CHAPTER I.—On Unknown Shores.
Pursued by Our Dying Ship. Cast Away Among Dangers. A Pointing Finger and a Sword. Beguiled by Savage Royalty. A Strange Girl and a Prediction.
IN range of my outlook seaward as I lay on the yellow strand was a grotesque figure standing near and gazing inland. His powerful frame was broad and squat; his long arms, ending with immense hands, hung loosely at his sides; his hair was ragged; and out of his blank face blue eyes wide apart. So accustomed was I to his habitually placid expression that the keenness with which he was looking roused me fully out of the lethargy into which extreme exhaustion had plunged me.
“Well, Christopher!” I said with an attempt at cheerfulness.
The strange look in my serving-man’s eyes did not disappear when he turned them on me at my greeting, but my glance at the forest discovered nothing alarming. It was useless to question Christopher; he would take his time.
I rose with stiffened members. The wretched, beaten colonists were prone along the beach, all sleeping except Captain Mason and Mr. Vancouver. With silent Christopher shambling at my heels I passed Mr. Vancouver as he sat on the sand beside his slumbering daughter; he was watching the sea more with his blue lips than his leaden eyes. I gave him a cheery greeting, blinked small since it was no time to harbor old scores. The effort failed; he only blinked at me. Already I had suspected that his quarrel with me because Christopher had stowed away on the vessel was merely the seizing of an opportunity to rupture the strong friendship between Annabel and me.
Even at a distance I had seen that Captain Mason’s spirit was hunting the waters, as he stood apart in a splendid solitude, arms folded, and towering in the dignity of a gladiator who might be disarmed, but not conquered. Never had I seen a profounder pathos than his when, finding the Hope foundering and helpless, he had ordered her abandonment and sent us into the boats. Then had come the most haunting thing that ever a sailor experienced.
It was the pursuit of us by the dying barkentine. What sails the last storm had left played crazy pranks with the derelict. With no hand on her wheel the rudder swung free. We were rowing northwestwardly, with the wind, and thus it was that the Hope, thrust by wind and wave, followed us, with wide swerves, with lungings and lurchings, now and then making a graceful sweep up a swell and then a wallowing roll to the trough. The fore-and-aft sails were gone, but some of the square canvas held; and the sheets flapped with a dismal foolishness between accidental fills. It was the drunken plunging of the hulk in deliberate pursuit of us that appalled. She snouted the water swinishly; she reeled and groveled under the seas that boarded her. Through it all, whether she was coming prow first, beam on, or stern foremost, and no matter how far she would veer, she clung to our course, shadowing us, hounding us, as though imploring our help.
In all the fury of the storms, from their first assaults at Cape Horn to their beating us down in the South Seas, Captain Mason had not faltered; he fought desperate odds with the cunning and valor of Hercules. But this careering mad thing, stripped of the grace and dignity of a sane ship,—this staggering, sodden monster, mortally stricken and dumbly floundering after the master who had abandoned her that she might go down alone into the deep,—was more than the man could bear; and he had sat staring in the boat, Christopher and I rowing, while we dodged the barkentine’s blind assaults. We were still bending to the work when darkness fell. It was then that the wind died, and we saw her no more.
Captain Mason showed relief at being dragged back into the living world by our approach.
“No sign of her?” I asked.
“Not from here. The view is shut in by those promontories,” indicating two headlands embracing our beach.
“Then,” said I, “Christopher will scale one of them and I the other.” <
There was a faint twinkle behind the seaman’s look, and something else, which recalled what I had seen in Christopher’s face as he gazed at the forest.
“I imagine you haven’t slept much,” I said, knowing his anxiety on the barkentine’s account.
“How could I, Mr. Tudor, when she had been following me like that?”
“Then you have already been up there to see if you could find her?” I ventured.
He looked amused as he drawled, “Not all the way,” and gave Christopher a look that appeared to be understood. His gesture swept the heights on either side and the richly verdured mountains that began to spring in terraces a short distance from the beach. “This is a tropical region,” he went on, “and those trees bear lively fruit. It is brown and carries swords. I didn’t get all the way to the headland.”
I understood, and inquired, “Did they speak?”
“No. A pointing finger with a sword behind it needs no words.”
I wondered where we could be, that armed natives should exhibit a hostile attitude. “Where are we stranded?” I asked.
“I don’t know. It has been weeks since I could even take a dead reckoning, and we’ve been blown far since then. My instruments disappeared while I was exploring this morning.”
“And we are without food or weapons,” I added, feeling a thrill at the prospect of measuring forces with an obscure menace.
Mr. Vancouver had loaded the barkentine with every possible means of defense, subsistence, and development, but we had fallen on an island far short of the one in the Philippines which he intended to colonize. The fate of the Hope was a vital matter. Most of her precious cargo was behind bulkheads. If she had not gone down, very likely she would drift to this island and yield her resources to any enemies we might encounter here.
Christopher was gazing at the forest again. I could see only deep shadows and brown tree-boles under the leafage. Birds of brilliant plumage were flitting among the trees, and the warmth of the sun bathed us in sweet, heavy odors.
“They are coming, sir,” said Christopher.
