the steering-wheel 
 closely, and threw a rapid glance ahead. 
 
 One minute earlier half-a-minute and the 
 course of all our lives had been changed. But the 
 delay had been too long. 
 
 The engine throbbed, the propeller turned the Ela 
 worked slowly round in her tracks and headed down 
 the stream. Fascinated still with terror, I gazed at 
 those hideous ranks on the platforms. Were they 
 going to let us go without a word us, who had seen 
 what no white man, and no woman, white or brown, 
 might look upon and live? 
 
 They did not move. The whites of their eyes, 
 clearly visible within the scarlet-painted circles about 
 the sockets, showed moveless and unwinking in the 
 shadow of the yawning gables behind. They were all 
 looking where ? at what ? 
 
 Again the question was answered. The Ela had 
 scarce made twenty yards on the way towards safety 
 and the open stream, when, with the suddenness of a 
 stage transformation, the whole channel in front of us 
 filled up with a crowd of war-canoes, issuing with in- 
 credible swiftness from numberless unseen waterways,
 
 332 WHEN THE RED GODS CALL 
 
 and a yell that struck through me like a knife re- 
 sounded in the hollow arcade of overhanging trees. 
 Nor did it cease, once begun. A continuous torrent of 
 wild, dog-like yelps poured forth without end from 
 every throat, while a thousand paddles, beating the 
 water into foamy spray, drove the army of canoes 
 down the channel straight at the launch. The speed 
 of the paddlers made every canoe leap and quiver; 
 the naked, painted bodies rose and fell like the jumpers 
 inside a piano. All the feathers and streamers that 
 they wore all the arrows and spears they carried 
 shook and flew and trembled with the fury of their 
 flight. And all the time they yelped and yelled, like 
 hell itself let loose. 
 
 I was so giddy with terror that I have no very clear 
 recollection of the minutes that followed. I know 
 that Mr. Worboise thrust me into the cabin, crying, 
 " Lie down on the floor," and that almost instantly 
 the sound of rifle shots rang out above the awful 
 tumult of the savage horde. The yelling checked 
 somewhat, but began again almost at once, and I 
 heard a pattering volley of arrows strike on the iron 
 bulwarks and all over the deck. A cry from one of 
 our own men told me they had not missed their mark. 
 Then the rifles rang out again, mingled with shrieks 
 from our boys, and calls from Mr. Worboise 
 " Stand to them, stand to them shoot him, Kabua ! 
 Mirani, fire!" Then a thundering of feet all over 
 the deck, and a chorus of yells compared with which 
 the former cries had been nothing a frantic stamp- 
 ing and scuffling more rifle-shots Mr. Worboise's
 
 WHEN THE RED GODS CALL 333 
 
 voice again " Keep her off, keep her off, Mirani ! 
 Damn you, we're aground ! " a shock that vibrated 
 through the whole launch, and the sickening quiver 
 of the propeller choked by mud the continuing 
 -good God, would they never end? was everyone 
 killed? and at the last, the crowning horror of all 
 a dozen naked painted bodies struggling to enter 
 the cabin all together; a forest of hideous arms seizing 
 me at all at once, fruitless struggling on my part over- 
 borne, useless screams drowned by savage howls 
 the sunlight of the open deck burning on my face, 
 the sudden shock of a fall on the planks, as my hands 
 were seized and my feet snatched from under me, and 
 rudely tied together, and the knowledge that the fight 
 was lost, and we were prisoners. 
 
 The yelling still went on; it confused my brain 
 so much that I could hardly think, and no doubt I felt 
 the horror of the situation somewhat less on that ac- 
 count. I saw that Mr. Worboise was lying on the 
 deck also, tied hand and foot, and bleeding from a 
 wound in the arm. I saw that two of our own boys 
 were dead, and the rest missing. There were several 
 of the savages lying shot across their canoes, and a 
 splashing and floundering out in the river, where a 
 long scaly tail rose and lashed the water now and then, 
 told of the fate of others. The launch was stuck 
 fast on a mudbank, and the engine had ceased to work. 
 
 I think I must have been half stunned when they 
 flung me down on the deck, for I do not remember 
 anything very clearly afterwards, until I felt myself 
 being carried up the ladder of the biggest ravi, and
 
 334 WHEN THE RED GODS CALL 
 
 into the gloom under the great roof. Then my sense 
 came back, and I looked about with almost frantic 
 attention, wildly hoping for a chance to escape. 
 
 They carried Mr. Worboise and myself down the 
 endless tunnel of the great house, the roof growing 
 lower and lower before us as we advanced, the sun- 
 light waxing dimmer. Curtain after curtain was 
 lifted and brushed aside; mystery after mystery ap- 
 peared, dimly seen in the growing dusk, and faded 
 away again. I do not know to this day if the giant 
 snakes that swung from the rafters were living or 
 dead. I cannot tell what the nightmare forms, toothed 
 and winged and finned, that flashed by in some dim 
 recess, may have been whether, indeed, I saw them 
 at all, or only pictured them, in the terror of a semi- 
 crazed brain. I know that I saw a drinking-cup made 
 of a skull, and filled to the brim with blood, set on 
 a kind of altar a long way down in the ravi, where 
 an opening in the roof let in a ray of sun that smote 
 down on the horrors below like the fire that fell from 
 heaven upon the idolaters of long ago. I know that 
 there was a smell of death in the air, and that skeleton 
 hands, with the flesh withering away, brushed against 
 us as we were carried past, and when the end of the 
 terrible journey neared, and the last curtain was lifted, 
 that a flight of hideous bats, with fox-like heads and 
 huge whirring wings, flapped their way out of the 
 inner recess of the ravi above our head and flew away 
 down the dark tunnel, looking like evil spirits un- 
 chained. . . 
 
 They were taking us to the secret shrine the
 
 WHEN THE RED GODS CALL 335 
 
 " Unholy of Unholies," on which no white man or 
 woman might look, and live thereafter. Only too 
 well we could guess why its mysteries were unveiled 
 for us. 
 
