Cover
"WITH THEIR ARMS STILL BOUND FIRMLY TO THEIR SIDES, THE PRISONERS STUMBLED THROUGH THE FOREST."
THE BLUE RAIDER
A TALE OF ADVENTURE
IN THE SOUTHERN SEAS
BY
HERBERT STRANG
ILLUSTRATED BY
C. E. BROCK
HUMPHREY MILFORD
OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS
LONDON, EDINBURGH, GLASGOW
TORONTO, MELBOURNE, CAPE TOWN, BOMBAY
1920
HERBERT STRANG
Complete List of Stories
ADVENTURES OF DICK TREVANION, THE
ADVENTURES OF HARRY ROCHESTER, THE
A GENTLEMAN AT ARMS
A HERO OF LIÉGE
AIR PATROL, THE
AIR SCOUT, THE
BARCLAY OF THE GUIDES
BLUE RAIDER, THE
BOYS OF THE LIGHT BRIGADE
BROWN OF MOUKDEN
BURTON OF THE FLYING CORPS
CARRY ON
CRUISE OF THE GYRO-CAR, THE
FIGHTING WITH FRENCH
FLYING BOAT, THE
FRANK FORESTER
HUMPHREY BOLD
JACK HARDY
KING OF THE AIR
KOBO
LORD OF THE SEAS
MOTOR SCOUT, THE
OLD MAN OF THE MOUNTAIN, THE
ONE OF CLIVE'S HEROES
PALM TREE ISLAND
ROB THE RANGER
ROUND THE WORLD IN SEVEN DAYS
SAMBA
SETTLERS AND SCOUTS
SULTAN JIM
SWIFT AND SURE
THROUGH THE ENEMY'S LINES
TOM BURNABY
TOM WILLOUGHBY'S SCOUTS
WITH DRAKE ON THE SPANISH MAIN
WITH HAIG ON THE SOMME
CONTENTS
- [A BEACH IN NEW GUINEA]
- [THE DRUMS]
- [THE CHIMNEY]
- [MR. HAAN]
- [IN THE TOILS]
- [THE TOTEM]
- [REMINISCENCES]
- [A RECONNAISSANCE]
- [COMPLICATIONS]
- [THE CAST OF THE DIE]
- [THE ORDEAL OF EPHRAIM MEEK]
- [THE LEDGE]
- [A FORCED LANDING]
- [AN INTERLUDE]
- [DUK-DUK]
- [FLIGHT]
- [THE ATTACK ON THE VILLAGE]
- [THE AVALANCHE]
- [AT ARM'S LENGTH]
- [THE LAST RAID]
- [JUSTICE]
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
Frontispiece in Colour
['With their arms still bound firmly to their sides, the prisoners stumbled through the forest.'] (See page [97].)
['Come up and have a look at this, Meek']
[Up and up, foot by foot, arrows whizzing and clicking]
[A score of dusky natives burst into the ring]
[Grinson marched in at the head of a procession]
['Who says I ain't tattooed?']
[With every step the descent became steeper]
[Kafulu sprang upon Meek from behind]
[The German flung a pail of water over the unconscious Meek]
[Noiselessly on his stocking soles tip-toed after the German]
[One of the Germans raised his revolver, but before he could fire, Hoole launched the spear at him]
[Grinson gave the boulder a shove in the desired direction]
[With a thunderous crash it struck the side of the vessel a few feet below the rail]
[Quickly they set their ladders against the barricade, and began to swarm up]
CHAPTER I
A BEACH IN NEW GUINEA
''Tis a matter of twenty-five years since I was in a fix like this 'ere,' said the boatswain, ruminatively, turning a quid in his cheek. 'Ephraim, me lad, you can bear me out?'
'I can't rightly say as I can, Mr. Grinson,' said Ephraim, in his husky voice, 'but I 'll try.'
The boatswain threw a leg over the stern-post of the much-battered ship's boat that lay listed over just beyond the breakers of a rough sea, and cast a glance at the two young men who stood, with hands in pockets, gazing up at the cliffs. Their backs were towards him; they had either not heard, or were disinclined to notice what he had said.
'Ay, 'twas twenty-six year ago,' he resumed, in a voice like the note of an organ pipe. 'We was working between Brisbane and the Solomons, blackbirding and what not; 'twas before your time, young gents, but----'
'What's that you 're saying?' demanded one of the two whose backs he had addressed.
'I was saying, sir, as how I was in a fix like this 'ere twenty-seven year ago, or it may be twenty-eight: Ephraim's got the head for figures. We was working between Brisbane and the Carolines--a tight little schooner she was, light on her heels. You can bear me out, Ephraim?'
'If so be 'twas the same craft, light and tight she was,' Ephraim agreed.
'Well, a tidal wave come along and pitched her clean on to a beach like as this might be--not a beach as you could respect, with bathing-boxes and a promenade, but a narrow strip of a beach, a reg'lar fraud of a beach, under cliffs as high as a church...'
'Say, Grinson, get a move on,' drawled the second of the two younger men. 'What about your beach? How does it help us, anyway?'
'Well, look at the difference, sir. There we was: schooner gone to pieces, a score of us cast ashore, three of us white men, the rest Kanakas. 'Tis thirty years since, but the recollection of them awful days gives me the 'orrors. My two white mates--the Kanakas ate 'em, being 'ungry. I drops a veil over that 'orrible tragedy. Being about a yard less in the waist than I am to-day, I was nimble as a monkey, and went up those cliffs like greased lightning, broke off chunks of rock weighing anything up to half a ton, and pitched 'em down on the Kanakas scrambling up after me, panting for my gore. For three days and nights I kept 'em at bay, and my arms got so used to flinging down rocks that when I was rescued by a boat's crew from a Dutch schooner they kept on a-working regular as a pendulum, and they had to put me in a strait jacket till I was run down. You can bear me out, Ephraim, me lad?'
'I can't exactly remember all them particlers, Mr. Grinson, but truth 's truth, and 'tis true ye 've led a wonderful life, and stranger things have happened to ye--that I will say on my oath.'
'You were one of the two that were eaten, I suppose?' said the young man who had first spoken, eyeing Ephraim with a quizzical smile.
'Gee! That's the part Grinson dropped a veil over,' said the other. 'What's the moral of your pretty fairy story, Grinson?'
'Moral, sir? 'Tis plain.' He opened his brass tobacco-box, and deliberately twisted up another quid. Then he said impressively: 'Dog don't eat dog; otherways we 're all white men, and there 's no Kanakas.'
Phil Trentham laughed, a little ruefully.
'We may have to eat each other yet,' he said. Then, waving his arms towards the cliffs, he added: 'The prospect doesn't please--what do you make of it?'
The situation in which the four men found themselves had certainly no element of cheerfulness. They were the sole survivors from a tramp steamer which, on the previous day, had fallen a prey to a German raider. After a night's tossing in their small open boat, they had been cast up on this unknown shore, and when they examined the craft, marvelled that they escaped with their lives. Collision with a rock that just peeped above the breakers some fifty yards out had stove, in her garboard-strakes, a hole through which a man might creep. Luckily, the bag of ship's biscuits, which, with a keg of water, formed their whole stock of provisions, had not been washed out or injured.
But what of the future? The narrow strip of sandy beach on which they had been thrown stretched along the foot of high precipitous cliffs that showed a concave arc to the sea. At each horn a rocky headland jutted far out, its base washed high by the waves. The cliffs were rugged and appeared unscalable, even with the aid of the tufts of vegetation that sprouted here and there from fissures in their weather-beaten face. It seemed that they were shut in between the cliffs and the sea, penned between the headlands, confined to this strip of sand, perhaps two miles long, from which there was apparently no landward exit. Their boat was unseaworthy; there was no way of escape by land or sea.