I observed a slow undulation in a wide arc among the shadows. A tree-trunk in the outer edge apparently detached itself, then advanced into the open, halted, and raised a sword. Five hundred other shapes came forth from the wide semi-circle touching the shore at either end. Some bore swords, others spears, and still others knotted war-clubs. The soldiers were brown and bareheaded, and the dress of each was limited to the loins, except that of the leader, the man who had first stepped out; he wore a sort of tunic or light cloak, and a head-dress, both gaudily illuminated with feathers.
Captain Mason stood motionless.
“What shall we do?” I impatiently cried.
Christopher left us and rapidly roused the sleepers. He must have dropped reassuring words, for the stir proceeded without panic, though all could see the advancing threat, which approached with an ominous deliberation.
“Do you think it’s to be a slaughter, Captain?” I asked.
He gave no answer, being evidently stunned. I turned to Christopher as he rejoined us. Many a time since I had rescued him from a mob of boys in a Boston street, taken him to my lodgings, and made him my servant, his strange mind had seemed able to penetrate baffling obscurities. At such times he had a way of listening, as though to voices which he alone could hear; but with that was an extraordinary reticence of tongue, and often an indirection that had tried my patience until I learned to understand him as well as an ordinary mortal could.
“Are they going to kill us, Christopher?” I asked.
He was in a deep abstraction, and I knew he was listening. “Sir?”
That was his usual way of gaining time, and I had learned to wait.
“Are they going to kill us?”
“Kill us, sir?”
“Yes.”
“You are asking me, sir?”
“Yes. Are they going to kill us?”
“Not now, sir,” he firmly answered.
The glance which Captain Mason and I exchanged was one accepting Christopher’s opinion and groping for what lay beyond it.
With some accuracy of maneuvering, the leader aligned his soldiers, stepped out after halting them fifty yards away, and stood waiting, obviously for a parley. He was showing impatience as Captain Mason still stood motionless.
“Some one must meet him,” I said. “It will never do to show timidity. You are the fittest.”
“These people are strange to me,” he replied, “and I don’t know how to proceed. They have an appearance of ferocity that I have never seen in these seas. Many outside men must have drifted to this island, but I’ll warrant that none ever left it, for I’ve never heard of anything that looks just like this. I imagine it is the graveyard of the unreported wrecks that happen in this part of the Pacific.”
I was surprised at the grayness in his face and the glaze in his eyes. What could our two hundred and fifty men, women, and children, helpless as they were, do without his shrewdness and courage?
“Then we have all the more to do,” I urged.
He squared himself, and said: “We three will meet them. Put yourself forward. Your height and strength will impress them.”
It looked odd that he did not include Mr. Vancouver, the leader of our enterprise, and Lee Rawley, the aristocratic and disdainful young lawyer whom Mr. Vancouver hoped that Annabel would marry.
Meanwhile, the leader of the savages, a man of commanding size and manner, had been growing more impatient, and was putting his men through some manual that hinted at barbarous proceeding; but when we started he desisted, and met us with urbane gestures. Then ensued a struggle to find a means of communication. Both Captain Mason and I knew something of the Pacific languages, he from a sailor’s experience and I from having fought as a first lieutenant in the Philippines during the war with Spain; but apparently our combined resources failed. Finally we caught a Spanish word and then a German. It remained for Christopher to discover that the embassador spoke some pidgin-English with his tongue and all languages with his gestures. Thus we learned that the gracious King Rangan had sent Gato, commander-in-chief of the army, with an escort of honor to conduit us to the imperial presence.
Captain Mason and I carefully avoided each other’s eyes. The tomb-like mask that Christopher knew how to wear was on his face.
As there were two armed savages to each colonist throat, there was nothing to do but accept. In a dismal procession guarded by the soldiers, we labored through the sand and sank into the scented forest.
After a walk through flagrant aisles of shade and color, we came upon a wide sweep where the undergrowth had been cleared away; in its place was a cluster of huts made of bamboo and thatch. The central space was occupied by one more imposing than the others. The matting curtain at the door was drawn aside after we had been seated before it on the ground, and a sturdy figure, followed by a striking retinue, came forth and took an elevated seat on a platform extending from the house.
The king’s gorgeous robe of a light fabric adorned with feathers and embroidered with gold was worn with a knowledge of its impressiveness. A wide band of gold embedded with gems served for a crown; the blazing scepter and massive wristlets and anklets were of like materials; the ears and fingers flashed with jewels. The royal face was benignant. Gato stepped forth to interpret, as the king’s immediate followers, dressed in long embroidered garments of native texture, ranged about the throne.
The attendant swinging a large feather fan over the king’s head was the only woman discoverable. There was a striking difference between her and the men. It was manifest in a prouder poise of the head, in a look of higher intelligence, and in a finer definition of features. The eagerness with which her glance ran over us, a shyness that struggled with an impulse to a bolder scrutiny, combined with a certain refinement of bearing to set her apart. She was raimented with no less barbaric splendor than the king and his immediate attendants, but in better taste. Her brown bare arms and neck were turned on the graceful lines of youth, and her wrists and hands were small. Her hair, instead of having the glistening blackness of the men’s, housed some of the sun’s gold; and I was startled to discover finally that her eyes were a deep blue.
At last her roving glance was caught and held by me. In her eyes was a moment of hungry inquiry. She caught her breath; a break came in the regular swing of the fan, and her eyelids drooped.
My fascinated attention to her was diverted by a deep rumble. King Rangan was speaking.