 Within the last curtain, our bearers flung us down 
 on the rickety palm-sheath floor, and left us. Their 
 cries of derision echoed all through the huge nave of 
 the building, as they ran yelping and howling down 
 the ravine again, and left us to ourselves. 
 
 For several minutes, neither of us spoke, and then 
 I turned my head, which was all I could move, to Mr. 
 Worboise, and asked him was he badly hurt. 
 
 " No, no nothin' but a prick of an arrer. 'Ave 
 they 'urt you, Mrs. Hugh? " he asked anxiously. 
 
 I reassured him as well as I could, but the poor old 
 man groaned bitterly. 
 
 " Oh, Lord forgive me that ever I brought you to 
 such a pass, Mrs. Hugh and me that would 'ave 
 laid down my life that willin' to save you and me 
 that persuaded you into comin' and all but there, 
 'oo was to know that we'd 'it on the one time in seven 
 years when no one can't do nothin' with them? All 
 over the West, that sempsi business is, but some 'as 
 it at one time, and some at another, and the last 
 thing I'd ever 'a thort was that we'd 'it on it here, 
 for they don't take near so much count of it in the 
 Delter as they do about the Fly River country. A 
 'undred thousand to one chance it was, and it's 'it 
 us." 
 
 " What will they do with us ? " I asked, trying to 
 keep the tremble out of my voice. I had been so
 
 336 WHEN THE RED GODS CALL 
 
 continually frightened ever since we entered the Delta 
 country, that it seemed as if my capacity for fear was 
 getting more or less worn out, and I only felt vaguely 
 nervous now. 
 
 Mr. Worboise was silent. 
 
 " I tell you all that'll 'appen to you," he said at 
 last, " and that'll be, gettin' struck on the 'ead with 
 that empty revolver of yours " (it was indeed empty; 
 I could only guess that, in my blind terror in the 
 cabin, I had fired off every cartridge without knowing 
 or remembering what I did), "and dyin' quick and 
 easy, before you 'as time to feel anythin'. No worse, 
 Mrs. Hugh. You can trust to me for that." 
 
 "And you?" I said. 
 
 But he pretended not to hear, rolling over on the 
 creaking floor so as to drown my voice. 
 
 " Better not think too much, if we're to keep our 
 'eads clear," he said. " Look round you, now you're 
 in 'ere after all, and see what it is they keeps in this 
 place. Maybe we won't 'ave the chance to tell, but we 
 may as well see." 
 
 We looked, and saw. I cannot say either of us 
 felt much interest in the unraveling of mysteries that 
 were like to cost us our lives, but all the same we 
 took note of our surroundings. 
 
 It was the end of the ravi, where its three or four 
 hundred feet of length and towering height abruptly 
 terminated in a small, sloped chamber, dimly lit by 
 an aperture under the gable of the low roof. Every- 
 thing was dusty and brown the woven palm-leaf
 
 WHEN THE RED GODS CALL 337 
 
 walls, the palm-sheath floor, the fiber curtain that 
 shut off the shrine from the tunnel beyond. Long 
 arrows of powdery gold sifted in here and there 
 though the roof, and showed the floating particles of 
 dust in the still air. There were no skulls here, no 
 human-bone daggers, no nightmare-painted shields 
 nothing at all but a grim circle of wickerwork drag- 
 ons, seven of them, all open- jawed and red-eyed like 
 the dragon we had seen on the platform outside, but, 
 unlike it, empty. How long they might remain empty 
 
 with what food their hideous maws might be fed 
 
 neither my companion nor I cared to speculate. 
 Nor did we try to picture to ourselves the scenes on 
 which these silent walls had many a time looked down. 
 In truth I speak for myself, and, I think, for my 
 companion too we thought as little as we could 
 about anything at all, lest our minds should give way 
 under the strain of the weight that had been laid upon 
 them, and leave us with not even the last consolations 
 of all courage and prayer. 
 
 The lances of dusty gold grew dim and died away; 
 the evening calls of parrots and cockatoos sounded 
 from the woody swamps outside. Smells of smoke 
 arose from the houses; on the river the sound of 
 canoe paddles beat up and down, and cries of excite- 
 ment mingled with the beating of the village drums. 
 Night came, but wearied though we were, there was 
 no sleep for us. We spoke but little ; our hearts were 
 too heavy. Old Mr. Worboise rolled over on the 
 floor and sighed from time to time; as for me, I
 
 338 WHEN THE RED GODS CALL 
 
 watched the silent stars through a little crevice in the 
 roof they seemed to give me courage and prayed 
 to Him Who made the stars, that even now, He would 
 deliver us out of the mouth of hell.
 
 PART III 
 
 LYNCH'S STORY 
 
 CHAPTER XV 
 
 T HAD had many homes, in many quarters of the 
 * world, but none that held my fancy more than 
 that one. 
 
 Most people, I suppose, would have maintained that 
 no sane man could possibly like to live in such a 
 place. Most people would have been, as they usually 
 are, wrong. 
 
 On the contrary, I should suppose that there are 
 very many men in the world men hurt as badly 
 as I had been, and with as much reason for desiring 
 a life completely free and completely secret who 
 have dreamed hopelessly, time and again, of just such a 
 retreat. I used to think about them sometimes, when 
 the dusk was coming down that strange green dusk 
 of the Purari, that makes the rivers, and the channels, 
 and the wide lagoons, and the clumps of nipa and 
 sago palm all look as if you saw them through the 
 hollow emerald that Nero used to watch the glad- 
 iatorial games with. I would sit on my veranda, 
 above the water, with the currents from the channels 
 outside swirling among the twenty-foot piles, under 
 the house, and see the last rays of the evening light 
 disappear from the darkening agate-green of the inner 
 lagoon that held my tiny island in its secret heart, 
 
 339
 
 340 WHEN THE RED GODS CALL 
 
 and hug myself to think how safely I was concealed. 
 Outside the lagoon lay a maze of deadly swamps, 
 deep and treacherous enough to engulf a hundred 
 armies, and leave no trace; outside this, bewildering 
 channels and streams that wound in and out and back 
 and forward, and apparently led to nowhere, outside 
 these, the three or four largest rivers of the Delta, 
 leading, after much winding and wandering, to a coast 
 barred by dense mangroves, and uncharted shoals and 
 shallows, and opening at last on the waters of one 
 of the most dangerous seas in Australasia. . . . 
 Yes, my retirement was about as complete as human 
 ingenuity, coupled to extraordinary geographical con- 
 ditions, could make it. 
 