Phil Trentham, working copra on a remote island of the South Pacific, had learnt of the outbreak of war some months after the event, and taken passage on the first steamer that called, intending to land at the nearest port and thence to make his way to some centre of enlistment. Among the few passengers he had chummed up with a young fellow about his own age--one Gordon P. Hoole, who hailed from Cincinnati, had plenty of money, and was touring the Pacific Islands in tramp steamers for amusement. Each was in his twentieth year, stood about five feet ten, and wore a suit of ducks and a cowboy hat; there the likeness between them ended. Trentham was fair, Hoole dark. The former had full ruddy cheeks, broad shoulders, and massive arms and calves; the latter was lean and rather sallow, more wiry than muscular. Trentham parted his hair; Hoole's rose erect from his brow like a short thick thatch. Both had firm lips and jaws, and their eyes, unlike in colour, were keen with intelligence and quick with humour.
Their two companions in misfortune presented an odd contrast to them and to each other. Josiah Grinson, forty-eight years of age, was five feet six in height, immensely broad, with a girth of nearly sixty inches, arms as thick as an average man's legs, and legs like an elephant's. His broad, deeply bronzed face, in the midst of which a small nose, over a long clean upper lip, looked strangely disproportionate, was fringed with a thick mass of wiry black hair. Little eyes of steely blue gazed out upon the world with a hard unwinking stare. He wore a dirty white sweater, much-patched blue trousers, and long boots. His big voice was somewhat monotonous in intonation, and he had been known to doze in the middle of a sentence, wake up and continue without a flaw in the construction.
Ephraim Meek, who had been mate to Grinson's boatswain for about a quarter of a century, was a head taller, but lost the advantage of his inches through a forward stoop of his gaunt frame. Where Grinson was convex Meek was concave. His hollow cheeks were covered with straggling, mouse-coloured hair; his long thin nose made him look more inquisitive than he really was; his faded grey eyes, slightly asquint, seemed to be drawn as by a magnet to the countenance of his superior. Meek was a whole-hearted admirer of the boatswain, and their long association was marred by only one thing--a perpetual struggle between Meek's personal devotion and his conscientious regard for veracity. No one knew what pangs Grinson's frequent appeals to 'Ephraim, me lad,' to 'bear him out' cost the anxious man. But he had always managed to satisfy the boatswain without undue violence to his own scruples, and Grinson had never felt the strain.
'What do I make of it?' repeated Hoole. 'Nix!'
'Where do you suppose we are, Grinson?' asked Trentham.
'I ain't good at supposing, sir, but I know we 're somewheres on the north coast of New Guinea,' Grinson replied. 'Which I mean to say it's inhabited by cannibals, and I was nearly eat once myself. 'Twas twenty or maybe twenty-one years ago, when----'
'By and by, Grinson,' interrupted Trentham. 'It's a gruesome story, no doubt, and we 'll fumigate it with our last go-to-bed pipe.'
'Just so,' Hoole put in. 'I guess we 'd better explore. It don't feel good on this beach.'
'Certainly. To save time we 'd better split up. You take Grinson and go one way; I 'll go the other with Meek. Whoever sees a way up the cliffs, signal to the others.'
They paired off, and walked in opposite directions along the sand. A line of seaweed some thirty feet from the cliffs indicated high-water mark, and relieved them of any fear of being engulfed by the tide.
Trentham and Meek had struck off to the west, and as they went along they scanned the rugged face of the cliffs for a place where it would be possible to scale them. For nearly half a mile they roamed on in silence; Meek was one of those persons who do not invite conversation. Then, however, the seaman came to a halt.
'I wouldn't swear to it, sir,' he said in his deprecating way, 'but if you 'll slew your eyes a point or two off the cliffs, I do believe you 'll see the stump of a mast.'
He raised his lank hand and pointed.
'That won't help us much,' said Trentham, looking towards a pocket of sand some distance above high-water mark, and surrounded by straggling bushes. 'We can't sail off in a wreck.'
'That's true as gospel, sir, but it came into my mind, like, that where there 's a mast there 's a hull, and p'r'aps it 'll give us a doss-house for the night.'
'It 'll be choked with sand. Still, we 'll have a look at it.'
They walked towards the spot where four or five feet of a jagged mast stood up apparently from the embedding sand. As they emerged from the surrounding bushes they discovered parts of the bulwarks projecting a few inches above a mound of silted-up sand, a little higher than their heads. Clambering up the easiest slope, and stepping over the rotting woodwork, Trentham gave a low whistle of surprise.
'Come up and have a look at this, Meek,' he said to the man standing in his bent-kneed attitude below.
'COME UP AND HAVE A LOOK AT THIS, MEEK.'
Meek came to his side, and drew his fingers through his thin whiskers as he contemplated the scene before him. Then he turned his eyes on Trentham, and from him to the cliffs and the beach around.
'Rum, sir!' he ejaculated. 'Uncommon rum!'
While the greater part of the vessel was deep in sand, a certain area of the deck around the base of the mast was covered with only a thin layer, through which the iron ring of a hatch was clearly visible. On all sides of it the sand appeared to have been cleared away, and heaped up like a regular rampart.
'Some one has been here, and not so long ago,' said Trentham. 'It's certainly queer. See if you can lift the hatch; we may as well go below.'
Meek hesitated.
'If so be there 's cannibals----' he began.
'Nonsense! They wouldn't be stifling under hatches.'
'Or maybe dead corpses or skellingtons.'
'Come, pull up the hatch; I 'll go down first.'
Brushing away the thin covering of sand, Meek seized the ring and heaved. The hatch came up so easily that he almost lost his balance.
'The stairway 's quite sound,' said Trentham, peering into the depths. 'Stand by!'
He stepped upon the companion, and descended. In a few seconds Meek heard the striking of a match, and Trentham's voice ringing out of the vault.
'Come down, Meek; there are no skeletons.'
Meek looked around timorously, sighed, and went slowly down the ladder. Trentham had just struck another match, and was holding it aloft. The flame disclosed a small cabin, the floor space almost filled with a massive table and three chairs of antique make, all of dark oak. Upon the table lay an old sextant, a long leather-bound telescope, a large mug of silver-gilt, heavily chased, a silver spoon, and several smaller objects. On the wall hung a large engraved portrait in a carved oak frame, representing a stout, hook-nosed, heavily wigged gentleman in eighteenth century costume, with a sash across the shoulder and many stars and decorations on the breast.
Meek breathed heavily. The match went out.
'I can't afford to use all my matches,' said Trentham. 'Run up and cut a branch from a bush; that'll serve for a torch for the present. And signal to the others.'
'I don't hardly like to say it, sir, but I 'm afeard as my weak voice won't reach so far.'
'My good man, you 've got long arms. Wave 'em about. Climb up the mast. Use your gumption!'
Meek mounted to the deck, and Trentham smiled as he heard a husky voice shouting, 'Ahoy!' After some minutes the man returned with a thick dry branch.
'I give a hail, sir, and flung my arms about frantic, and Mr. Grinson, he seed me. I can't say he heard me, not being sure. He 've a wonderful voice himself--wonderful, and I heard him answer as clear as a bell.'
'That's all right!' said Trentham, lighting the branch. 'We 've made a discovery, Meek.'
'Seemingly, sir. I 'm fair mazed, and that's the truth of it. Who might be the old soldier yonder, and what's he wear that thing on his head for? He ain't a sea captain, that I 'll swear, and I wonder at any sailor-man sticking up a soldier's picture in his cabin.'
'You 're quite right, Meek,' replied Trentham, who had been scrutinising the portrait. 'The old soldier, as you call him, is a king.'
'You don't say so, sir! Where's his crown, then?'
