CHAPTER XX
The End of the Chase
"Ahoy there! Horton, ahoy! Where are you, Rajah?" Strangely weird and uncanny did the sounds appear as they left the lips of Captain Keppel and floated across the rushing stream away into the jungle. "Ahoy! Ahoy!"
Three times in succession did the gallant commander give tongue to the words as he sat in his gig with his gun across his knees. Then, hearing the beat of gongs and of drums, and the shouts of the combatants, and detecting no voice which he could recognize as coming from his junior or from the Rajah of Sarawak, he lifted his weapon and fired it in the direction from which the loudest sounds came.
"Ahoy!" back came the answering shout, but almost drowned by the noise of shallow water rushing over a pebbly bottom. "Ahoy there! Don't fire or you will hit one of us. We are dead ahead of you."
"Then we will join you," called out the captain, and at once his gig, in which he had set out to relieve or help the forward party immediately prolonged firing had been heard, was rowed towards the bay in which the native craft lay, and just outside which the pinnace was moored, so as to allow her to make use of her gun.
Weird indeed, and hazardous in the extreme, was the position in which the British lay, and as he reclined upon the grass, with the Rajah on one side of him and John Marshall on the other, Tyler had to confess that never before had he been in a worse predicament.
"We were in a tight place when upon the schooner," he whispered to his companion, the boatswain, "and that rock, where Li Sung and I were caught and surrounded was a ticklish position, but here there is no knowing where the enemy are. They are everywhere, and bullets and spears come from every direction. Halloo! There's a shot, and that is Captain Keppel's voice or I am much mistaken."
A few seconds later the crew of the gig joined hands with Lieutenant Horton's party, and a council of war was held, the Rajah joining in, together with Tyler.
"Come," said Captain Keppel in pleasant tones, "we of the navy do not pretend to know everything, and there is no doubt that in a case like this, when the lives of all our men are at stake, the best advice should be taken. You have had experience with these people, Rajah, and so have you, young Richardson. What shall we do? For my part I fancy that it will take us all our time to keep the enemy from rushing in upon us."