 I used, as I say, to think of all those other men, 
 as I smoked alone on my veranda of an evening 
 the men who had " done something," or had some- 
 thing done to them, or who, like myself, carried both 
 burdens. . . . Had many of them tried the re- 
 lief that I had looked for and found, or had they, 
 nearly all, contented themselves with spouting 
 " Locksley Hall " and " gone back " to play billiards, 
 and buttonhole newcomers, and take short cuts out of 
 the way, when people they didn't want to meet heaved 
 into sight? 
 
 I suppose they had, most of them. I was made of 
 other stuff. When I left Port Moresby jail, I wanted 
 nothing more to do with white men, or with women, 
 white or brown. A brown woman and a white, be- 
 tween them, and in different ways, had taken all the 
 savor out of my life. White men had driven me to
 
 WHEN THE RED GODS CALL 341 
 
 crime, had punished me for committing crime, had 
 made an outcast of me for being punished. It seemed 
 to me that I had had enough, and a little over. I 
 am not the kind that commits suicide, physically, but 
 I committed it morally, when I went out into the wil- 
 derness for good, and I maintained, and still main- 
 tain, that I had ample reason. 
 
 One must live, however. Even in the wilds of 
 Papua, a white man needs money, or its equivalent. 
 Cartridges, flour, tea and sugar and bacon, trade stuff 
 for the natives, clothes, books, and the hundred and 
 one small necessities wanted by the white man who 
 has not " gone native " in his retirement, cannot be 
 procured for nothing. I turned sago-getter, and sold 
 my stuff to a Malay dealer from Dutch New Guinea, 
 who used to come down into the Gulf, from the Dutch 
 side of the Fly River, and buy all I could send him. 
 Then my cutter would go up to Port Moresby, and 
 bring the goods I wanted. Garia, who was still with 
 me, was my messenger sometimes; one of my Kiwai 
 boys, who cut and washed the sago, took his place at 
 times. Both kept my secret. 
 
 I had a good house in " Lynch Lagoon " as I 
 christened the inner lake I had chosen for my resi- 
 dence. It was built with a high gabled roof, and a 
 door back and front, so that there was always cool- 
 ness and a current of fresh air blowing over the palm- 
 sheath floor, through which the green water glimmered 
 pleasantly far below. The ladder to the veranda was 
 of lawyer cane, and I could draw it up and down 
 at will, making the house at any moment into a com-
 
 342 WHEN THE RED GODS CALL 
 
 plete fortress. There was no furniture except a ham- 
 mock, a box, and a few mats and cooking-pots; I 
 needed no more. But there was solitude and cool- 
 ness, good food (with native sago, and fish, and fruit, 
 wild pig, cocoanut, nipa-nut, baked yam and taro, and 
 parrot-and-pepper stew, a man needs few civilized 
 luxuries), hard work when I chose, and rest when 
 I chose; all the books in the world to keep me com- 
 pany, if I liked to send for them, my pipe for com- 
 fort, and my boat for pleasure. More, there were 
 adventures enough to fill a dozen volumes, did I 
 choose to write them, among the wild tribes of the 
 Delta, who at first resented my presence not a little 
 and had to be brought into line, in ways that suited 
 their savage natures, but wouldn't suit anyone who is 
 likely to read this so I won't describe them. I 
 ought to have been happy, and in some degree I was. 
 But there were pricks here and there. 
 
 I could not enjoy good novels, for one thing. A 
 novel always has a love-story in it nonsense about 
 women and faith and trust, that I didn't believe in, 
 but that, all the same, had power to trouble me. So 
 I could only stock my book-box with detective tales 
 and things of that kind. 
 
 I could not sing, for my own pleasure, as I had so 
 often been used to do in old days, having a good 
 voice, and being popular on that account among music- 
 loving friends. Most songs, when you come to think 
 of it, are all about lovers parting for ever, but loving 
 each other all the same, or about homes and firesides
 
 WHEN THE RED GODS CALL 343 
 
 and children, and stuff of that kind. I didn't care 
 for them so I never sang. 
 
 The native women used to annoy me, too. Garia's 
 wife had flatly declined to accompany him to the Delta, 
 and, native fashion, had gone off and married an- 
 other man, leaving him a widower a misfortune 
 which did not weigh at all severely upon his spirits 
 so there were no petticoats, even grass ones, about 
 my place. What Garia's loves among the girls of 
 the Delta might be, I never inquired, so long as none 
 of them were obtruded on me. But I could not avoid 
 the women when I went into the towns, as I did at 
 times, and the very sight of them annoyed me. Over 
 and over again the chiefs, who counted me a million- 
 aire according to Purari ideas, offered me their best- 
 looking maidens to wife, for a fixed price, in tobacco 
 or fish-hooks or scarlet cloth, hoping to enrich their 
 villages by the connection, and over and over again 
 I had need of all my diplomacy to stave off serious 
 trouble on account of my refusal. I would not have 
 touched one of them with a ten-foot pole, if they 
 had been as lovely as they were actually hideous. A 
 world without women in it was what I wanted, but, 
 as I did not require a world devoid of all popula- 
 tion, I had to put up with the annoyance of their con- 
 tinued existence somewhere or other, and avoid them 
 as best I might. 
 