'Ah, I wonder where! The poor man lost his crown and his head too. It's Louis XVI., King of France a hundred years ago and more. Here it is in French, below the engraving: "Engraved after the portrait by Champfleury." We 're in a French vessel, Meek--the ship of some French explorer, no doubt, who was wrecked here goodness knows how many years ago.'
Meek looked around again, and slightly shivered.
'I wonder what they did with the bones?' he murmured.
'What bones?'
'The cannibals, I mean, sir, when they 'd eat the captain and crew.'
'You 've a ghastly imagination, Meek. A question more to the point is, how it happens that these things remain here, so well preserved. There 's very little sand on the floor, as you see; any one would think that somebody comes here now and then to tidy up. Would your cannibals do that, do you think?'
'I wouldn't like to say, sir. I 'll ask Mr. Grinson; he knows 'em, being nearly eat himself. But I don't know who 'd have a good word for cannibals.'
'At any rate, they aren't thieves. This mug, for instance, is silver gilt, and of some value; here 's a coat-of-arms engraved on it, and it must have been polished not very long ago. Yes, it has been rubbed with sand; look at the slight scratches. I 'm beginning to think rather well of your cannibals.'
'Touch wood, sir,' said Meek earnestly. 'I wouldn't say a thing like that, not till I knowed. And as for thieves--well, if a man's bad enough to eat another man, he 's bad enough to be a thief, and if he ain't a thief, 'tis because he don't know the vally of things. Ignorance is a terrible unfortunate calamity.'
A sonorous bellow from above caused Meek to jump.
'There, now!' he said. 'My head 's full of cannibals, and 'tis Mr. Grinson. We 're down below!' he called.
'Is the place afire?' asked Grinson, sniffing, as he bent his head over the hatchway. 'I thought 'twas Mr. Trentham smoking when I seed the smoke, but I see you 're disinfecting the cabin, sir, and I don't wonder. This 'ere wreck must have been collecting germs a good few years.'
'Come down, Grinson,' said Trentham. 'Where 's Mr. Hoole?'
'Taking a look up the chimbley, sir.'
'What chimney?'
'Well, that's what he called it; for myself I 'd call it a crack.' He came ponderously down the ladder. 'Jiminy! Ephraim, me lad, you never tidied up so quick in your life before.'
'I can't truthfully say as I tidied up, Mr. Grinson,' said Meek. ''Tis uncommon tidy for a cabin, that's a fact.'
'Picters, too! The master o' this 'ere ship must have been a rum cove!'
'He was a Frenchman, Mr. Trentham says.'
'That accounts for it. I remember a French captain----'
The chimney, Grinson,' Trentham interrupted. 'You haven't explained----'
'True, sir; it was took out of my mind, seeing things what I didn't expect. As we come along, sir, Mr. Hoole he says: "Ain't that a chimbley?" "Where?" says I, not seeing no pot nor cowl. "There!" says he, and he points to what I 'd call a long crack in the cliff.'
'Where is it?'
'About half a cable length astern, sir. Mr. Hoole went to have a look at it. Here he is!'
'Phew! That torch of yours is rather a stinker!' said Hoole, springing lightly down the ladder. 'My! This is interesting, Trentham. I wondered where the path led.'
'You 've found a path?'
'Sure! Didn't you see it?'
'No. The fact is, Meek and I were so much taken up with the wreck that we forgot everything else. But we didn't see any footprints in the sand.'
'There are none about here, except yours. The path is way back a few yards. I caught sight of a narrow fissure in the cliff, what we call a chimney in the Rockies. I pushed through the undergrowth to take a keek at it, and came upon distinct signs of a beaten track, leading straight to the chimney. That's barely wide enough to admit a man; Grinson would stick, I guess; but 'tis surely used as a passage. There are notches cut in the cliff at regular intervals.'
'Then we can get away?'
'Sure! All but Grinson, that is. We 'd have to leave him behind.'
'Don't say so, sir,' said Meek. 'Mr. Grinson 's not so fat as he was--not by a long way. I 'm afeard if he stays, I must stay too.'
'Thank 'ee, Ephraim, me lad,' said Grinson warmly. 'But Mr. Hoole is pulling my leg. You take him too serious; he 's a gentleman as will have his joke. He wouldn' go for to desert two poor seamen.'
'I never could understand a joke--never!' said Meek. ''Tis a misfortune, but so I was born.'
Hoole and Trentham, meanwhile, had been examining the relics and discussing the bearing of their discoveries on the situation.
'It's quite clear that the wreck is visited,' said Trentham.
'By natives, of course. Why? How often? It doesn't matter much, except that if we saw them, we might get a notion as to whether we could safely go among them and get their help. You are sure the chimney is climbable?'
'Certain. The notches are deep, and you could set your back against the opposite wall and climb without using your hands.'
'I 'll have a look at it. Then we had better go back to our boat, get some grub, and talk things over. It's too late to go in for further adventures to-day.'
'That's so. Say, I 'd leave the hatch off for a while. The place reeks--it would give us away.'
'Right! We 'll clear out. The men can keep guard above while we 're examining that chimney.'
CHAPTER II
THE DRUMS
An hour later they were seated in the boat, nibbling biscuits and taking turns to sip at the water in their keg.
'Now that we 've proved that Grinson can just squeeze into the chimney,' said Hoole, 'I guess we had better climb to-morrow and take a look round. But what then? What do you know about this blamed island, Grinson?'
'Not as much as you could stuff into a pipe, in a manner of speaking,' said Grinson. 'A few years ago I spent a couple of weeks in Moresby and round about--you can bear me out, Ephraim, me lad--and I know no more than what I picked up there. That's on the south-east: we 're on the north, on what's German ground, or was; and by all that's said, the Germans never took much trouble to do more than hoist their flag. They 've got a port somewhere, but whether we 're east of it or west of it, I don't know no more than the dead.'
'So when we climb, we shan't know which way to go,' said Trentham. 'Yet our only chance is to make along the coast till we reach some white settlement, unless we could manage to attract attention on some passing ship. You don't know what the natives are like hereabout?'
'No, sir. They do say there 's little chaps about two feet high in the forests, but I never seed 'em. The folks on the coast ain't so little, and down Moresby way they 've learnt to behave decent; but I reckon they 're pretty wild in other parts, and I know some of 'em are 'orrid cannibals, 'cos I was nearly eat myself once. We was lying becalmed off the Dutch coast, away in the west of this 'ere island, and some of us had gone ashore for water, and----'
'What's that noise?' exclaimed Hoole, springing up.
A faint purring sound came to their ears.
'It's uncommonly like an aeroplane engine,' said Trentham. 'It would be rather fun to be taken off in an aeroplane.'
'Never in life!' said Meek mournfully. 'It 'ud turn my weak head.'
'Your head will be quite safe, Meek,' said Trentham. 'The only aeroplane that's likely to be in these latitudes is the one that scouted for the German raider. Our poor captain guessed what was coming when he saw the thing, and three hours afterwards they got us, and he was dead.'
'There it is!' cried Hoole, pointing sea-ward.
They were just able to discern the machine, little more than a speck, flying along from west to east. In a few minutes it had disappeared.
'Flying after other game,' said Trentham. 'You were saying, Grinson?'
'And I got parted from the rest, through chasing a butterfly, which I was always a stoodent of nature. I had just nabbed a lovely pink 'un with gold spots, when a crowd of naked savages surrounded me, their faces hidjous with paint, and their spears pointing at me like the spokes of a wheel. Not having my pistol with me, I couldn't shoot 'em all down one after another, so I offered 'em the butterfly, then a brass button, and one or two other little things I had about me, which any decent nigger would 'a been thankful for. But no! Nothing but my gore would satisfy 'em, or rather my fat, for I was in them days twice the size I am now. You can bear me out, Ephraim, me lad?'
