The next morning we set out for our twenty miles’ tramp, along a narrow jungle path, accompanied by some ten natives of the village whom my companion had retained to cut a path for us up the mountain. It was a long, tiresome journey, and we were heartily glad when it was ended, and we were encamped on the rocky banks of a fern-hid stream.
Twice during our day’s march had we crossed deep, ragged depressions in the earth, which were overgrown with a jungle that seemed to be coequal in age with the surrounding trees. We did not pause to examine them, although our natives pointed them out with the expressive word mas (gold). We promised to do that at a later date. On the border of the creek I found some gold-bearing rock, and while the Tuan Hakim was engaged in securing some superb specimens of the great atlas moth, I sat down and crushed some fragments of it, and obtained enough gold to satisfy me that the rock would run four ounces to the ton.
It was a beautiful night. We lay under our mosquito netting, and gazed up through the interlacing branches of the trees at the star-strewn sky, and smoked our manilas in weary content. The long, full “coo-ee” of the stealthy argus pheasant sounded at intervals in distant parts of the forest. It might have been the call of the orang-utan, or the wild hillmen of the country, for they have imitated the call of this most glorious of birds.
The shrill, never ceasing whir of the cicada hardly attracted our attention; while the whistle and crash of a monkey that was inspecting us from his perch among the trees above caused me to peer upward, in hopes of catching a glimpse of his grayish outlines.
I had not had an opportunity of asking my companion for the details of his tragic story. I turned to him, and found him watching me attentively. “Were you listening to the call of the coo-ee?” he asked.
“It is the queen of birds. I will get you one. I have never shot one. They only come out at night, and then only to disappear, but we can trap them. It will die in captivity. That is why Solomon could not keep them, and sent for new ones every three years.”
“What became of the woman?” I asked.
“The body of the Laksamana was thrown over the walls by the Portuguese,” he said moodily. “It was embalmed and laid away. Two months from that day the woman was walking outside the walls. The war was over. There was no more gold. Three of my people sprang upon her and the Portuguese she was to marry.” He paused for a moment and looked up at the stars, then went on in a cold, matter-of-fact tone. “They were lashed to the headless body of the man they had murdered, and thrown into the royal tiger-cage, by order of his Highness, Ali, Sultan of Maur.”
I raised my curtain and threw the stub of my cigar out into the darkness, a smothered exclamation of horror escaping my lips.