 I cannot say I thought very much about Stephanie 
 in those days. I had trained myself pretty success- 
 fully not to. The only news that I had had of her
 
 344 WHEN THE RED GODS CALL 
 
 during the years since she had left was indirect news, 
 but not the more agreeable for that. A missionary 
 living in an out-of-the-way division had told one of 
 my boys that he got ten pounds a year for his mis- 
 sion, by simply writing now and then to tell a " gen- 
 tleman in London " that I wasn't dead. Whether 
 Stephanie herself, or the man who had always wanted 
 to take her from me, were the moving spirit in this, 
 I did not know, but I supposed it to be the doing of 
 both. And I laughed to myself, to think how that 
 meaningless piece of mummery in Port Moresby Mis- 
 sion Church still held three lives in its grip, tight as 
 the alligator holds his prey, in the slime and mud of 
 the Delta swamps. 
 
 One afternoon I shall long remember it I had 
 come in early from my sago-cutting, on account of 
 the exceptional heat, and turned into my hammock 
 for a doze. It really was exceedingly warm. The 
 circle of palm and pandanus and mangrove trees shut- 
 ting in the glassy mirror of " Lynch's Lagoon " was 
 so deadly still that you could not see where the divid- 
 ing line between the drooping foliage in the air and 
 its painted presentment in the water began or ended. 
 The sky was black with heat, and the shadows had 
 the peculiar brassy tinge that one only notices on the 
 worst of Delta days. Real shadow, indeed, there 
 was none, save in my house ; and I was thankful to get 
 my head beneath the grateful darkness of its roof, 
 and lie down to rest, promising myself a dip inside
 
 WHEN THE RED GODS CALL 345 
 
 my alligator fence, as soon as the sun should have 
 gone down. 
 
 I dozed off almost at once; the last thing I re- 
 membered was the slow lip-lap of the burning-hot 
 water under the house and the steady crackle like 
 the sound of sticks in a fire given off by the thatch 
 of the roof, under the scorching rays of the three- 
 o'clock sun. 
 
 It seemed to me by and by, that I woke, partly, 
 and recognized my surroundings, but that I still con- 
 tinued half-asleep, and dreaming a little. I dreamed 
 an absurd dream that I heard the beat of a pro- 
 peller. 
 
 That, of course, was quite impossible, on the Purari, 
 and I turned myself round in the hammock with a 
 jerk, and settled my head on the cool silk-cotton pil- 
 low. I wanted to sleep soundly, not to lie half awake 
 and see and hear things that did not exist. 
 
 The roof crackled in the sun, a fish in the lagoon 
 below leaped and fell with a splash. A dull bumping 
 and thumping of far-away thunder rolled down the 
 lonely waterways, and died away in the distance. 
 . . . Sleepy beyond expression, I seemed to fade 
 away with the sound, and drop down below the hori- 
 zon into a gulf of infinite rest. . . . 
 
 There, again! I was almost broad awake. What 
 nonsense ! It was utterly impossible and yet it did 
 sound like the faint, faint beat of a propeller a very 
 long way off several miles at least no louder 
 than the throb of a man's own heart when he wakes
 
 346 WHEN THE RED GODS CALL 
 
 and listens to it in the night the lonely, cruel 
 night. . . . 
 
 " Garia ! " I yelled to a formless heap on the floor. 
 
 " Oh ! " answered my servant, waking with some 
 difficulty, and sitting up stiffly he was not as young 
 as he had been; near thirty-five by now, and that is 
 late middle-age for a native. 
 
 " You been hearem steamer ? " 
 
 " Sitima, Taubada? you gammoning me!" an- 
 swered the Motuan with an air of bewilderment. 
 
 I listened again, but there was nothing. 
 
 " Must have been dreaming," I said. I lay down 
 again, and slept this time. 
 
 When I woke, it was late, and almost dark. Garia 
 was gone out serenading, or its Papuan equivalent, 
 in the nearest village, I had no doubt. I took my 
 swim, keeping carefully within the fence, for Lynch's 
 Lagoon was rather a favorite spot with egg-laying 
 alligators lit my lamp, found a book, and settled 
 myself on the veranda, to wait until Garia should re- 
 turn and get my supper. 
 
 He was some time about it. The evening darkened 
 into night ; the moon came up from behind the circling 
 wall of palms, and turned the water-floor of my do- 
 main to a pavement of shining pearl. Green fireflies 
 danced about the roof of the house, and hung them- 
 selves like fairy torches all along the fringes of the 
 thatch. Still, not a sign of Garia, and I was getting 
 hungry. 
 
 In truth, he did not appear till nearly nine o'clock, 
 and by that time I was so angry that I nearly kicked
 
 WHEN THE RED GODS CALL 347 
 
 him off the ladder into the lagoon, as he climbed up. 
 I would have done so, only that I thought he was 
 sure to clear the alligator fence in his fall, and I 
 had more than a notion that there was a lady alligator 
 out laying eggs in the dark, just opposite the house. 
 
 He was, of course, exceedingly apologetic, and full 
 of explanations, as was always the case when he had 
 outstayed his leave. I paid small heed to him ; the 
 explanations, as usual, were largely " girl," and that 
 was a subject I barred. Ordering him to get my sup- 
 per at once, and stop talking, I flung myself on a mat 
 on the veranda, and lay there smoking and watching 
 the moonlight spread across the lake, in a frame of 
 mind by no means correspondent with the peace and 
 beauty of the night. 
 
 Garia was afraid of my ill-humors when they came, 
 and he set about his work at once, making a great clat- 
 tering with the tin cooking-utensils, and blowing os- 
 tentatiously at the embers of the fire that was us- 
 ually kept smoldering, native fashion, on a bed of white 
 ashes. 
 
 I have often wondered, since, what would have hap- 
 pened that night, had Garia's cooking been a little less 
 good than it was had my ill-humor, unassuaged by 
 a full meal, held so far as to compel him to silence. 
 I have, just as often, flinched away from the inevita- 
 ble reply. 
 
 But the food was good, though it came late, and 
 after I had satisfied my hunger, my annoyance died 
 down, and I beckoned with a finger to my servant. 
 I had seen that he was bursting with some strange
 
 348 WHEN THE RED GODS CALL 
 
 piece of news, and was not averse from hearing it, 
 after all. News is news, even in the Purari Delta. 
 
 " Where you been stop all this time ? " I asked. 
 
 " Go along place plenty mud, plenty water he stop, 
 long way, see girl belong Doravi," he began eagerly. 
 