'I wouldn't be sure 'twas exactly twice, Mr. Grinson, but not far short--a pound or so under, p'r'aps.'
'I thought my last hour was come, and it came on me sudden that I hadn't made my will----'
'There 's a smudge of smoke far out,' cried Hoole. 'If we get on a rock and wave our shirts, somebody 'll see us.'
They looked eagerly out to sea. A steamer, just distinguishable on the horizon, was proceeding in the same direction as the aeroplane they had noticed a few minutes before. Grinson put up his hands to shade his eyes as he gazed.
'If I had a pair of glasses, or that there telescope in the wreck! Ah! I may be wrong, but I believe 'tis that ruffian of a pirate as sunk our craft yesterday. Seems to me we 'd better keep our shirts on our backs, sir.'
'I dare say you 're right,' said Hoole. 'For my part I 'd rather try my luck with cannibals than with those Germans again.'
'Which I agree with you, sir,' said Grinson. 'With luck, or I may say gumption, you can escape from cannibals, like I did.'
'Ah, yes. How did you get out of that ring of spears?'
The boatswain took such pleasure in retailing his yarns that the two young men gave him plenty of rope.
'I was fair upset at not having made my will, thinking of how the lawyers would fight over my remains, in a manner of speaking. So I takes out my pocket-book and my fountain pen, and with a steady hand I begins to write. It shows what comes of a man doing his dooty. Them cannibals was struck all of a heap when they seed black water oozing out of a stick. They lowered the points of their spears, and, instead of being a circle, they formed up three deep behind me, looking over my shoulder. It come into my head they took me for a medicine-man, and the dawn of a great hope lit up my pearly eyes.'
'Where did you get that, Grinson?' asked Hoole.
'What, sir?'
'That about "pearly eyes" and the rest.'
'Oh, that! It took my fancy in a nice little story called Lord Lyle's Revenge as a kind lady once give me, and I 've never forgot it. Well, as I was saying, I set to droring a portrait of the ugliest mug among 'em--fuzzy hair, nose bones and all--they a-watching me all the time with bated breath; and when I 'd put in the finishing stroke, blest if every man Jack of 'em didn't begin to quarrel about whose photo it was. Never did you hear such a hullabaloo. Fixing of 'em with my eagle eye, I waved 'em back like as if I was shooing geese, took a pin from my weskit and stuck the portrait on a tree, and told 'em to fight it out who was the ugliest of 'em, 'cos he was the owner. The cannibals made a rush for the tree, every one of 'em trying to prevent the rest from getting the picture, and I lit my pipe and walked away as steady as a bobby on dooty. You can bear me out, Ephraim, me lad?'
'Wonderful steady you was, Mr. Grinson, and the bottle of rum empty too. I couldn't have walked so steady. The other chaps said as how you 'd been taking a nap, but I never believed 'em.'
'Never go napping on dooty, Ephraim; which I mean to say we 'll have to take watch and watch to-night, gentlemen. What with cannibals and them big hermit crabs and other vermin, 'twouldn't be safe for us all to have our peepers shut.'
'Very true, Grinson,' said Trentham. 'The boat's rather exposed: you had better choose a spot on the beach where we can shelter for the night. There are some rocks yonder that look promising. Then we 'll arrange about watching.'
Grinson and Meek went off together; the others meanwhile strolled up and down, discussing plans for the morrow.
'We 're so badly off,' said Trentham. 'You 've luckily got your revolver; any spare cartridges?'
'A score or so.'
'I 've only a penknife, worse luck. Grinson has a long knife, and Meek, no doubt, has a knife of some sort; but three knives and a revolver won't enable us to put up much of a fight if we really do come across any cannibals.'
'And I guess that fountain pens and pocket books won't be much good. We couldn't patch up the boat?'
'Without tools? Besides, I shouldn't care to risk a voyage. We may have a chance of reaching some settlement overland, and I dare say could pick up some food; but on the sea we might drift for weeks, even if we could exist on our few biscuits and little water.'
'Well, old man, we 'll get what sleep we can and try the chimney in the morning. The sky promises fair weather, anyway; did you ever see such a splendid sunset?'
They were facing west, and beyond the headland the sun, a gorgeous ball of fire, was casting a blood-red glow on the scarcely rippling sea. On the cliffs the leaves of the palms were edged with crimson, and flickered like flames as they were gently stirred by the breeze. The two friends stood side by side, silently watching the magnificent panorama. Suddenly Hoole caught Trentham by the arm, and pulled him down behind a rock.
'My sakes!' he exclaimed under his breath. 'D' you see people moving between the wreck and the cliff?'
Trentham took off his hat and peered cautiously over the rocks.
'You 're right,' he said. 'It's not easy to make 'em out; they 're in the shadow of the headland; we 're a good mile away, I fancy. They can't see us at present, but we had better warn the others; the sun as it moves round will strike us presently.'
They returned to the spot which Grinson had selected for their camping place--a space of clear sand protected on one side by a group of rocks and on the other by a clump of bushes spreading from the base of the cliffs. Meek had already brought up their scanty stores from the boat; Grinson had stripped off his jersey and shirt.
'If you 'll take my advice, gentlemen,' he said, 'you 'll swill the sticky off--you 'll sleep all the better for it. Bathing all in I wouldn't advise, in case of sharks.'
'Shall we get any sleep, I wonder?' said Trentham. 'There are men on the beach, Grinson.'
'Men, sir?'
'Cannibals!' murmured Meek.
'We saw figures moving between the wreck and the cliff.'
'Holy poker!' exclaimed the boatswain, rapidly drawing on his shirt. Trentham noticed momentarily the figure of a bird tattooed on his upper left arm. 'Hope they don't come this way.'
'Why shouldn't we take the bull by the horns and go their way?' said Hoole. 'I 'll tackle 'em, if you like. You don't know but we 'd make friends of them.'
'Not by no manner of means, sir, I beg you,' said Grinson. 'The New Guinea savages are the fiercest in creation; Ephraim can bear me out; cunning as the devil, and that treacherous. The tales I could tell! But I wouldn't freeze your blood, not for the world; all I say is, keep out of their clutches.'
'Where can we hide, if so be they come this way?' faltered Meek.
'There 's nothing to bring them along this bare beach,' said Trentham. 'They won't see us if we remain here; I doubt whether they 'll even see the boat. No doubt they 'll be gone by the morning.'
'Just so,' said Hoole. 'Still, we 've got to meet them some time, probably----'
'Better by daylight, sir,' said Grinson. 'Wild beasts and savages are always most fearsome at night. I say, lay low.'
'As low as you can,' Meek added.
The glow of sunset faded, and in the deepening shade the figures were no longer visible. The four men sat in their shelter, talking in undertones, none of them disposed to sleep. For a while only the slow tumbling surf bore a murmurous counterpoint to their voices. All at once a dull boom struck upon their ears. It was not the explosive boom of a gun, but a deep prolonged note. Soon it was followed by a similar sound, at a slightly higher pitch, and the two notes alternated at regular intervals.
'Drums, by the powers!' ejaculated Grinson. ''Tis a dance, or a feast, or both.'
'A mighty slow dance,' said Hoole. 'I 'd fall asleep between the steps.'
But even as he spoke the sounds became louder and more rapid, and presently in the midst of the now continuous booming a voice was heard, chanting in monotone. Into this broke a deeper growling note as from many voices in unison, and after the song and accompaniment had continued for some time with ever-increasing vigour and volume, they came to a sudden end in a short series of strident barks, half smothered by the clamour of the drums.
The four men had risen, and leaning on the rocks, with their faces towards the sounds, had listened to the strange chorus.
'It's extraordinarily thrilling,' said Trentham. 'I 'd never have believed that drums could make such music.'
