Volume Three—Chapter Ten.
Hamet.
The disposition on the part of Helen Perowne and her companion seemed to be to trust the beasts of the jungle sooner than the Rajah; and after a few moments’ pause to listen, they went cautiously on, with the cries of the great cat-like creature that they knew to be in their neighbourhood seeming to grow more distant, as if it had been driven off by the noise and firing at the house.
It was terrible work that flight; and had she been alone Helen would have given up in sheer despair, for every atom of growth in the jungle seemed to be enlisted in the Rajah’s service, and strove to check the fugitives as they fled. Great thorns hooked and clung to their clothes; ratan canes wound across and across their way, tripping them up, so that again and again they fell heavily; while the dense undergrowth rose up constantly like a wall of verdure, as impenetrable as some monstrous hedge.
Streaming with perspiration, panting with exhaustion, and ready to give up in despair, Helen struggled on, nerved to making fresh attempts by the courage of her companion; but at last the jungle was so dense that any further effort seemed like so much madness, and they paused to rest, Helen sinking down amidst the thorns and leaves, too much exhausted to move.
The Malay girl did not speak, but stood leaning against a tree-trunk, listening for tokens of pursuit, but there was not a sound; and by degrees it dawned upon them that the Rajah’s people had taken alarm at the noise, and then, seeing nothing, hearing nothing more, they had quietly returned to their rest; for the probabilities were that they would not venture to disturb the Rajah, who would sleep on in his stupor perhaps till mid-day.
After a time the girl laid her hand upon Helen’s shoulder.
“We must try again,” she said; and with a weary sigh the fugitive rose and staggered on, following her companion as she tore aside the canes, pushed back thorny growth, and utterly regardless of self, kept on making a way for Helen to follow.
There was a strong display of kindness in her manner, but it was not unmingled with contempt for the helplessness of the English girl, who had to trust entirely to her for every step of their progress.
Just at the very worst time, when they had again become entangled in the wild jungly maze, the Malay girl stopped once more to take breath; and then making an angry effort to free herself from a bramble-like growth that was tearing her sarong into shreds, she uttered a cry of joy, for she found that she had broken through quite a thorny hedge of growth, and was now standing in a narrow pathway, evidently the track made by elephant, buffalo, or other large creatures of the jungle.
Her cheery words aroused Helen to fresh exertion; and following the track, painful as it was, and full of crossing strands and canes, they got on for the next two or three hours pretty well, when they seemed to have descended into marshy ground through which the track led.
Here they found a fresh difficulty, for if the Malay girl had had any doubt before that they were in an elephant path, it was made evident now by the series of great footprints, every one of which was a pitfall of mud and water, the custom of these huge beasts being to step invariably in the tracks left by those that have passed before, believing them to be indications of safety; and the result is that in a short time the path becomes in a wet soil one long series of muddy holes.
It was along such a way as this that Helen and her companion struggled on till the sun had risen and the rich shafts of orange and gold came pouring through the dense foliage above their heads.
With the sunrise came light and hope. The sombre forest seemed to be less depressing, and when they had struggled on for another hour, until the heat began to be steamy, a brighter light shone through the trees ahead, and they awakened to the fact that they were near the little river, whose banks they at last reached, to lie down beneath the spreading branches of a huge tree. The boughs formed a screen from everyone who might be passing in a boat; and here the Malay girl produced some food which she had had the foresight to bring; and this they ate, watching the rapid, sparkling stream, whose path through the jungle was all sunshine and light, while that of the fugitives had been one of gloom.
As they sat there resting, they now and then directed their attention to the stream, gazing up and down as far as their eyes would reach in search of danger; but sparkling water, blossom-burdened trees, and the occasional glint of some brightly-plumaged bird darting from side to side, was all that met their sight.
They both meant to be watchful, and as soon as they were rested to once more continue their flight, but the exhaustion produced by their unwonted exertions proved to be too much for them, and as the heat increased they both fell into a deep sleep.
