One Maid's Mischief

by George Manville Fenn

The disposition on the part of Helen Perowne and her companion seemed to be to trust the beasts of the jungle sooner than the Rajah; and after a few moments’ pause to listen, they went cautiously on, with the cries of the great cat-like creature that they knew to be in their neighbourhood seeming to grow more distant, as if it had been driven off by the noise and firing at the house.

It was terrible work that flight; and had she been alone Helen would have given up in sheer despair, for every atom of growth in the jungle seemed to be enlisted in the Rajah’s service, and strove to check the fugitives as they fled. Great thorns hooked and clung to their clothes; ratan canes wound across and across their way, tripping them up, so that again and again they fell heavily; while the dense undergrowth rose up constantly like a wall of verdure, as impenetrable as some monstrous hedge.

Streaming with perspiration, panting with exhaustion, and ready to give up in despair, Helen struggled on, nerved to making fresh attempts by the courage of her companion; but at last the jungle was so dense that any further effort seemed like so much madness, and they paused to rest, Helen sinking down amidst the thorns and leaves, too much exhausted to move.

The Malay girl did not speak, but stood leaning against a tree-trunk, listening for tokens of pursuit, but there was not a sound; and by degrees it dawned upon them that the Rajah’s people had taken alarm at the noise, and then, seeing nothing, hearing nothing more, they had quietly returned to their rest; for the probabilities were that they would not venture to disturb the Rajah, who would sleep on in his stupor perhaps till mid-day.

After a time the girl laid her hand upon Helen’s shoulder.

“We must try again,” she said; and with a weary sigh the fugitive rose and staggered on, following her companion as she tore aside the canes, pushed back thorny growth, and utterly regardless of self, kept on making a way for Helen to follow.

There was a strong display of kindness in her manner, but it was not unmingled with contempt for the helplessness of the English girl, who had to trust entirely to her for every step of their progress.

Just at the very worst time, when they had again become entangled in the wild jungly maze, the Malay girl stopped once more to take breath; and then making an angry effort to free herself from a bramble-like growth that was tearing her sarong into shreds, she uttered a cry of joy, for she found that she had broken through quite a thorny hedge of growth, and was now standing in a narrow pathway, evidently the track made by elephant, buffalo, or other large creatures of the jungle.

Her cheery words aroused Helen to fresh exertion; and following the track, painful as it was, and full of crossing strands and canes, they got on for the next two or three hours pretty well, when they seemed to have descended into marshy ground through which the track led.

Here they found a fresh difficulty, for if the Malay girl had had any doubt before that they were in an elephant path, it was made evident now by the series of great footprints, every one of which was a pitfall of mud and water, the custom of these huge beasts being to step invariably in the tracks left by those that have passed before, believing them to be indications of safety; and the result is that in a short time the path becomes in a wet soil one long series of muddy holes.