'It trickles down my spine,' Hoole confessed. 'And they 're pretty nearly a mile away. What must it be on the spot? Say, if they start again, shall we creep along and see?'
'I 'm game. Look! They 've lit a fire. There's some ceremony on hand--not a thing to be missed.'
'Which means a feast, sir,' said Grinson. 'If you ask me, I say don't go. It 'll turn your blood.'
'Special if 'tis a man they eat,' said Meek.
'You two stay home; Mr. Trentham and I will go,' said Hoole. 'The rocks and scrub will give plenty of cover; besides, the feasters will be busy. We 'll be unseen spectators in the gallery.'
Heedless of the further expostulations of the seamen, Trentham and Hoole set off, and keeping well under the shadow of the cliffs, tramped rapidly towards the growing blaze. As they drew nearer to it, they moved with greater caution, careful not to come directly within the glow. The drums recommenced their slow tapping, and when the white men arrived at a spot where, screened by the bushes, they could see unseen, the dance had just begun.
The fire was kindled on a clear space between the wreck and the vegetation that clothed the foot of the cliffs. Beyond it, nearer the vessel, about twenty natives were stamping in time with the two drums, placed at one end of the line. They were men of average height, well built, but rather thin in the legs, wearing fantastic head-dresses, bone or coral necklaces and armlets, and scanty loin-cloths. The watchers were at once struck by certain differences in the types of feature. All the savages were a dull black in colour, except where they had painted their skins white or red, but while the majority had wide bridgeless noses and frizzy hair, there were some whose noses were arched, and whose hair, though curled, was neither stiff nor bushy. Every face was disfigured by a long skewer of bone passed through the nose.
The dance was disappointing. The men did little more than stamp up and down, swaying a little now and then, stepping a pace or two forward or backward, shaking their spears, and emitting a grunt. There was no excitement, no crescendo of martial fury.
'A very tame performance!' whispered Hoole.
But Trentham was no longer watching the dance. Beyond the dancers, only occasionally visible as they moved, there was something that had fixed his attention. He could not quite determine what it was, but a suspicion was troubling him. Between the swaying figures there appeared, now and again, a whitish object partially obscured by bush, and barely within the circle of light from the fire. It was motionless, but the fugitive glimpses that Trentham caught of it made him more and more uneasy.
'You see that white thing?' he whispered, taking Hoole by the arm.
'Yep! What of it?'
Trentham pressed his arm more closely. The dancers had moved a little farther apart, and for the first time the object behind them was completely outlined.
'By gum, it's a man!' murmured Hoole.
'And a white man!' added Trentham. 'I was afraid so.'
CHAPTER III
THE CHIMNEY
Noiselessly the two spectators slipped away through the bushes. Startled by the discovery of a white man, whose very stillness declared him a prisoner in bonds among these dancing savages, they felt the need of talking freely, unrestrained by precautions against being overheard. They hurried along at the base of the cliffs until they were out of earshot, then sat on a low rock where they could still see all that went on around the fire.
'Can it be that planter fellow on the Berenisa? What was his name?' said Trentham.
'You mean Grimshaw; he was the only man besides ourselves who wore ducks. I don't know. Grimshaw was a small man; the prisoner seemed a big fellow. I couldn't see his face.'
'Nor I. Whoever it is, I 'm afraid his number 's up.'
'I didn't take much stock of Grinson's yarns about cannibals, but it appears he 's right. The niggers would hardly bring their prisoner down the chimney for the fun of it, or the trouble of taking him up again.'
'Did you see a cooking-pot?'
'No, I was too busy watching the dancers to look around.'
'We 'll have to get him away.'
'Whew! That's a tall proposition, Trentham.'
'Confoundedly; but we can't stand off and see a white man cut up! Hang it all, Hoole, it's too horrible to think about!'
'Ghastly. Yet remember where we are. We might get him loose, but what then? They 'd hunt us over this strip of beach, and we 've proved pretty well there 's nowhere to hide.'
'Our only chance is to get him up the chimney.'
'My dear man!'
'It may be out of the frying-pan into the fire, if there are more of the savages on top, but down below his fate is certain, whereas----'
'But there 's the climbing. I 've done some in the Rockies, but I guess you 're a tenderfoot at mountaineering, and as for the seamen----'
'If they can scramble up rigging, they ought to be able to manage that chimney. I 'm sure I could. And really, there 's no time to lose. They 're still drumming and dancing, but who knows when they 'll feel hungry? We had better bring up the others at once.'
They got up, and hastened towards their camping-place.
'It's the first step that costs,' remarked Hoole. 'How to get him away with the firelight full on him. It's a ticklish stunt.'
'We can but try--we must try! Hullo! Here 's Grinson.'
The two seamen stepped towards them from the shelter of a bush.
'We came to meet you, sir,' Grinson began.
'Hush, Grinson!' said Trentham. 'Muffle that organ-pipe of yours. The savages have got a white man.'
'Never!' exclaimed Meek, in husky astonishment.
'He 's lying tied to a bush there, apparently,' Trentham went on. 'A man dressed in white.'
'Mr. Grimshaw! How did they get him?' said Grinson. 'He must have been cast ashore.'
'We don't think it's he, but it may be. Anyhow, we must try to rescue him.'
'Save us, sir! We 'll only go into the pot too. It will be like taking a bone from a dog, only worse.'
'Worse ain't the word for it,' said Meek. 'And you 'd go first, Mr. Grinson, being a man of flesh.'
'Tough, Ephraim--uncommon tough, me lad. Any nigger of sense would rather have something young and juicy, like Mr. Trentham. I remember once----'
'Not now, Grinson,' Trentham interposed. 'We must make up our minds; there 's no time for recollections.'
'Plenty of time, sir. These 'ere cannibals never start cooking till the moon 's high aloft, and she 's only just peeping above the skyline.'
'That's a relief, if you 're right----'
'I can bear him out, sir,' said Meek.
'It gives us more time to make our plans. Our idea is, Grinson, if we get the prisoner away, to climb up that crack in the cliff; there's no safety below. There may be danger above, of course; it's a choice between two evils. We meant to try our luck to-morrow, you know; we only anticipate by a few hours, and though climbing will be more difficult in the darkness than it would be in the light, you and Meek are used to clambering up the rigging at all hours and in all weathers----'
'Say no more about that, sir. We 'd back ourselves against cats.'
'Or monkeys,' suggested Meek.
'You 've got no tail, Ephraim. 'Tis not the climbing as I 've any fear about, sir; 'tis first the bonfire, second what's up top, third and last--there ain't no third, now I come to think of it.'
'The second we 've agreed to chance. The first--well, the only thing is to work round the savages and get between them and the chimney; then one of us must creep or crawl as close to them as he can, and watch his opportunity. There's no need for more than one.'
'That's my stunt,' said Hoole.
'Not at all. It's between you and me; we 're younger and quicker on our pins than the others; but why you should have the most risky part of the job----'
'The reason 's as clear as daylight. The quickest climber ought to go last. I allow that Grinson and Meek are probably more spry than I am in climbing; but in any case they 're ruled out. You 've never climbed a chimney--I have. I think that fixes it.'
'But the prisoner. It's unlikely he can climb quickly, and the last man couldn't go faster than he.'
'You ought to have been a lawyer, Trentham. But I have you yet. The last man may have to hold the savages off while the prisoner, slow by hypothesis, does his climb. Then speed will be vital when he climbs himself--see?'
'Axing your pardon, sir, and speaking like a father, as you may say,' said Grinson, 'there 's only one way of settling a little difference so 's to satisfy both parties. I 've seed many a quarrel nipped in the bud----'
'A quarrel, you juggins!' cried Trentham. 'There 's no quarrel!'
'Just so, sir--that's what I said. It's a difference, and a difference can't never grow to be a quarrel if you just toss for it.'
