The foregoing is a fair example of Indian Mohammedan lore as dabbled in by its preachers in the islands.
They had now reached the shore. For miles along the coast by the serried lines of giant bread-fruits and palms shone the blue lagoons that reflected reefs of stars.
As though a ghost had crept from the forest to warn Waylao, her shadow crept in front of her. Abduh’s monstrous silhouette also dodged in front of him, so grotesque, so hideous that it might well have been the true index of his mind expressed in his shadow to warn the mad girl. Suddenly they arrived at the hollow in the volcanic rock. It was the entrance to the mosque. Once in ages past that great cavern by the sea had been moulded by Nature’s volcanic passion—and now the children of those wild lands were lured into those old bowels wherein glowed the passions of a greater hell. An old-time Chinese opium den, joss-house or fan-tan den in ’Frisco or George Street, Sydney, was a positive holy citadel compared with that cavernous hole of debauchery and Mohammedanistic religion.
Waylao trembled with fright. The Indian, taking no risks, still clutched her arm like some monstrous spider, as she looked behind her, stared over her shoulder in fear. Then they entered that hollow doorway and left the moonlit seas outside. The Indian, still clutching her arm, bent his turbaned head as he passed beneath the low roof of that subterranean passage, that harem cave of Mohammedanism in Southern Seas. Did her heart flutter and all hope die as she entered there? God only knows. Most likely she would have escaped if the man had not held her.
No sooner had they entered that tunnel-way than she heard the murmur of singing harem beauties and the mumblings of far-off encores. Sounds of ribald heathenish _himees_ (Marquesan cannibal songs) came to her astonished ears, accompanied with faint whiffs of opium and scented gin.
Ah me! Had I and my old shellbacks had the slightest idea or hint of all that happened in that cavern, methinks there would have been a mighty rumpus between shellbackism and the Mohammedanistic propaganda one dark night. Several pious Indians would have been seen floating seaward on the next tide, with their skulls cracked.