 " Confound you and your girls," said I. " Tell the 
 story without any girls in it, or go off to your mat 
 and sleep. I've no doubt at all you went to see some 
 of your girls, or that you took them more of my to- 
 bacco and tinned salmon than you'd any right to. 
 Skip the girls, and come to the story." 
 
 " Taubada no can tell, no tell along girl," remon- 
 strated Garia. Then, very quickly, and watching my 
 eye all the time " All girl belong Doravi, he go long 
 way away Doravi, he go walk about mud, catsing trab, 
 sleeping 'long bush " 
 
 " I tell you I don't care if they did." 
 
 " Taubada, you hearem me man he maken 
 ' sempsi ' 'long Doravi, woman he go stop bush all-a- 
 time." 
 
 "I've heard about the 'sempsi' before; it's the 
 greatest nuisance in the West. Get me a drink, you 
 chattering cockatoo and hold your tongue, if you can." 
 
 Garia went outside to the water-bag, and returned 
 with a full pannikin. My mouth being temporarily 
 closed immediately after, he seized his opportunity, 
 and went on, fast as he could 
 
 " That girl he makem thing Motua man he call 
 ' aani ' he sit down, he make good sing 
 
 " And you paid for their singing with my tinned 
 goods and fish-hooks, I suppose?" I said, yawning.
 
 349 
 
 I was growing sleepy and it seemed easier to endure 
 the yarn, than to stop it. 
 
 " No, I no give nobody nothing," protested Garia 
 virtuously. " I hearum that girl sing, very good he 
 sing, I no savvy all that-fellow Purari talk, some 
 little-bit talk I savvy, girl he sing along * sempsi/ he 
 sing along boat big boat, he say, all same rui (dug- 
 ong) make noise all same rui, he come down water, 
 going Doravi, white man all same Lineti he stop, 
 'nother white man no all same he stop, that fellow he 
 gottem one leg, no two leg, he gottem breast, same 
 woman, he gottem talk belong him, same woman, that 
 two people, six Papua boy, he go along Doravi, woman 
 belong Doravi he look out 'long bush, he flenty fright. 
 By-'n'-by that woman he say that two feofle he dead, 
 suppose he go look along Doravi, woman he flenty 
 glad, he fright along that boat, along that feofle." 
 
 It is almost incredible, but true, that at the moment, 
 I did not understand. The Delta is full of extraor- 
 dinary yarns, largely concerned with sorcery, devils, 
 and unbelievable apparitions of every kind, and this 
 really sounded rather like one of the usual sort, per- 
 haps a little more highly-colored than usual, with its 
 one-legged, woman-breasted man, and its boat that 
 breathed like a dugong. . . . Then, like a lightning 
 flash, there struck into my mind that dream of the 
 afternoon the sound of the propeller. . . . Had 
 it been a dream after all and if not. . . . 
 
 God Almighty ! if a white man and white woman had 
 gone into Doravi had gone at the time of the 
 ' sempsi ' . . .
 
 350 WHEN THE RED GODS CALL 
 
 "One leg!" Why, that was a skirt. "Talk be- 
 long woman "... and the rest. . . . 
 
 Once before, in my lifetime, when events were 
 crashing about my head like stones, and past and fu- 
 ture hung in the balance of a single minute, I had 
 seen, by a power I cannot account for, the thing that 
 had come to pass far away from me had known, 
 with the same certainty, what was about to come to 
 pass. I saw, and knew, now. I knew who the woman 
 was. I saw what her fate would be. 
 
 Garia has told me since that he thought I was struck 
 with madness. There may have been some excuse 
 for such an idea. Most of the movable things in 
 the house took wings during the next few minutes, and 
 flew about the walls and floor. The building trembled 
 on its long-legged piles. The captive cockatoos I kept 
 as night-guards to the house woke up and screamed 
 blue ruin on the roof. ... I was looking for 
 something for several things and I wanted to 
 find them in a hurry. 
 
 When I found them (they included a dark lantern 
 that I used for fishing, two rifles, a couple of ban- 
 doliers of cartridges, and a small packet that I stowed 
 carefully away in the pocket of my shirt), I took 
 Garia by the neck, and dropped him down the ladder. 
 
 " The canoe ! " I said. 
 
 Something in my manner had no doubt suggested 
 by this time that I was in a hurry. Garia darted un- 
 derneath the house, and had the canoe out almost be- 
 fore I was down the ladder myself. 
 
 Outside the lagoon, in a wide stream leading to the
 
 WHEN THE RED GODS CALL 351 
 
 main channel, my cutter was moored. We shot 
 through the byways of the water-maze as the eel shoots 
 through the roots of the nipa palms, and fairly flung 
 ourselves on the cutter's deck. The canoe was lifted 
 up, the sweeps got out, and we rowed and punted 
 breathlessly through the twisting channels, out into 
 the wind and the moonlight, and the wide waters of 
 the open river. 
 
 Doravi lay to leeward of us, and the night-breeze 
 was strong; the current, too, was in our favor. My 
 cutter flew through the water, leaving a boiling wake 
 behind her, and shipping a continuous stream of Pu- 
 rari river over her gunwale. But fast as she went, 
 my thoughts went faster. Should I be in time? 
 should I be in time? And if I were not? . . . 
 
 " O my darling, my own lost darling to find you 
 and lose you like this ! " I was crying out in my soul, 
 as the cutter fled over the empty, moon-whitened wa- 
 ters, through the gorgeous tropic night. " Stephanie ! 
 Stephanie ! what devils have made sport of your life 
 and mine ! " 
 
 I knew my way well about these streams, and I 
 knew how far the cutter could go with safety. We 
 were still a good half-mile from Doravi when I brought 
 to and got out into the canoe, warning Garia to wait 
 for me, on pain of having his brains blown out if he 
 failed. 
 
 I had taken time, in my hurried preparations, to 
 change my light clothes for a dark shirt and trousers. 
 Now I halted for a moment, scooped up a handful
 
 352 WHEN THE RED GODS CALL 
 
 of the river mud, and rubbed it well over my face and 
 hands. Thus protected, I hoped to pass unseen in 
 shadow, and as for the moonlight (which I cursed in 
 my heart), I must keep out of it as much as pos- 
 sible. 
 
