“Listen!” I said sharply. There was a splash of a paddle.
“Dacoits?” asked Cary hopefully. “Thinking maybe they can slip over the side and rush us?”
He beamed and slung his feet out of the hammock, to get some guns from below. Cary was always hopeful of trouble.
“We’re right in front of the Residency,” said the doctor dryly, “and Vetter has a steam launch. They know it. Don’t be an ass. Dacoits? No!”
Cary hesitated. Then somebody called to us across the water. Very softly, in Malay, as if they didn’t want to be heard on shore.
“They want to come aboard,” grunted the doctor. “Get your guns if you like, Cary, but you might want to put on a shirt, too. There’s a girl with them.”
Cary swung down the companionway and the doctor stretched himself luxuriously in the hammock. A dark shape took form in the moonlight. It was a regular Malay dugout with three natives in it. A man in the bow and another in the stern, with a girl between them. They came on the Shikar’s deck as Cary reappeared with both arms full of guns.
Cary got the first look at the girl, and he dropped the guns and looked foolish. The doctor grunted and offered to get lights, but the two men protested politely but very sincerely against it. They sat down and exchanged polite phrases with the doctor, who was the only one of us who could talk decent Malay.
I sat back and wondered, feasting my eyes on the girl. Sixteen—seventeen—eighteen? I don’t know. I do know she was at the prettiest age any girl could be. Malay all through, yes. But her skin was fair as mine and her eyes were wonders. There was grace and pride and blood and breeding in every move she made. She looked at the doctor mostly, quietly and composedly, but her eyes alternately flamed and brooded. Now and then she glanced at the two men.
And one of them was an old chap, white haired and stately, with a ceremonious looking kris on one side of his sash and an old percussion pistol on the other side. In the moonlight you could see his clothes were all of silk, and mighty fine quality, too. Not at all the sort of thing a man would wear who made a habit of paddling himself around. The other man was a well-set-up young chap with eyes like a hawk who looked like a young prince out of the Arabian nights. Somehow, you’d take to those two.