Thank heaven! he failed to pounce upon her innocence then. She too had lifted that vile potion to her lips, but had shattered the goblet, untouched, in fragments at his feet.
Those swashbucklers at the card-tables, flushed with drink and thoughts of the prize that seemed almost in their clutches, had also put forth their vile talons to stay her flight; but she was too swift for them as she sped from that sensual hollow by the seas, her soul ablaze with fear.
Such is a portion of the history of those much-admired caves and subterranean passages of the Marquesan Group, caverns where the tourist doubtless enters to take a snapshot of Nature’s transcendent beauty of coral, flowers and ferns, little dreaming of the secret they held for the guile of men years ago.
I believe that these caverns were also used as Chinese opium dens. The French authorities had issued an edict forbidding the traffic in opium because of its demoralising influence on the native population. But still the trade prospered in secret, natives inhaling the dreamy narcotic, from Tai-o-hae to Papeete. The penalty for smugglers was a heavy fine, but if the culprit had not the wherewithal he was discharged with a caution, for the official exchequer was too poor to keep them in the calaboose, which was always full of successful aspirants who yearned to live, under Government protection, a life of comparative luxury and ease.
It was hinted that the French officials of that time were not above accepting bribes in the way of cash and maids, for Abduh Allah’s harem cave was strangely immune from the vigilant eye of the law.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Waylao Off Colour—Our Trip to Tahiti—Papeete at Night—The drowned Native Girl—Her Obsequies—A Humorous Creed
WAYLO returned home after her experience in that harem mosque with several of her illusions slightly damaged. But though the materialisation of her dreams did not correspond with the romance of her old South Sea novels, she was too infatuated with Abduh to break away from him.
All that I know about the matter, or knew then, is, that old Lydia sold me one dozen new-laid eggs next morning.
“She poor sick girls this longer time; she lie bed late in morning. Nice sun over mountain, allee samee she no wake.”