'There 's our Solomon!' said Hoole. 'Spin up, Trentham!'
The rising moon gave light enough. Trentham spun a shilling.
'Heads!' Hoole called.
'Tails it is! That's settled!'
''Tis fate: you can't go agen it,' murmured Meek.
'Those fellows must be pretty tired, drumming away like that,' said Trentham. 'But we had better make a start, Grinson. I think we ought to take our biscuits and water: they 'll last us a day or two, and we don't know what chances of getting food there 'll be on the cliff. You and Meek fetch them along. We 'll wait for you here.'
'They took it well,' said Hoole, when the men had gone. 'I was afraid Meek would jib.'
'Meek 's all right,' responded Trentham. 'The British sailor-man has his weak points, but he 's not a funk.'
He began to stride up and down with his hands in his pockets. Hoole watched him for half a minute or so, then said:
'You 'd better take my revolver.'
'Why in the world?' said Trentham, swinging round on him.
'It may be useful--last resource, you know.'
'If we can't do without that---- Why, man, a shot would absolutely dish us, would be heard for miles, and bring up every cannibal there is. This job has got to be done quietly.'
'I reckon there 'll be a pretty big row when they miss their supper. Well, if you won't take it, remember I 've got it, anyway.'
Some fifteen minutes later the four men, in single file, were stealing along the inner edge of the beach, close against the cliffs. Trentham, who was leading, took a zigzag course for the sake of cover from the scattered rocks and patches of vegetation. The seamen in the rear had slung the provisions about their shoulders with lashings from the boat, and on their account Trentham set a slower pace than his anxiety to be in time would otherwise have commended. The fire was burning more brightly, whiffs of acrid smoke were borne on the breeze, and the moon, about ten days old, appeared to have reached its greatest altitude, and was accentuating every irregularity on the face of the cliffs.
As they drew nearer to the fire, Trentham moved still more slowly, picking his way with care. Now and then some small animal, with a whisk and a rustle, scurried away in the undergrowth. Once Meek, who bore the keg, tripped over what he declared was a monster crab, and fell forward, the keg hitting a rock with a sharp crack. The rest halted and held their breath; had the sound been heard by the savages? The monotonous drumming continued unbroken, and they went on.
Between the fire and the cleft that was their destination, grew the tangled vegetation in which Hoole had discovered the track of footsteps. It grew higher than their heads, and they were able to enter it without much risk of being observed. A few whispered words were exchanged between Trentham and Hoole, then the latter led the seamen towards the chimney, which stretched upwards like a black streak in the moonlit precipice, while Trentham struck to the left, and crept cautiously towards the outer edge of the bushes, where he could look out upon the festive scene.
His heart seemed to be making more noise than the drums. His lips were dry. The skin of his face felt tight. 'Nerves!' he thought, with angry impatience. It was strange how, without the slightest consciousness of fear, his mental realisation of all that was at stake thus affected his body. Taking a grip of himself, he went forward and peered through the stiff crinkled foliage. For a few moments he saw nothing but the glare of the fire; then, as he gathered self-command, he was able to take in details which he had missed at his view a short while before.
The dancers were still swaying to and fro. At one side, crouched on the sand, were two men holding in one hand an object like a huge dice-box, and with the other beating a skin, as he supposed, stretched across the circular end. At the other side, near the fire, stood two iron cooking-pots. Beyond, in the same place, lay the motionless white figure. Everything was clearly illuminated by the flames, and Trentham wondered, with a feeling of despair, how it would be possible to approach the prisoner unseen.
A few minutes after his arrival, the dance and the drumming came to an abrupt end. In the ensuing silence he heard the wash of the waves beyond the wreck, and a strange squealing grunt which, until then, had been drowned by the deep tones of the drums and the barking cries of the men. One of the savages, who wore a tall feathered headdress, glanced up at the moon, and said a few words to the others. All of them squatted on the sand except two, who went to the bush, some twenty yards away, to which the prisoner was bound. Trentham's blood ran cold. He wished he had brought Hoole's revolver, for it seemed that nothing else could save the helpless man, and he was on the point of shouting for Hoole, when a piercing squeal, such as no human being ever uttered, gave him at once a shock and a sense of relief. Next moment the savages returned towards the fire, one of them carrying the body of a small pig.
Trentham almost laughed as the tension of the last few moments was relaxed. The men were not cannibals after all! He looked on as in a dream while one of the men cut up the animal, and the other raked over the fire with a spear. But with reflection his former anxiety came back. Why had the savages brought their prisoner here? To leave him to be drowned? But he was far above high-water mark. Were they reserving him as the bonne bouche of their feast?
One of the cooking-pots was placed over the fire, and the dismembered pig was thrown into it. Beyond, the savages squatted in a half-circle, talking. Their leader raised an arm towards the moon, and then jerked it in the direction of the prisoner. The gestures made things clear to Trentham. The moon had not gained an altitude which cannibal superstition required for the slaying of a man.
Trentham felt himself flush with hope. The savages had their faces towards him, their backs towards the prisoner. The raking of the fire had dulled the flames, and the cooking-pot partly obscured the glowing embers. There was still time.
He crept through the bushes until he had almost encircled the space upon which the savages had built their fire. Then, however, a gap of clear sand, twenty or thirty yards wide, separated him from the bush where the prisoner lay. Was it possible to cross that gap undiscovered? No friendly cloud obscured the moon; if one of the savages chanced to turn, he could not fail to see the moving figure.
Trentham looked around him. There was no cover on that stretch of sand--no bush, no bank of seaweed, no wave-cast log. But the surface was a little uneven; the winds had blown up slight mounds and hollowed shallow troughs. White-clad as he was, the white was stained and toned by water and exposure, he might perhaps crawl through the depressions without attracting attention. But it must be at a snail's pace, inch by inch, flat as a worm.
He lay on all-fours, waited a moment or two, then started on his laborious progress. The mounds seemed higher, the troughs deeper, now that he was on their level, and the yielding sand helped to cover him, though at the same time it made movement difficult. Inch by inch he crawled on, stopping at every yard to listen; he dared not raise his head to look. The savages were still jabbering. Every now and then the dull glow of the fire was brightened by a flicker, at which he lay still as a log, moving on again when the transient flame had died down.
Thus, after exertion more exhausting than if he had run a mile, he came round to the rear of the bush to which the prisoner was bound. The foliage was thin and withered. Raising himself on his knees, he saw that he could easily reach through the branches and cut the man's bonds. Would his sudden action alarm the prisoner--perhaps cause him to cry out? The man, as he could see now, had been placed face downwards, and was tied to the central stem. He was very still. Perhaps rescue was already too late. But no! As Trentham gazed, he discerned a slight movement of the head; it was as though the prisoner sought easier breathing. The moonlight revealed a bald crown and heavily bearded cheeks; it was certainly not Grimshaw, the planter who had been Trentham's fellow-passenger on the Berenisa.
Trentham was still undecided whether to risk a preliminary warning, when the movements of the savages showed that the critical moment had come. The cooking-pot had been removed from the embers and set before the leader, who plunged his hand into it, took out a small joint, and with a hollow, wailing cry flung it into the air in the direction of the moon, the other men chanting a weird chorus. Then they sprang up, gathered about the pot, and began to eat, with horrid sounds of gobbling.
'Now 's the time!' thought Trentham. Stretching forward the hand in which he held his open knife, he cut through the tendrils about the prisoner's arms and feet, and the longer strands which attached him to the bush, whispering a single word of caution. For a few moments the man lay almost as still as before, but Trentham saw that he was stretching his limbs and raising his head to look towards the fire, from which there came now only the faintest gleam. Then slowly, almost imperceptibly, he crawled backward through the bush. Trentham rose to his feet. When the man reached him, he took him by the hand and helped him to rise, then led him with cautious steps, under cover of the bush, down the beach towards the spot where the wreck in its sandy bed stood up slightly from its surroundings.
