One Maid's Mischief

by George Manville Fenn

Then, in an instant, the feeble clasp became one of iron; and before Chumbley could more than realise that he was being held, a second figure bounded from behind a bush on to his back, dexterously throwing a sort of bag over his head and drawing it tight about his neck.

The young officer was taken by surprise; but he was not so easy a prey as Hilton. As a rule, Chumbley resembled the elephant in his slow, ponderous movement. Now, there was something almost leonine in his activity, the latent almost herculean strength he possessed being brought into play.

Uttering a smothered roar, he tried to shake off his assailants as they clung to his back and neck, pinioning his arms, and holding on so closely, that in the dark the figures of the three men seemed like one huge monstrous creature writhing savagely upon the grass.

Four more dark figures had suddenly appeared upon the scene, looking weird and strange in the starlight; and while the distant sound of voices, with an occasional burst of laughter, came to where the struggle was going on, all here was so quiet—save for the oppressed breathing—that no attention was drawn towards them from the visitor-dotted lawn.

The fresh-comers leaped at Chumbley like dogs at their hunted quarry; but so fierce was the resistance that one of them was dashed to the earth, the others shaken off, and the young man followed up the display of his tremendous strength by making a blindfold effort to ran.

The probabilities are that, as he had instinctively taken the direction leading to the house, he would have got so far that his assailants would not have cared to follow, had not one of them thrust out a foot as Chumbley was passing, and tripped him up, when he fell with a heavy thud to the ground.

Before he could make a fresh effort to rise, half a dozen Malays were upon him; and while some sat and knelt upon, others bound him hand and foot.

Then they paused to listen whether the struggle had been overheard; but finding it had excited no attention either at the house or the Residency island, they leisurely rolled their prisoner over and over down the grassy slope into a waiting boat close up to the bank. A few vessels of water were dipped, and quickly poured over the grass where the struggle had taken place, and then once more the star-spangled surface of the river was broken up as a shadowy boat softly glided out to the middle of the river, and then seemed to die away.

But the incidents of the night were not yet at an end, Fate seemed to lend her aid to bring them to one peculiar bent.

For, hot and weary of the insipid attentions of her new conquest, and fagged out with her task of entertaining so many guests, Helen Perowne began to think of how she should escape, wishing the while that everyone would go, and far from satisfied with her last encounter with Hilton.