Going back alone through the jungle, he lost his way and along toward evening what should he do but stumble plump on the whole nest of Allos where they lived. This was a place highly interesting to an investigator and would have been even more so to the little gunboats of different flags that police the sea. It was no hut but a proper palace, with a stockade and towers and flagpoles all complete and every blessed thing about it snaffled off some ship or other.
He saw strakes, beams, keelsons, masts, rigging, and cabin doors enough to build a fleet with; and the windows were ports and the chimneys all funnels. The women were cooking dinner in pots made of ship's bells turned upside, and they were dressed in yards and yards of Chinese silks all watered impromptu by sea water, and lace curtains from some captain's berth and various other flotsam while the little children toddled around in American flour bags. Yes, those Allos could wear plenty of garments when they were home, which was good manners, but more particular indicated they'd collected so much wealth they didn't know what else to do with it.
There were two great carven figureheads guarding the gate, and Andrew Harben even saw the name under one of them, a most calm and beautiful white face looking down on this rascal crew. Witch of Dundee it said. And where was the Witch of Dundee now, and where all the hearty men which sailed with her? Gone down in Macassar long since. Here were her bones, what was left, and for theirs the monkeys would be rolling them on the mud flats at low tide....
Well, Andrew Harben saw these things and he understood quick enough that the kindly Bugis were no more than wreck pirates who drove a rich trade whenever for any good and sufficient reason the light failed. They must have been at it for years, very quiet and cautious so the keepers would have plenty of time to go mad and get eaten by the crocodile, as the skipper said. Of course they would not kill the keepers in any uncrafty way lest the news should get out and spoil their graft, and a white man with a spear through him is hard to keep secret underground in any native country.
However, they would have made an exception of Andrew Harben. They spied him standing there in the dusk, and they knew their game was up unless they nailed him. They chased him hard through the swamps, but he gave them the slip and reached home a jump ahead. They were not anxious to follow while he could sweep the bridge with his fowling piece and so they stood on the shore and howled.
"Ya—ya!" they said, meaning damn him.
Andrew Harben was the angry man. He'd been pretty much fed up with natural history by this time. About everything that flew or crawled in Borneo had sampled him, and he was bit and stung all over. Meanwhile he considered the wickedness of these Bugis that had been carrying on serial murder here all unbeknownst and how nearly they had added him to the score by playing him for a scientist and a sucker. And he considered too that he was now shut off from all help in the matter of the lights and what a responsibility of life and property rested on him to keep them going.
"When I thought of that," he said, telling me, "—when I thought of that I jumped up and fired into the trees till the gun was too hot to hold. Curse 'em! D'you know I had to take what was left of my pants to patch up the wicks that night?"
He would have given all the honorary letters of the alphabet for the use of a rifle, but he might have saved his rage, for the Bugis minded bird shot not at all. They only danced in the mangroves and mocked him. "Ya—ya!" they said, which meant they'd get him yet....
He began to think so himself the next day when his water ran out. The tender was due in three more days. He thought his wicks might last that long, with nursing. But he would be dead a dozen times over with thirst.