 Gliding silently through the intricate waterways 
 that form the secret approach to Doravi, I came be- 
 fore long into a small, half -hidden stream, where, 
 through an opening veiled with creepers, I could safely 
 survey the town. None knew better than I that the 
 celebration of these religious mysteries barred the way. 
 to open approach even for me, though under ordi- 
 nary circumstances I was free to pass as I liked. In 
 the time of the " sempsi " interference from a stranger 
 meant death. 
 
 The whole place had a marvelous appearance; if 
 I had come on any other errand, I should have been 
 struck with admiration. The main waterway of the 
 town was like a fair every house was lighted up with 
 torches, every canoe carried a burning palm-stump, 
 and there was bustle and movement upon all the plat- 
 forms, while the gorgeousness of the feather head- 
 dresses, the elaboration of the painting on faces, limbs, 
 and bodies, exceeded anything of the kind that I had 
 ever seen. The tall gables of the ravis were not, as 
 usual, open, but were filled in with huge veils of na- 
 tive matting, each as large as the drop-curtain of a 
 good-sized theater. Through the curtains a dull, lurid 
 glow shone down upon the river, and dark shadows 
 could be seen flitting to and fro. What might be 
 doing behind any one of those mysterious screens-
 
 WHEN THE RED GODS CALL 353 
 
 what assuredly would be doing behind most of them 
 before the morning I could guess, but I did not dare 
 to picture to myself, lest I, even I, should lose the nerve 
 that never yet had failed me. 
 
 The next question was had the white strangers 
 by any chance missed Doravi, or, not missing it, had 
 they escaped? 
 
 " A steam-launch ought to have given them a chance 
 of getting off," I said to myself, peering through the 
 creepers, "if they ... . Ah!" 
 
 They had not missed Doravi nor had Doravi 
 missed them. There was the launch, gutted of every 
 movable, stuck fast in the mud. 
 
 I sat in my canoe, and thought, determinedly beat- 
 ing down the paralyzing fears that began to wind 
 themselves like snakes about my heart. ... If 
 they were still alive, they would be imprisoned in the 
 largest and most important of the ravis probably 
 bound and guarded, since none of the houses were 
 solid enough to act as a prison in the ordinary sense. 
 They would be put in the rear of the ravi, while the 
 sorcerers were carrying out their ceremonies in front. 
 
 . . If one could attract the guards to the front 
 could concentrate all attention there for just five 
 minutes. . . . 
 
 I felt in my pocket for what I had stowed away, 
 and considered. 
 
 Fire? No. I might creep underneath the ravi 
 without being seen, but it was another matter to set 
 fire to heavy, damp-soaked piles, without attracting 
 notice. And if I did succeed in lighting some portion
 
 354 WHEN THE RED GODS CALL 
 
 of the supports or flooring, it would be seen and put 
 out before any harm could be done. . . . No; 
 the other way was best. 
 
 I inspected the small fire-pot I had brought with 
 me, to avoid the necessity of striking matches. The 
 hot brands were alive underneath the ashes. . . . 
 It must be tried; there was no other way. 
 
 Back into the tangle of channels I pushed the canoe, 
 and began threading my way with the utmost caution 
 round to the rear of the ravis. The scene was weird 
 enough to have delighted the heart of a Dante. The 
 moon had climbed high overhead now, and through 
 the dense roof of tangled creepers and orchids, her 
 silver spears struck down into the depths of the inky 
 water over which I glided. To right and left of the 
 channel, the oozy mud was boiling with hideous life 
 crabs, water-snakes, things many-legged and 
 horned, things feelered, carapaced, shining, lithe, with- 
 out a name. On one side of the canoe stretched the 
 trackless maze of the swamps: on the other, through 
 the screen of bushes and low-growing palms, the sin- 
 ister lights of the ravis burned like the mouth of hell. 
 Once, as I swung abruptly round a turn into the dark, 
 I saw the head of a monstrous alligator, streaked and 
 rayed with green phosphorescence, rise out of the 
 water; its eyes burned in the gloom like emerald 
 lamps, and the double line of tusks in its extended 
 jaws showed faintly white. ... It was gone in 
 an instant, but I bent to my paddle, and flew down the 
 water-lane, for I knew that near a village, such mon- 
 sters as this were bold enough to knock even a large
 
 WHEN THE RED GODS CALL 355 
 
 boat over, and pull the paddlers out, as a man might 
 rip a row of peas from a shell. 
 
 There! that was the great ravi now, sloping down 
 to the mud only a few yards away from me, the tall 
 gable at the other end pricking the sky quite a long 
 way away. At my end, there was a low wall of bark 
 and split branches, raised above the mud on piles some 
 six feet high; the roof came down to meet it at a 
 sharply sloping angle. The chamber within must be 
 small; it could not accommodate many guards. 
 Were they there? 
 
 I slipped out of the canoe, and lay down flat upon 
 the surface of the yielding slime, supported by a wide 
 piece of planking I had brought for that purpose. 
 Holding to this, and working my arms and legs, I suc- 
 ceeded in getting underneath the end of the ravi. 
 Here I left the plank, and climbing up one of the sup- 
 ports, began very cautiously to make a hole in the 
 floor with my knife. 
 
 It was not a difficult matter ; the palm-sheaths gave 
 way almost at once and my fingers slipped through. 
 I put my eye to the opening, but the darkness within 
 was complete. I listened. Somebody was breathing 
 two people were breathing one asleep, and one, 
 I thought, awake. 
 
 If these were natives, and I attracted their atten- 
 tion, my life, and what I valued infinitely more, that 
 other life, would not be worth a minute's purchase. 
 If they were whites, it was imperatively necessary to 
 communicate with them and warn them of what I 
 was going to do. Yet, how to manage it?
 