Helen and her companion had been slumbering heavily for several hours, ignorant of the flight of time, and in these brief restful moments thoughts of peaceful days had come back to both; while in the sunshine beyond the tree that formed their shelter birds flitted here and there, the brilliant armour-clad beetles winged their reckless flight, making a whirring hum as they dashed over the stream. The surface of the river was flecked with the rising of the bright scaled fish, and what with the varied greens and the beauty of the blossoms that made the sides of the little river quite a garden, all looked peaceful, and as if trouble could not exist upon earth. But danger was near, for two of the Rajah’s boats came slowly up-stream with their occupants parting the leaves with bamboo poles, and peering beneath on either side in search of the fugitives; while, in utter ignorance of their proximity, the wearied girls slept on.
A tall, fierce-looking Malay, in a brilliantly-tinted sarong, stood in the prow of the boat nearest to the fugitives, and he was so indefatigable in his efforts to examine every foot of the way, that it seemed impossible for the girls to escape his search.
Nearer came his boat, and still those the crew sought lay insensible to danger, and with Helen’s thoughts far back in the past of her pleasant days with her friends at the little settlement. The tall Malay used the light pole he held with the utmost skill, and parted bough after bough, raising this one, depressing that, until it was down in the swift, pure water.
Every now and then he gave some short, sharp order to the men who paddled the boat, so that they sent it in closer or forced it back, giving him abundant opportunity for seeing anyone upon the bank; and in this way they approached the great tree beneath whose umbrageous foliage the two girls slept.
The boat was sent close in, and the swarthy face of the Malay peered between the branches, which he moved with the pole, so that over and over again they helped to shelter those who were sought, and at last the sharp order was given to back out from among the branches; but the moment after the leader rescinded his order and seemed to be desirous of searching more, for he raised a broad-leaved bough, held on by it, and looked in once more beneath the shade, shot with brilliant rays, and with flies dancing up and down in one broad band of sunshine.
That broad band of sunshine shone right athwart the Malay girl’s face, and as the searcher saw it a grim smile of satisfaction played for a moment about his lip, and then left him stern-looking and calm.
“Go on,” he exclaimed, in his own tongue, as he loosed the branch whose leaves hid the sleeping girl from sight, and the boat went forward, the Malay peering back for a moment with his great opalescent eyeballs rolling as he looked up and down the great tree, as if fixing it in his mind with the surroundings on either side of the stream. After this he went on in the same matter-of-fact way, pressing the branches aside and examining his bank of the river for quite an hour longer, when the leader of the other boat, which was well in advance, hailed him, and proposed that they should give up the search as of no avail.
The other searcher made a little demur, when the other became more pressing.
“They could not have wandered up so far as this,” he said; and the tall Malay reluctantly acquiescing, the two boats were turned, a man placed a paddle over the stern for steering purposes, the other paddles were laid in by the weary rowers, who, leaving the boats to descend the swift stream, settled themselves in easy attitudes, pulled out their betel boxes and leaves, and each man, after smearing a sirih leaf with a little paste of lime, rolled up in it a fragment of the popular betel-nut, and sat back with half-closed eyes, chewing, as if that were the be-all and end-all of existence.
The boats sped rapidly down-stream, past the glorious panorama of tropic vegetation spread on either side: but it was not noticed once save by the tall Malay, who sat back in the prow with his bamboo pole balanced in his hands, lazily peering out of his half-closed eyes.
As they approached the huge tree, beneath whose shade the two weary girls lay resting, the Malay’s dark eyes opened slightly, as if he were again carefully observant of the place. Then they half-closed once more, then quite closed, and he seemed to go fast asleep.
Then the two boats rapidly glided down with the current and disappeared.
The sun, which had before been shining straight down upon the river, had gone westward, and had begun to cast shadows across the foaming stream, when once more a boat appeared, but only propelled by one man, who, armed with a long pole, stood in the stern, as he kept close in under the trees, and thrusting the pole down in the bubbling water, forced the little vessel along at a rapid rate.
He did not look either to right or left, but aimed straight for the great tree, and even then passed it, but only to alter the course of the boat a little, and let it glide back right beneath the branches and close in shore, where he silently secured it, and then stepped out to where the Malay girl still lay sleeping.
