Tom raised his piece for a shot, but he was too late; and Yusuf smiled and showed his teeth as he ran and picked up the birds, tied their legs together with some grass, and added them to the jungle-fowl he was carrying.
“Well, they won’t be able to laugh at us,” said Bob. “We shan’t go back empty. Hallo! what the dickens now?”
For a couple of scantily clad Malay girls, their sarongs torn and ragged with forcing their way through the bushes, came panting up, uttering loud cries, and flinging themselves down at the astonished youths’ feet, clung to their legs, while Yusuf began to abuse them angrily, and kicking one, was about to thrust away the other with his foot.
“You leave them alone, will you?” said Bob, giving him a rap on the head with his gun-barrel. “I wish to goodness I knew what was the Malay for cowardly beast, and you should have it, young fellow.”
The Malay’s hand flew to his kris as he threw down the birds, and it flashed in the sunshine directly.
“Ah! would you bite?” cried Bob, presenting his gun at the other’s breast, when the man shrank away, with his eyes half-closed, and a peculiarly tigerish aspect about him as he drew his lips from his white teeth, but kept at a respectful distance, knowing as he did how ably the young sailor could use his gun.
Just then the girls renewed their cries and lamentations, clinging wildly to the youths as if for protection, as half-a-dozen Malays, armed with krises and the long limbings, or spears, that they can use with such deadly force, came running up, and made as if to seize upon the two girls.
“Keep off, will you! Confound your impudence, what do you mean?” roared Bob, slewing round his gun to face the newcomers. “I say, Tom, what fools we do seem not to be able to speak this stupid lingo! What are they jabbering about?”
“Hang me, if I know,” said Tom, whose face was flushed with heat and excitement. “All I can make out is that they want these two Malay ladies who have come to us to protect them.”
“Then, as my old nurse used to say, ‘want will be their master,’” said Bob, angrily; “for they’re not going to have them.”