Middy and Ensign

by George Manville Fenn

“Why, this leads to the sultan’s old house, where the inchees were killed!” thought Ali. “Surely they are not going to kill me?”

A shudder ran through him, and a strange sense of horror seemed to freeze his limbs as he was half thrust half earned along through the jungle, his captors having at times to use their heavy parangs to cut back the canes and various creepers that had made a tangle across the unfrequented track.

It was as the young chief had surmised. They were taking him to the deserted house that had been formerly occupied by former inchees or princesses of the Malay people, who, for some political reason, had been cruelly assassinated by order of the present sultan, they having been krissed, and their bodies thrown into the river.

Was this to be his fate? he asked himself; and if it was, in what way had he offended?

The answer came to him at once. It was evident that the intercourse he had held with the English was not liked, and now in his own mind he began to have misgivings about the resident and his party. Sultan Hamet was, he knew, both cruel and treacherous. Was the position of the English people safe?

Yes, he felt they were safe. He was the offender; and once more a shudder of fear ran through him at the thought of his young life being crushed out so soon; just, too, when he was so full of hopeful prospects and aspirations.

His manhood asserted itself, though, directly. He was the son of a chief, he told himself; and these treacherous wretches who had seized him should see that he was no coward.

Then he began to think of his father, and wondered whether it would be possible to communicate with him before he was killed.

Then he felt a little more hopeful, for perhaps, after all, the instructions to his captors might not be to slay him. If it was, and he could only get his hands free, their task should not be so easy as they thought for.

For two long hours was he forced through the tangled jungle, and every minute he became more convinced that his captors were bound for the place of whose existence he knew, having once come upon it during a shooting expedition, and, in spite of his followers’ horror, persisted in examining the ruins nearly choked even then with the rapid jungle growth.