 356 WHEN THE RED GODS CALL 
 
 I could think of no plan but the risky one of put- 
 ting my hand further through, and feeling about. 
 Touch would certainly tell me what I wanted to know, 
 and if I alarmed a cannibal guard by mistake well, 
 as Nelson said, something must always be left to 
 chance. The risk had to be taken. 
 
 Very, very cautiously I slipped my fingers through, 
 and touched a hand. 
 
 I gritted my teeth together, and waited. In the 
 front end of the ravi lights flashed to and fro, foot- 
 steps beat on the rickety floors, long chanting cries 
 arose. Under the house, the crabs and water-snakes 
 made a creeping noise. There was no other sound. 
 
 I reached up again, and clasped the hand firmly, and 
 then my heart gave a jump, for I felt that it was 
 bound tied tightly round the wrist with a cord of 
 native fibers. The fingers were small and slight, and 
 stirred feebly in my hold. It was a left hand a 
 woman's hand and on the third finger were two 
 rings one a heavy carved ring with a very large 
 stone, the other a plain smooth band. . . . 
 
 I knew the rings I knew the hand and I knew 
 that here, in the very shadow and maw of death, those 
 hands that had been joined together in Port Moresby 
 Mission Church, ten years ago, had met again at last. 
 
 One has no time for great emotions, when life is 
 hanging by a thread; the discovery scarcely moved 
 me at all. I was only anxious that my hand should 
 be recognized as that of a white man and a friend, and 
 I pressed the little fingers strongly. They answered 
 as best they could.
 
 WHEN THE RED GODS CALL 357 
 
 Now, there is scarcely a girl in the world who does 
 not know the schoolgirl alphabet of secret communi- 
 cation one rap for A, two for B, and so on. I 
 guessed that Stephanie (for I was as sure it was she 
 as if I had seen her face) would not be different from 
 the majority of her sex in this matter, and I began 
 to rap, touching her fingers lightly. 
 
 " Are you watched ?. " I asked. 
 
 The fingers stirred, and feebly struck on mine four- 
 teen times then paused then struck fifteen times. 
 
 " No." 
 
 "Who else?" I rapped, economizing every useless 
 word. 
 
 "Worb " began the hand. I pressed it to show 
 I understood. 
 
 "Don't fear" I rapped. Our fingers met in a 
 long, close pressure. Then I slipped my knife up 
 through the opening, and very carefully cut the cord, 
 first from one wrist, and afterwards from the other. 
 I heard the faintest little whisper pass above my head, 
 and then another hand, heavy and stout, was laid 
 above the opening. I cut the bonds of this also 
 and passed the knife through the opening. It was 
 taken. 
 
 I still feared to speak, knowing the keen ears of the 
 natives, and knowing that they could not be more than 
 a few yards away ; but I beat out on Stephanie's hand, 
 " Wait noise" and then dropped down into the mud 
 again. 
 
 Like an eel I wriggled myself forward, underneath 
 the floor of the ravi, which overhung my head some
 
 358 WHEN THE RED GODS CALL 
 
 five or six feet above me. Light began to show 
 through the palm-sheaths after I had gone some way, 
 and I could see the feet of natives passing up and 
 down. The chanting had ceased; everyone seemed 
 engaged in carrying things from place to place, and 
 setting them in order. Of a sudden, as I looked and 
 listened, all the movement ceased, and there was a 
 great silence. 
 
 I liked this not at all, and I liked it less when one 
 voice probably that of the head sorcerer rose in 
 a loud droning monotone, evidently making a speech. 
 From what I knew of man-eaters, this was likely to 
 be the preliminary to the final act. There was no 
 time to waste. 
 
 I carried the little fire-pot in my teeth ; my fuse was 
 cut and ready. I judged myself to be now almost at 
 the front of the ravi, full four hundred feet from 
 where Stephanie and Worboise were imprisoned. The 
 charge was a small one I trusted it would do no 
 more than it was meant to. 
 
 Three lives hung upon my fingers as I put the stick 
 of dynamite in its place, but I made no noise. The 
 crackling of the fuse was very faint, and the droning 
 voice of the sorcerer masked it completely. 
 
 I dropped back into the mud and made my way un- 
 derneath the ravi again, a good deal faster than I had 
 come. The fuse was a long one, and ought to give 
 me time; still . . . 
 
 Underneath the far end again, I clung to the sup- 
 porting posts, breathless, and listened, wondering the 
 while how long I could stop there without being
 
 359 
 
 picked up by an alligator ; I knew there must be plenty 
 about. 
 
 The droning voice of the sorcerer paused went 
 on again rose to a higher pitch and ceased. 
 Then broke out a yell that set the hair crisping on my 
 head. I began scrambling up the post, resolved at 
 least to defend her as far as I could and die with her, 
 if I could not save her die after her, rather; I 
 would see to that when 
 
 Crash! the fuse had not failed me after all. The 
 ravi shook to its foundations. The forward gable 
 leaped, burst, and splashed down into the river. Bits 
 of palm-sheath, drums, shields, skulls and weapons 
 went hurtling through the air. The sides of the ravi 
 opened out like a basket struck by a sudden blow, and 
 fell right and left in splintered ruins. A chorus of 
 terrified howls arose out of the momentary silence 
 that had followed the explosion, and then came a 
 sound of popping and splashing, as if some giant were 
 throwing handfuls of stones into the river. It was 
 the men of Doravi, plunging, wild with terror, into 
 the stream. Some, I had no doubt, were left behind, 
 never to stir again ; the charge was big enough to have 
 killed a good many, though not so much by direct con- 
 cussion as by the falling of the beams and pillars. In 
 truth, it had been almost too large, for the far end of 
 the ravi was badly shaken, and the roof there was 
 within an ace of falling in. 
 
 I scarcely waited to see what damage had been 
 done, before tearing aside the opening in the floor, and 
 squeezing myself in.
 
 3<x> WHEN THE RED GODS CALL 
 
 " Worboise, can you move ? " I whispered. 
 
 " Yes, I've cut myself and 'er quite free," came the 
 answer. 
 
