Middy and Ensign

by George Manville Fenn

How Ali made a Dash for Liberty.

As Ali lay back there with closed eyes, it seemed impossible that he could have slept and dreamed all this, but it was plain enough now. He had but to unclose his eyes and see the Malays in the outer room, and listen to the twittering of the small birds, the screams of the parrots, and the cry uttered from time to time by some monkey.

Where was his manhood? he asked himself—where his keen desire to escape and help his friends? He felt half-maddened to think that he should have slept and neglected them, not sparing himself for a moment, and never once palliating what he called his crime by trying to recall the fact that he had not slept the previous night, and that he had been completely exhausted.

There was the fact staring him in the face; he had been lying there thinking of escaping, and listening to the cries of the prowling tigers, and—“Stop,” he asked himself, “where did the reality end and dreaming begin? Did he see the Malay get up and hurl a torch out of the open door, and then come back and lie down?”

Yes, he felt sure that was true, but where that which he was watching shaded off into dreamland, he could not tell.

It was weak, perhaps, but the scalding tears rose and filled his eyes, and when he passionately dashed them away and sat up, he felt ready to make a fierce rush through his guard, and either escape or die.

He was on the point of risking all in some such mad attempt when two of the men came in, proceeded to make a careful inspection of the place where he was, and then sat down just in the opening, getting up soon afterwards, though, to make way for another, who brought in some food on fresh plantain leaves, rice freshly boiled with fowl, and curry made with freshly-grated cocoa-nut and peppers. There was an abundance of fruit, too, but Ali looked at it all with a feeling of disgust. He had no desire to eat.

The men left the food on its fresh green leaves before him, and went out to their own meal, while the prisoner sat thinking that the expedition had by this time started, for he had slept long in spite of his troublous dream. Then his thoughts turned to the steamer and Bob Roberts, whose frank, happy face was always before him, and then somehow he thought of the steamer and its powerful engine, and how it was kept going with fuel and water; and that set him thinking of himself. How was he to help his friends if he let himself get weak for want of food.

The result was, that he ate a few grains of rice, when the want of appetite disappeared, and he went on and made a very hearty meal. He felt annoyed, though, directly after, to find his captors smile as they came to remove the fragments of his feast.

Then began once more the terrible hours of anxiety, during which he paced up and down his prison like some wild beast, his guards squatting outside, and watching him in the most imperturbable manner, as they chewed their betel or varied it by smoking.