CHAPTER XVII
DOWN THE FLUME
The lights had disappeared from the flume as I turned to go, and, rather than take the chance of another fall, I decided to use my small electric torch in finding a solid footing. The lacquered crimson reflection of the fluttering disc of light instantly revealed the cause of the slipperiness I had encountered. The whole end of the pier was criss-crossed with thick trails of blood, with great spreading pools here and there where, whoever shed it, had stood or sat. The blood on my hands and raincoat, where they had come in contact with Ranga's reeling frame, proved beyond a doubt that he was badly hurt. That explained his unsteadiness on his feet, and also the fact that he had avoided shaking hands with me. Very likely, indeed, his hands were unfit to use. Tired to the verge of exhaustion though I was, my blood leaped at the thought of the battle royal the splendid fellow must have fought—and won. I was expecting to come upon traces of the fight at any moment as I picked my way in past the ruined mill to the foot of the old grade leading to the top of the cliff.
As I left the planking of the pier behind two sets of footprints appeared in the wet, firm earth of the path at the side of the road. Both were made by bare feet, but the larger ones—plainly Ranga's—were broken and irregular, and saturated with blood. There could be no doubt that his feet, like his hands, were frightfully torn. The small prints pressed very close to the side of the large, indicating that Rona was either supporting the wounded giant or being supported by him. From the fact that the smaller impressions were deeply indented, I figured that the former was the case—that she was helping him. The girl, evidently, was not badly hurt—perhaps not at all.
Where the path I was following joined the bridle-road at the brink of the cliff, the trail of blood turned off down the foot of the flume toward the big sugar mill. The battle royal must have been fought somewhere in the depths of the dense tropical growth that filled the rocky fissure in the cliff followed by the flume. What grim secret the black hole held would have to wait for the coming day to reveal. My way home led in the opposite direction, and there was some question in my mind as to whether or not I had the strength for the full course.
Fortunately for me the flume had been built along ridges and high ground, so that the trail following it had not been exposed to heavy flooding in the torrential rains of the early evening. I found it hard and firm underfoot for the most part, and by no means hard to follow without resorting to my electric torch. It would have been very easy going had I not been so nearly all in, but even as it was, by using my absinthe sparingly as I had done while painting, I managed to keep plugging steadily on toward home.
At one time something very near a panic seized me for a while, when the thought flashed through my mind that the great quantity of Ranga's blood soaked up by my boots and my clothes would undoubtedly leave a trail that Rawdon's hounds, should they chance to nose into it, would be quite justified in mistaking for that of the Malay himself. Even if I succeeded in holding the beasts off with my revolver, my presence there, and in such a state, would call for a lot of explaining. If the Chief once became suspicious, I told myself, it would undoubtedly upset my plans to get Ranga away, to say nothing of involving both myself and Captain Tancred in a serious scrape. I was in a miserable state of funk until the cheering thought entered my head that Ranga had probably killed not only the dogs, but probably Rawdon and the Chief as well. That reflection reassured me immensely, and, buoyed in mind and body, I trudged on confidently to the foot of the waterfall.
I had noticed from time to time along the way that the flume, in its less inclined stretches, was overflowing its sides. The reason for this became evident when I reached the intake, at the side of the pool under the falls, where I discovered that the gate, usually only partly raised, was wide open. A flow of more than double the normal was rushing out of the rain-swollen stream and into the flume.
I was too tired to speculate upon how this might have happened. It was touch-and-go with my tottering knees all the way up the steep, slippery path to the top of the cliff; but, with three or four breathing spells and the last of my absinthe, I managed it, and came out at last upon the greensward rimming the bathing-pool under my bedroom window. It was comparatively quiet here, now that the roar of the falls was deadened by distance, which was doubtless the reason that I heard for the first time a racket from the other side of the plantation that must have been going on right along. It was rather a lucky thing that I did hear that noise before I turned in. Had I not done so, it is hardly likely that it would have occurred to me that it might be a wise precaution to remove my boots before entering the house, and then to strip off and burn carefully in the kitchen range everything that I had been wearing. It was all I could do to keep awake until the irksome job was over, but, since it was evident from the ki-yi-ing and cursing that was floating down the wind that Ranga had not made a clean sweep of Rawdon and his pack, I reckoned that it well might be the means of preventing unpleasant complications.
My arduous climb up from the old sugar mill had served a useful purpose in one respect. The hard physical exercise had sweated the poison of the absinthe out of my system and relaxed the near-to-breaking tension my nerves had been under for thirty-six hours. I fell into a good normal hard-workingman's sleep the moment the mosquito-net closed behind me. And the best of it was that, when a pandemonium outside awakened me a little after sun-up, I tumbled out upon my feet in full possession of all my faculties. This was a mighty fortunate circumstance, for the rather delicate situation with which I was confronted called for something better on my shoulders than the usual "absinthe-holdover" head.
Harpool and Rawdon, it appeared, had experienced a beastly night. Losing a hot scent that had been picked up at the foot of the waterfall immediately after leaving the bungalow, they had been forced to take refuge in one of the labour villages during the deluge. Dragged out by the bloodthirsty Rawdon before the rain had ceased to fall, they had spent the night "working" the fringes of the bush in the hope of stumbling upon the trail of the elusive fugitive. The net result of this was the drowning of two more hounds and the driving of the baffled bushranger to the verge of distraction. Returning, dead beat, in the early dawn, they had encountered, at the intake of the flume, a scent so strong that even the paprika-dosed noses of Suey's victims followed it readily. Swarming up the cliff in full cry, the hunt came on to whirl in a mad war dance round the bungalow and put a period to my morning slumbers.