When Tapee returned, about half an hour after, he at once prepared supper. We were all famished. We closed the door and bolted it. Tapee said that on his way back after seeing the priest, he had heard a lot of French officials discussing Fae Fae’s disappearance from the palace. O’Hara groaned and Fae Fae wept, while I moodily ate mangoes and stewed, juicy fruits, and wondered what my relatives would think when they heard that I had been hanged for abducting maidens in the South Seas! We passed a most wretched night. I dozed off once, and dreamed that the world was a vast guillotine, with me sitting in its receiving-basket as Time, and all the stars danced sorrowfully around me, ere the blade fell and severed my connection with mundane things. When I awoke, O’Hara was looking very ill; but he gave a faint smile as Fae Fae held his head and passed her fingers through his curly hair. At daybreak Tapee went out and hired a kind of _char-à-banc_ owned by a wizened Chinaman. We took the Chinaman into our confidence, gave him a good tip, and promised him a lot more than we could ever give him. To tell the truth, if a Chinaman gives one his word of honour, he seldom breaks it. I’d sooner trust a Chinaman than many pious people whom I’ve unfortunately met. When we got into that wagon the bottom nearly dropped out. It was old and rotten. The horse was an object for pity; it moved at a mile an hour, and the angles of its bones looked decidedly like the angles of the guillotine. We crouched in the bottom of the cart, safe from the vigilant eyes of the officials who were on the look-out for us. When we arrived in the Chinese quarter of Papeete, I hired a room in a fan-tan den, and O’Hara helped me to put up a bed. When all was comfortable, O’Hara fell asleep, and I crept out into the forest and went back to Tapee’s bungalow. When I arrived there, Fae Fae was weeping bitterly. I saw that she had become sane, and regretted her flight from the palace. She was evidently terrified in her reflection over the punishment she would receive from the Queen’s hands. I tried my best to soothe her.
“Oh, Monsieur, I so unhappy. Poor Monsieur Ilisham hurt himself too. I feel lone, and Queen Pomare find me out and punish me, I know, I know!” she wailed.