'NOW 'S THE TIME!'
Edging round this, the two men crouched below the level of the savages' heads, and in silence, one step at a time, moved along parallel with the sea-line, until they arrived at the outlying edge of the bushes which stretched up towards the foot of the chimney. Here they rose erect and quickened their pace. They were half-way to the cliffs when there was a sound of crackling. Looking over his shoulder, Trentham saw one of the savages in the act of throwing more fuel upon the fire, which suddenly broke into a bright flame. Immediately afterwards the air rang with a blood-curdling yell, and the whole troop of savages rushed towards the bush where they had left their prisoner, and swept round it in the direction of the sea.
Trentham hurried on. Panting heavily, the prisoner followed on his heels. At the foot of the chimney Hoole was waiting.
'The men are up--all's clear,' he said, flashing a look at the stranger, whose face was pallid and ghastly in the moonlight. 'Guess he 's about done,' he thought, and wondered whether his strength would hold out. 'You go first, Trentham; I 'll cover the rear.'
Trentham entered the narrow fissure, set a foot in the lowest notch, and, levering his back against the opposite wall, began to climb. The stranger, who had spoken no word, followed with nervous haste, so quickly that at the second step his head touched Trentham's boot.
'Steady! Steady!' Hoole called up in a loud whisper. 'One slip, and you 're done!'
The man paid no heed. He seemed to feel that he was on the verge of exhaustion, and must attain that giddy height while there was yet time. Hoole watched him anxiously; it would hardly be safe to follow until the man had reached the top, yet the savages were returning. He heard their yells of rage, and presently caught sight of them running up the beach in a scattered line. A few moments later a ferocious shriek proclaimed that one of them at least had espied the men climbing.
'I must chance it,' thought Hoole. 'He 's a heavy chap--if he falls.'
With the speed acquired in mountaineering, he was soon on the heels of the rescued prisoner, whose quick pants alarmed him. About sixty feet from the base the man gave a long gasp and stopped. Hoole stuck his feet firmly, bent his head, and presented an arched back. At that moment he heard a sharp whizzing sound. The man grunted, and began to climb again. Hoole followed. Something flew with a hiss past his ear, and clicked against the wall.
'Arrows!' he thought. 'I wonder what their range is.'
Up and up, foot by foot, arrows whizzing and clicking, the savages yelling with ever-increasing fury, and audible through it all the laboured breathing of the man above. Then the shooting suddenly ceased; one tremendous yell, then silence. Hoole guessed that the savages had begun to climb. But he was now a hundred feet above them; if the stranger's strength held out, they would never recover the start. Their bare feet made no sound as they clambered up; the fissure was too narrow for him to see them. Once more the stranger stopped for breath, and when Hoole stopped also, a shout of triumph, immensely loud in the narrow passage, announced that the savages were gaining. The sound seemed to give their victim new strength; he clambered more quickly than before. Presently Hoole heard Trentham's voice quietly giving encouragement. Then, looking up, he saw the man hauled over the edge, and five seconds later his shoulders were grasped by Grinson's brawny hands, and he lay among thick grass.
UP AND UP, FOOT BY FOOT, ARROWS WHIZZING AND CLICKING.
'Just saved your bacon, mister,' he said to the man beside him.
The stranger brushed the sweat from his pallid brow with his sleeve, uttered an inarticulate grunt, then fell backwards fainting.
'Batten down, Ephraim, me lad!' cried Grinson.
The seamen had turned to good account the hour they had spent alone on the cliff top. With ready resource they had cut down pliant branches from the surrounding trees, torn up saplings by the roots, and begun to construct a hurdle large enough to cover the opening. It was unfinished, but as soon as Hoole had reached the top they threw it across the gap, and hastily piled upon it the material still unused. The leading native, arriving half a minute later, found his egress blocked by this criss-cross of trunks and branches, which yielded only slightly to the butting of his head. Meanwhile, Hoole and Trentham were tearing down more branches, and casting them upon the heap, which quickly grew to such a size that Goliath himself could not have raised it.
From beneath it rose the muffled cries of the savages. Then all was silent.
CHAPTER IV
MR. HAAN
'Sprinkle a little water on his face, Meek,' said Trentham, indicating the rescued prisoner, who lay unconscious where he had fallen. 'Only a little--we have none to spare.'
'Tickle his nose,' suggested Hoole. 'Trentham, I 'll take a look round; we may be on the edge of a hornets' nest.'
'Don't lose yourself, man. In fact, you 'd better not go out of sight. It mayn't be safe to call to each other.'
The rays of the moon, now high over the sea, lit up their immediate surroundings. From the cliff edge to an irregular row of palms a few yards back, low-growing plants carpeted the ground. On one side of the chimney they were trodden down, and a faintly marked track was discernible until it disappeared among the trees. No sound broke the stillness except the wash of the surf two hundred feet below, and an occasional deep booming note from some distant spot in the forest, which Trentham identified as the call of the cassowary.
'"Saved his bacon!" Mr. Hoole said: 'tis a true word,' remarked Grinson. 'Which I mean to say, you saved him from being turned into bacon, sir--or ham. He 'd have cut up very well.'
He stood at Trentham's side, looking down at the man whom Meek was trying to restore to consciousness--a brawny figure, clad in duck trousers and a white flannel shirt, with a linen collar and a blue tie. His features were heavy, his skin was deeply browned. The crown of his head was almost entirely bald, but a thick growth of short brown hair clothed his lips, cheeks, and chin.
'The very picter of Captain Lew Summers as once I sailed with,' Grinson went on. 'How 'd he get in this mess, sir?'
'I don't know,' replied Trentham. 'He hasn't said a word.'
He thought he saw the man's eyelids flicker.
'He 's coming to, sir,' said Meek, from the ground.
'Lift his head, Ephraim,' said Grinson. 'I 'm speckylating whether his first word 'll be a curse or a blessing.'
The man slowly opened his eyes, but it seemed to Trentham, watching him intently, that he had more command over himself than might have been expected in a man recovering from a swoon. He glanced from Meek to Grinson, then to Trentham, and raising himself on his elbows looked along the track that led among the trees.
'Feel better?' asked Trentham.
'FEEL BETTER?'
For a moment he did not reply; then slowly and with a curiously thick utterance, he said:--
'Yes. You save me? Dank you.
'Not at all. Couldn't leave a white man in the hands of niggers, you know. Can you get up?'
'I dink so.' With Trentham's assistance he struggled to his feet. 'Yes. Widout you I am killed--and eat! Ach!'
'You are not an Englishman?'
'Dutch. Mate of a trade schooner dat was wrecked up de coast.'
'And the rest of the crew?'
'Dead--dead; all but me. I swim strong.'
Grinson glanced at the Dutchman's trousers, then at Meek.
'Yes, but what good?' the man went on. 'De niggers capture me. Widout you, my friend--Ach! Dey make me climb down; at de height of de moon'--(he shuddered). 'Yes, I know dem, widout you I am killed and eat. I dank you.'
'Well, it was uncommonly lucky we happened to be hereabouts,' said Trentham. 'We were in a ticklish situation ourselves.'
'Wrecked?'
The moonlight glinted on a pair of very keen eyes.
'No, we were sunk by a German raider. The boat we got away in, four of us, only escaped a shell by a hair's breadth. Did you sight the ruffians?'
'No. My schooner was wrecked up de coast. You escaped a shell! Wonderful! And you go, where?'
'We don't know. We only got ashore yesterday, and couldn't find a way up the cliffs till we discovered this crack.'
