Gold Out of Celebes

by Aylward Edward Dingle

Barry suddenly found Natalie in need of support, for her courage, once past the crisis, was not proof against the sort of soul-revolting conflict she was now forced to witness. Barry drew her to him with an arm about her shoulders, and she rested against him with a little sigh of relief. His own eyes refused to leave the scene on his old ship; but beside him he heard voices, and he knew that Mrs. Goring too had found the stress too great and had sought comfort in Gordon's arms. Yet those two people had reason, too strong to be downed, for witnessing Leyden's atonement; and while on that blasted and corpse-like wreck two men fought, one in awful, cold, remorseless silence, the other with broken screams of insane fury that availed him nothing, Mrs. Goring murmured between racking sobs:

"Not vengeance for my pain, dear God! Only repayment for the golden years he stole from the man who loved me!"

The sobs ceased, and the murmuring hushed, and the two women were spared the rest. With a terrific outburst of shrill railing against everything human or divine that could have any possible hand in his defeat, Leyden gathered superhuman strength out of his desperation and tore loose his knife hand. His other hand, at Vandersee's throat, had grown white and numb from its own efforts that had not changed the Hollander's expression one bit; but now, in a last swift up-stroke of the knife, the cornered rat saw victory beckoning to him.

He drove in his thrust, and Barry went cold at sight of it. He wondered angrily at Houten's indifference. The great trader stood in his launch as unruffled as if in his office; his men, although they retained their rifles in hand, offered to use them for no other purpose than keeping their prisoners quiet. And just beside them, that murderous blade swished through the air fair aimed at Vandersee's breast. Then the big Hollander stepped back, and stumbled.

"Gone!" Barry and Gordon cried hoarsely together. Yet they saw Houten in his old, apparently indifferent attitude, and could not force themselves to move. Men sprang into full sight where Rolfe and his party were, and they, too, remained in their places. The thing was uncanny: the colossal trader exercised a compelling influence over everybody about him, bordering upon the supernatural. Not a hand was raised in Vandersee's vital peril. Then the utter confidence of the man was revealed.

With his stumble Vandersee drew back from his antagonist three feet, and Leyden plunged forward, tripped by his own balked impetus. The knife flashed upwards, missing its mark by a foot, and while yet the sun played on the steel in midair Vandersee recovered, smiling now with terrible assurance, and his great bulk leaned, his long, powerful arms enwrapped his foe in a hug that paralyzed every limb. The knife fell through Leyden's clutching fingers, and the point quivered for a moment in Vandersee's shoulder before it fell to disappear through the broken planks. The next breath brought both men heavily against a gaunt, charred stanchion, and Leyden's terrified cry pealed over the water.

Alongside the wreck, on the schooner, ashore, wherever a man was stationed, faces looked on in fascination. Still Houten stood in his place, his placid visage regarding the conflict unmoved; no line of his immense figure revealing anything in him save a sort of bovine indifference in the result. In a flash everything was changed in him. The sudden impact of those two struggling bodies was the final strain the stanchion could bear; the blackened timber burst into splinters, and Vandersee and his foe crashed through and pitched headlong into the swirling current of the creek entrance.

Then Houten's real interest was shown, and swiftly. His guttural voice barked a brief order in Dutch, the concealed men on the wreck sprang into sight and covered Leyden's men in the launch, and like the dart of a shark Houten drove his own craft out into the stream after the vanished combatants, his great red face gone ashy, his beady eyes gleaming anxiously.

On board the schooner Barry drove his men to boat-falls in hasty endeavor to get a boat over; but the effort could have only proved fruitless, for the stream ran like a mill race around those writhing, twisting grasses that endlessly bent, straightened, and twined, and the undertow was appalling. Houten's launch rounded the Barang's stern and the trader searched the waters with outthrust head that contrasted strongly with his previous attitude of nonchalance.

Something rolled upwards on the surface at the very edge of the grasses and disappeared again. In a few seconds it appeared again, and now Vandersee's red, strangling face emerged from the water. The launch shot towards him and picked him up, twenty yards from the spot where he had plunged in grips with Leyden. When he regained his breath, he pointed inshore beside the wreck, and the launch put back. Still there came no sight of Leyden; and soon the boat headed for the schooner, Vandersee's men bringing Leyden's launch in response to an order. And the two burly Hollanders came on board the Padang in quiet mood, mounted to the poop and met their friends with a subdued, almost sorrowful smile. Mrs. Goring and Gordon could not restrain their anxiety, however, and Vandersee answered their looks of inquiry.