Gold Out of Celebes

by Aylward Edward Dingle

"Now keep your guns shooting!" was the skipper's final order, and he sent the launch straight for the entrance, while the unseen foes on the banks transferred their aim from the brigantine and made the forest ring with their howls of rage.

In the narrowed entrance, forced to scrape the matted grass by the eddying current, the launch soon resounded with the cries of wounded seamen. Barry kept his hands on the wheel by sheer force of will, for the little circle of brass scorched to the touch. The rifles burned the hands of the men who used them; native riflemen began to look piteously at their white leaders, afraid to slip fresh cartridges into smoking breeches. And the arrows fell thicker than ever, the smoke from the launch's furnace streamed away full of flame, the boat itself roared and crackled from the water line to the gunwale. But the oil thinned out as they sped; those rifles that kept shooting took heavier toll as the range closed, and Barry prayed that his hands would hold out. His white companions stood grimly to their guns, uttering no sound save to encourage and soothe the natives. Then a cartridge exploded in a man's hand, and the rifle was flung overboard with a howl of terror. Still another shell burst with the fierce heat, and panic threatened. Bill Blunt stopped it.

"Here ye go, then, Bullies!" he roared, flinging down his own gun. "Put 'em down, me sons, and git busy like me. Here's th' river close aboard, lads, an' in a minit ye'll all be freezin'."

Tearing off his jacket he dragged it in the river when he came to a spot bare of oil, then fell heartily to work beating down the fire along the gunwale. The seamen gained heart, once safely quit of their dangerous rifles, and followed the old fellow's lead, until the business of fire-fighting drove from their minds the fear of flying missiles from shoreward.

"Here iss the riffer, mine friendts," Houten rumbled at last, and the launch shot into the main stream, drawing thin threads of fire into her eddying wake, leaving behind her the flying death and the devouring blaze. Barry guided his craft straight over the river to the farther bank, seeking for relief to his burning eyes in the cool blackness of night. His hair and eyebrows were singed off close, his skin was a scorched torment; but a glance at his companions proved that others had suffered too, and he held on to his fast-cooling steering wheel while old Bill Blunt led a final attack on the clinging fire about the launch.

They shot into the shadow of the bank and looked back on a scene of terrific grandeur. As their faces cooled, and the air revived their dulled vitality, a deeper significance in the picture came home to them. For some minutes their brains could only grasp the fact that they had escaped the fire as well as their enemies' range; but a shaft of fire roared up through the trees, and the howl that responded hinted at the truth.

"Gee! They're getting roasted in their own fire!" gasped Little.

So it was. The jungle on all sides of the creek began to blaze, and the roar filled the river channel. At first only small patches of dead wood and leaves burned, but when great hanging masses of moss caught fire, the jungle drew the flames like a huge furnace, and in some of the trees a score of men were trapped.

"Poor devils! Dose mans are murdered by Leyden," growled Houten. "He shall pay, jah! It iss on his bill."

But despite the awful peril facing them, the little brown men over on the creek worked on as if with a definite aim beyond the mere destruction of a ship and the dispersing of her crew. Figures dancing in the firelight were feverishly busy about the creek entrance, towards which the blazing Barang was drifting, gathering speed with every fathom by which she drew nearer to the tremendously faster river stream outside. Gradually the surface oil about the vessel thinned out and died, as if the supply had been suddenly cut off. And the moment the water ceased to blaze, canoes shot out from the shore, and frantic little savages pushed and hauled at the bigger craft in obvious anxiety that she should not reach out beyond the entrance. They succeeded in pushing her on to the edge of the cleared channel, then the swift current gripped her, swung her broadside in the entrance against the matted grasses, and there she lay, heeling over slowly, burning away merrily above water, but safe to stay there in the opposing elements of fire and water whose contest must come to a climax when fire reached water line.