Thirty seconds, swift, interminable, an unbroken clash of steel through the smoke and crash of the bullets—thirty seconds intervened before his soldiers, getting up to him, plunged fiercely forward, with bayonet and poniard, into the indistinguishable mass. The little lamp had immediately rolled over; the solemn darkness shook with a turmoil of oaths and outcries rising high above the clang of the fighting and the thud of the fallen. In a moment it was all over. Yet the trembling air still seemed to listen among the sudden silence of the tall tjimara-trees.
A heavy groan shuddered slowly forth. Then another. And again another in a different voice.
Gerard struck a match and lighted a pocket-lantern. Of his seven men, three, including Popa, still stood upright; a fourth rose, stumbling, from the dark confusion on the ground. Of the three remaining, two were already dead (one decapitated), and the third lay unconscious. Not one of the Achinese was able to continue the fray.
“Hurry up,” said Gerard, cutting Popa’s bonds. “No, I’m not wounded; it’s nothing but a scratch. We’re quite near the camp; the least hurt must help the others.”
The tomtom, the enemy’s well-known alarm, came thumping down the valley, re-echoed on every side from twenty watchful hiding-places.
“Hurry up for your lives!” cried Gerard. In shamefaced silence Popa pointed to an easier track. Slowly and laboriously the two badly wounded were passed down by the others; the trail was followed back again; the foot-path was reached. Near the entrance to the wood a patrol met them, sent out on the report of the firing.
“And you, Popa, speak,” said Gerard, after the tension was over.
“It is my crime, Lieutenant; the fault be on my head. I observed the trail as we went by; my thoughts were heavy for the murdered Adja. I wandered down it a few steps in my curiosity, knowing I could soon rejoin you. Suddenly one struck at me from the darkness through the grass.”
“And why did they not come after us?” questioned Gerard.
“You were gone on, up above; the grass is high. There were two of them only; I was alone, marauding.”