It was the death cry of a wah-wah monkey facing the cruel jaws of a crocodile.
I plunged my fingers into my ears to smother the sound. I understood it all now. Baboo’s pirates, the dreaded Orang Kayah’s rebels, were the troop of monkeys we had heard the night before in the tambusa trees.
“Baboo,” I shouted, “come here! What does this all mean?”
The Tiger-Child glided from behind the protecting pile, and came close up to my legs.
“Tuan,” he whimpered, “Baboo see many faces behind trees. Baboo ’fraid for Tuan,—Tuan great and good,—save Baboo from tiger,—Baboo break up all glass bottles—old bottles—Tuan no want old bottle—Baboo and Aboo Din, the father, put them on deck so when Orang Kayah’s men come out of jungle and drop from trees on deck they cut their feet on glass. Baboo is through talking,—Tuan no whip Baboo!”
There was the pathetic little quaver in his voice that I knew so well.
“But they were monkeys, Baboo, not pirates.”
Baboo shrugged his brown shoulders and kept his eyes on my feet.
“Allah is good!” he muttered.
Allah was good; they might have been pirates.