“And he and the Inche Maida have been up one of the little rivers in his boat, and the officers caught them, and brought them back.”
Volume Three—Chapter Twenty Two.
Help in Need.
If little Mrs Bolter had seen her lord—the quiet, suave medical man, who by his genuine admiration had so late in life won her heart—she would have trembled with the idea that he was about to fall down in a fit of apoplexy. For as he realised who was the showily-dressed Malay who had taken Helen Perowne in his arms, he first turned sallow with the heart-sinking sensation consequent upon seeing his helpless charge in the hands of one who, spite of his assumption of English manners and customs, remained at heart a fierce and unscrupulous savage.
But the next moment the pallor passed away, his face flushed with rage, and as his indignation increased, he became absolutely purple.
He made a furious struggle to escape from those who held him and get to Helen’s side; for in those angry moments his English blood was on fire, and little, stout, short-winded, and pretty well exhausted by previous efforts as he was, he forgot everything but the fact that there was a helpless girl—an English lady—in deadly peril, and asking his aid. Numbers—personal danger—his own want of weapons—all were forgotten; and the little doctor would have attempted anything then that the bravest hero could have ventured to save Helen Perowne from her captors.
But it was not to be: one man, however, brave, when left to his natural strength of arm, is as nothing against a score; and literally foaming now with rage, Doctor Bolter, as he was mastered by the Sultan’s men, had nothing left but his tongue for weapon, and this—let him receive justice—he used to the best of his power while Murad remained on deck.
Dog, coward, reptile, contemptible villain, disgrace to humanity, fiend in human form, scoundrel whom he would kick—these and scores of similar opprobrious terms the doctor applied to the Rajah, making the crew of the prahu scowl and mutter, and draw their krisses in a threatening manner, as they looked at Murad for orders to slay the infidel dog who dared revile their chief.