One Maid's Mischief

by George Manville Fenn

It was night before Helen again woke, and her first thought was of escape; but as she softly rose to a sitting posture, she felt that one of the girls was by her side, and as she listened to her regular breathing, and tried in the darkness to collect her thoughts and to recall exactly where the door and window lay, the black night seemed a little less black just in one particular part of the room, and she realised that the window must lie there.

“If I could get past that window!” thought Helen, with throbbing brain. “I know it would be hard, but still I might make my way to the river and find someone who would be my friend. There must be paths through the jungle.”

Then with a strange aching sense of misery she thought of how little she had done since she had been out there. No one could be more ignorant of the nature of the jungle than she. She remembered that someone had called it impenetrable; but she knew that Dr Bolter went on expeditions to discover gold, and that the Reverend Arthur Rosebury sometimes wandered there.

“Poor Mr Rosebury?” she said, half aloud. “What he could do sorely I could,” and then the blood in her veins seemed to freeze, and a shudder ran through her, for from out of the darkness came a deep, hoarse, snarling roar that she recognised at once as that of some tiger on the prowl.

She was very ignorant of the jungle and its dangers, but she knew that if she should attempt to leave the building where she was imprisoned now, the result would be that she would encounter a foe of whose savage nature the station was full of tales.

The stories of her childhood came back to her then, and she laughed bitterly as she recalled the faith she had once had in the legend of Una and the lion, and familiar histories of how the helpless had been befriended by the savage creatures of the forest. Then, as she thought of her defenceless state, she once more shuddered, and asked herself whether it would not be better to trust herself to the jungle than stay where she was, to encounter one whom she dreaded far more than the creature whose cry she had just heard.

In a fit of desperate energy as her thoughts were fixed upon Murad and the possibility that he might at any time now present himself, Helen softly glided from her couch and began to cross the uneven floor, stepping cautiously from bamboo lath to lath, and shivering as one gave a crack from time to time.

It seemed darker now, and for guide towards the window there was nothing but the faintly-felt sensation of the dank jungle air coming cool against her cheek; but she kept on, thinking nothing of the way she should turn or how she should escape; all that animated her now was the one great idea that she must steal away beyond the power of these two Malay women to recall her. If she could now do that, the rest might prove easy. Something would no doubt offer itself.

“I must, I will escape,” she half wailed, in a whisper that startled her as it fell upon her ear, so full was it of helpless misery and despair.

She paused to listen, for one of the girls had moved, and then, as she stood in the darkness, there was a very faint rustling noise, and Helen felt that her gaoler had risen and was cautiously stealing towards her. So sure was she of this, that she held up one hand to keep her enemy at a distance; but though the sound continued, no one touched her, and the soft rustling came no nearer to where she stood.