 " Stir yourself, then I've given them a dose that's 
 frightened them off for a bit, but there's no knowing 
 they may not come back. Lower her through this 
 opening to me; I'll get her to the canoe." 
 
 With some difficulty it was done, and Stephanie 
 (who most fortunately had been tied up only an hour 
 or two, and so was able to move) conveyed through 
 the swamp to the canoe. I found it possible to sup- 
 port her on the plank, and, leaning on it myself, to 
 work gradually along into the open water. I do not 
 think that any other white man could have done so 
 much without drowning himself or his charge, or 
 both ; but I had been two years in the Delta now, and 
 had become almost as active in the swamps, on occa- 
 sion, as the natives themselves, though the art which 
 they possess of actually swimming in the semi-liquid 
 slime still was beyond my powers. 
 
 To get Worboise through was another matter, and 
 more than once we both came near suffocation. How- 
 ever, it was done at last, and I had them both safe in 
 the canoe, which was a double one, meant for several 
 paddles. Worboise was nearly as good a paddler as 
 myself, allowing for the difference in age, and I prom- 
 ise you we made that dug-out go, once we were clear 
 of the maze surrounding the town, where one had to 
 turn and twist at every minute. 
 
 I scarcely cast a glance behind to see what the na-
 
 WHEN THE RED GODS CALL 361 
 
 tives were doing; I could hear, however, by the fran- 
 tic cries and the wild beating of paddles, that they 
 were rushing up and down the town, seeking the cause 
 of the disaster, which no doubt they put down to some 
 enemy assisted by attendant demons. The only thing 
 I really feared was that they would seek safety in the 
 open rivers, and so come upon us. They did not, 
 however. We cleared the town and the maze unmo- 
 lested, and reached the cutter safely. 
 
 The wind which had brought us down so easily was 
 not a fair one for returning, and we had to beat our 
 way back up the main stream, taking some hours on 
 the way. All that time I never saw Stephanie's face. 
 She lay in the tiny cabin, where I had put her on 
 reaching the cutter, and slept the sleep of complete 
 exhaustion. We had not spoken during the perilous 
 journey in the canoe. That one clasp of the hand, 
 and a few hurried words of encouragement, were all 
 that had passed between us. 
 
 Worboise made up for any conversational omis- 
 sions, however. The hardy old man was not a bit dis- 
 tressed by his short imprisonment, and he had the ar- 
 rears of several years of silence to make up. His 
 tongue never ceased, from the moment we boarded 
 the cutter, until we reached the opening into Lynch's 
 Lagoon. There, we transshipped again into the 
 canoe, and he was silent. 
 
 For once, I had not grudged a word of what he 
 said; I drank in every syllable. Many things were 
 made clear in that slow sail up the river. Many mists
 
 362 WHEN THE RED GODS CALL 
 
 were rolled away from my life from my life and 
 Stephanie's. 
 
 I helped her up the ladder, when we reached the 
 house, and lit the lamp for her to go on. 
 
 " Worboise and I will stop outside on the veranda 
 for a bit," I said. " You can tell us when you're 
 ready for us. All my things are there ; take what you 
 want. We'll stop here to-night, and sail down to 
 Daru or Yule Island to-morrow. You're as safe here 
 as if you were in Windsor Castle; Doravi doesn't 
 know anything, and if it did, three of us could hold 
 the place for a year." 
 
 She went in without a word. Out on the veranda, 
 Worboise and I sat and smoked and talked. The 
 moon was sinking low; the palm and pandanus walls 
 of the lagoon were shot with a weft of silver. I 
 looked on the lake and the boat, and the one brown 
 fortress house, with eyes of farewell. I knew that 
 I should never see the moonlight on my Purari home 
 again. 
 
 Garia, down in the canoe, was chewing betel-nut 
 and looking up at the sky. I do not know what he 
 was thinking of; but he laughed now and then. 
 
 It was waxing late, when a little movement at my 
 elbow, like the fluttering wing of a bird, made me look 
 up, and in the light streaming out across the veranda 
 from the room behind, I saw Stephanie. 
 
 She had taken a sky-blue flannel shirt of mine out 
 of the box and put it on. She had, in some miracu- 
 lous way, removed most of the stains of mud from
 
 WHEN THE RED GODS CALL 363 
 
 her skirt. She had piled her curly hair high on her 
 head, and bound it with a gay silk tie mine also. 
 In the tired pallor of her face, her eyes shone like 
 blue water-lilies ; and her sweet mouth smiled 
 smiled as on that day so long ago, when we had stood 
 together on the deck of the Merrie England and seen 
 the white seas break into foam beneath our keel, to 
 bear us on our wedding journey. 
 
 I opened my arms, and my bride came home. 
 
 I don't suppose it was more than a few seconds 
 after that, when we, who had quite forgotten earth 
 and all it contained, heard the sharp splash of pad- 
 dles underneath the veranda, and the grumble of a dis- 
 contented voice, fading further and further away 
 
 " Cutter . . . river . . . not wanted here. 
 
 
 Stephanie leaned over the rail, her eyes sparkling 
 witH laughter, and with something else. 
 
 " Oh, poor old man ! " she said. " We've quite for- 
 gotten him ! " 
 
 "Well, and if we have?" said I. "He isn't 
 wanted ! "
 
 ENVOI 
 
 There is a rubber plantation, high up on the As- 
 trolabe River, in the loveliest spot of the loveliest 
 valley of all that lovely country. It has a handsome 
 house, filled with books, with pictures, with dainty 
 furniture and ornaments, all showing the care of a 
 cultured hand. It has a great cool river, and a water- 
 fall that sings all day and all night long. It has flow- 
 ers and fruits as many and as fair as the Garden of 
 Eden, and an Eve whom no angel would ever have 
 had the heart to turn from the gates of Paradise. 
 But there is no serpent there. 
 
 We are growing rich, or at least, we hope to, as 
 Papua counts riches, some day. We are both of us 
 more anxious about money matters than we used to 
 be; there are reasons why we should be so. We do 
 not need the world, nor care for it, but others may. 
 
 The old book is finished. We keep it for the 
 future. 
 
 THE END 
 
 364
 
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