He stood looking at her for a few moments before kneeling softly down at her side, when, with a light, firm touch, he placed one hand upon her right wrist and the other upon her lips.
The girl started into wakefulness, and would have shrieked, but the hand across her lips stayed her. She would have seized the kris with which she was armed, but her wrist was pinioned.
She gazed with fierce and angry eyes straight into her captor’s face, and thus for some moments they remained till he raised his hand.
“Well,” she said, “you have taken me.”
“Yes; at last,” he replied, in the same low voice as that in which the captured girl had spoken.
Involuntarily the Malay girl’s eyes turned towards her companion, but she closed them directly, believing that Helen had not been seen.
“Yes, she is there,” he said, in a low whisper. “I saw her before I saw you.”
“And now you are going to drag us back to Murad?” said the girl, adopting his tone. “How proud Hamet must feel now that he has become a slave-catcher!”
“I did not say I was going to take you back to Murad,” he said, laughing. “Do you wish me to take you back to have the kris?”
The girl shuddered, for she knew that this would be her fate; but with true Eastern spirit she recovered herself.
“What matter?” she said, indifferently. “I do not mind.”
“You do mind,” he said; “and you want to live.”
“Yes: then let me go,” she replied.
“No; I was sent to take you, and I have found you.”
“But you do not mean to take me back to Murad?” she cried, angrily.
He laughed again.
“It is for you to decide,” he continued, in a low voice. “I, Hamet, have loved you long now—ever since Murad grew tired of you and cast you off. You know it.”
“Yes,” she said, sullenly, “I know it. You have told me before; and if I had told the Sultan he would have had you slain.”
“Both of us,” said the tall Malay, coolly. “But now we are away from him and free. Will you listen to me?”
“I must,” she said, scornfully. “I cannot help it.”
“Yes; you could help it,” he said; “but you will not. I am obliged to take this opportunity, and I do, for I could not bear to see you hurt.”
“And yet you came to seek me?”
“Yes, and to save you. Two boats have been searching for you this afternoon, but only my eyes saw you. Had it been any others, you would have been in Murad’s power by now.”
“Did you come and see us sleeping?” she said, eagerly.
“Yes. How else could I have known that you were here waiting to be caught?”
“And now that you have caught me,” she said, indifferently, “what does Hamet mean to do?”
“Is it Hamet, Murad’s officer—or Hamet your friend?”
“How can I tell?” she said, indifferently. “You are a catcher of slaves, and you have taken two. Are you happy?”
“No,” he said, earnestly. “Make me happy.”
“How? Tell me what are your plans?”
“To save you if I can; but either you become my wife, or you go back to Murad. My orders are to take you.”
The girl remained perfectly silent for a few minutes, during which the tall Malay watched her intently.
“If I say I will be your wife, and go with you now back to your place, will you let her go free—where she will?” said the girl.
“Yes,” he said, eagerly. “I will not see her; she may go where she will.”
The girl hesitated for a few moments, and then tried to rise, but the Malay held her tightly by the wrist.
“I shall not try to run,” she said, scornfully. “Loose my arm.”
The Malay hesitated, gazing full in her eyes. He then tossed the girl’s arm lightly from him.
“I will trust you,” he said; and then he looked on curiously, as the Malay girl stooped softly over Helen, and just brushed her hair with her lips so gently that the sleeping girl did not stir. Then, turning to the Malay:
“Are you alone?” she asked.
“Yes: quite. I saw you before; but I did not want to capture you for Murad. Now, is it to be as I say? Will you come?”
The girl glanced once more at Helen; then placing her hand in that of the Malay, she let him lead her a few paces along the bank, and assist her into a seat, where, taking his place in the prow, he silently loosened the boat, guided it softly past the boughs, so that there was not even the rustle of a leaf; then, letting the pole dip into the water, he gave one powerful thrust, and the sampan darted out into mid-stream, and then rapidly glided out of sight, just as the shadows were deepening across the river and an orange glow began to tinge the surface of the leaves.