Volume Two—Chapter Twenty Seven.
A Desperate Attempt.
More long weary days of stifling heat, without a breath of air to relieve the oppression, and more hot suffocating nights, during which, half wild with terror and despair, Helen, like some newly-captured bird, had beaten the bars of her prison in vain.
She had appealed to the Malay girl, but only for her to turn away and seem at last weary and troubled by the importunity she had received. Then she had appealed to the second girl, who was of a morose jealous aspect, and who evidently detested her. But all appeal here was vain, for the girl evidently did not understand her words, and turned sullenly away. It was so, too, with the rest of the women, who came to the door and just entered the room in obedience to some call.
But Helen might as well have appealed to the trees that stood tall and columnar just outside the prison window. Those who did not understand her words looked at her with a heavy scowl; while those who could comprehend laughed, or made her keep away from them, for they disliked her coming, and their eyes plainly told the hatred that there was in their hearts. Beside which, they knew the punishment that would fall to their lot should they go in opposition to their lord’s orders, and the danger was too great to tempt the most willing of them to run any risks.
The girl who had been most gentle to her, and who had not scrupled to talk freely about her own affairs, now seemed to keep aloof; and feeling more and more her helplessness, Helen awoke to the fact that if she were to escape from her present durance it must be by her own effort.
In this spirit she tried to restrain herself, and waited patiently for some opportunity for communicating with her friends; though when this opportunity would come she was obliged to confess was doubtful in the extreme.
Naturally enough her thoughts turned to writing, and feeling the folly of applying in a place like her prison for pens and paper, she set herself to contrive some means upon which she could describe her position, finding it at last in the form of a book, one of whose fly-leaves she covered with a pitiful appeal to any Englishman who would read it, and imploring help. This she kept by her, ready to send should opportunity occur, and still the dreary days glided by.