'I help you. Yes, it is a pleasure to do something for dem what save me. Dis coast, I know it a little. I was here before, since ten years, when I come wid expedition for search of--of copper. You listen to me; I show you. You go to Friedrich Wilhelmshafen; it is de German port----'
'Axing your pardon, mister,' Grinson interposed, 'you been a long voyage, surely. There ain't no German ports in New Guinea nowadays, and I lay that port have got a new name that don't break your jaw to say.'
The stranger turned his eyes on Grinson for a moment, then went on:
'It is a long way--a journey of eight or ten days. I show you. Dere is needed great care. De niggers--cannibals--you see dem. Always must we watch, and wid luck--I say wid luck--we do not fall into deir hands. Dey have villages along de coast--de coast is very dangerous, and we must go drough de forest.'
'Aren't there villages in the forest?' asked Trentham.
'In de mountains, yes,' said the Dutchman, waving an arm towards the interior. 'De coast and de mountains, dey must we avoid equally.'
'And the niggers on the beach there--where is their village?'
'On de coast somewhere, I know not where. Dey carry me far from de place where I was wrecked--five days.'
'I 'm glad of that. I mean I 'm glad we aren't near their place; it gives us a better chance. Ah! here 's the fourth of our party.'
Hoole had just reappeared at the edge of forest. 'My name is Trentham, by the way; my friend yonder is Mr. Hoole; these friends of ours, men of your own calling, are Mr. Grinson and Mr. Meek.'
'Yes. My name is Haan--H-a-a-n.'
Wondering why he had spelled the name, Trentham turned to Hoole, who had just come up.
'I followed the track some distance,' said Hoole. 'Nothing doing, except that a fiendish leech dropped on me from a tree, I suppose, and did himself rather well, confound him!' He showed his wrist. 'The beast has opened a vein, and I knew nothing about it until I got back into the moonlight and wondered how on earth I 'd cut my wrist. But there 's no sign of natives.'
Meek heaved a sign of satisfaction. Having introduced the Dutchman and explained his plight, Trentham went on:
'I think we had better get out of this at once. We haven't heard a sound from below, which suggests--doesn't it?--that the savages know another way up, probably far away. The track must lead to their village, so we 'll avoid that. Mr. Haan knows something of the country, and has offered to guide us to--what is it?'
'Friedrich Wilhelmshafen,' said Haan.
'A reg'lar tongue-twister, sir,' said Grinson. 'But it 'll change its name, like a woman, for better--couldn't be for worse!'
'Do we strike east or west?' asked Hoole.
'East,' replied Haan. 'I dink we should go an hour or two while the moon is up, den rest till morning.'
'Are there any beasts of the earth that do go forth and seek their prey by night?' asked Meek.
'Not in dis country,' the Dutchman answered. 'Dere are no dangerous beasts except de cannibals, and dey will not walk when the moon is down. We go, den; I show de way.'
Haan gazed into the sky, then went to the brink of the cliff and looked out to sea and along the coast in both directions.
'I take my bearings,' he said, returning. 'Now we start.'
He struck off almost at right angles to the native track, but instead of entering the forest strode along at a moderate pace just outside its edge, at an average distance of thirty feet from the cliff. The rest followed him in single file, Trentham leading, Meek bringing up the rear. They had taken only a few steps when Grinson halted until Meek reached his side.
'Trousers!' he said in a falsetto whisper.
'What did you say, Mr. Grinson?' asked Meek, dropping his voice to match.
'Trousers, Ephraim--the Dutchman's. Didn't you notice 'em?'
'Well, he do have a pair, as is only decent, but I can't truthfully say as I noticed anything partickler about their rig.'
'Where are your eyes, Ephraim? I 'm surprised at you! He said he swam ashore.'
'True. "I swim strong," was his words, and I can believe it, his arms and legs being such.'
'D' you believe he took his trousers off, then? S'pose he did--wouldn't they show? If you 'd used your eyes, Ephraim, me lad, you 'd 'a seen as there weren't no sign of sea-water on them trousers. 'Tis my belief they 've never been near water since they left the washtub.'
Meek looked in a puzzled way into the boatswain's eyes. Grinson winked, jerked his arm in the direction of the Dutchman, then, edging a little closer to Meek, put his head over his mouth, and whispered:
'Cut the painter.'
'What painter?'
'Hopped the twig, as they say in the dear old New Cut where I was born. Deserted, Ephraim.'
'Never!' Meek ejaculated. 'What for would he desert in a land of cannibals?'
'What do men desert for? Anything--nothing! You mind that time Ben Scruddles hooked it at Noo York? What for?'
'Well, 'twas a long time ago, and I don't rightly remember, but I 'd say 'twas because Ben didn't like the skipper's red hair.'
'Might 'a been part of it, but the main thing was that Ben was just tired--tired o' the skipper, tired o' reg'lar hours and ever-lasting dooty, tired of every blessed thing--like a horse as jibs and swears he won't pull the blessed cart another blessed inch. Anything for a change. I lay my life the Dutchman got it bad, and fancied a change. Cannibals is nothing when you feel like that; I 've felt like it myself.'
They had lagged while talking, and Hoole, looking over his shoulder, called:
'Now, men, keep up! We don't want to lose you. The moon 's going down.'
'Ay, ay, sir!' replied Grinson, in his usual bellow. 'Ephraim was talking, and he never could do two things at wunst.'
Haan meanwhile had trudged steadily on, making his path through the undergrowth that skirted the forest. The rankness of the vegetation and the uneven surface of the ground made progress very slow. It seemed to Trentham easier going near the cliff edge, where the plants were less tall; but when he made the suggestion, Haan at once rejected it.
'We go safer out of sight from de sea,' he said.
Only the swishing of their feet, a rustle as some small animal was disturbed, now and then a squeal from among the trees, broke the deep silence of the tropical night. The air was chill, but walking kept the men pleasantly warm. Gradually the moon stole down the sky behind them, and when it had disappeared Haan called a halt.
'Now we rest,' he said. 'In morning we go into de forest, until we see a hill; seamen call it Mushroom Hill, because it look like one when dey see it from de sea. When we see it, we go quicker.'
The sailors dropped their burdens, and beat down the vegetation over a space some twelve feet square. Here they all stretched themselves, and made a frugal supper. Haan helped himself to biscuits more often than Grinson liked. For a while the boatswain said nothing; at last, however, drawing the mouth of the bag together, he ventured:
'Beg pardon, sir--'twas eight days, I think you said, to the port we 're making for?'
'Yes, eight or nine,' replied Haan.
Grinson pressed down the loose end of the bag, and, exhibiting the bulk, said:
'Biscuits won't last three, Mr. Trentham, and short rations at that.'
'We get food in de forest--plenty,' said Haan.
'I 'm glad to hear that,' said Trentham. 'This one bag was all that we had time to snatch up when we took to the boat. The old piracy was gentlemanly compared with the new. As a seaman, Mr. Haan, you must feel pretty much disgusted at the dirty tricks the Germans are playing.'
'It is war,' said Haan, with a shrug. 'De ways of war, like everyding else, dey change.'
'They do indeed!' cried Trentham. 'In the old days you could fight and then shake hands; but I 'm hanged if anybody will ever want to shake hands with a German after all this devilry!'
'That's sure!' said Hoole. 'Take me for one. I 'm a citizen of the United States, and war 's not precisely our trade; but after what I 've seen, I 'm going to take a hand, if any one will have me--and I get clear of this New Guinea.'
'And I was on my way to join up,' added Trentham. 'The Raider has only made me extra keen.'
Haan grunted, and changed the subject by suggesting that they should take turns in watching through the remaining hours of the night. They were not near a village, he thought, but it was as well to adopt precautions in a land where enemies might lurk in every bush. Trentham proposed that the seamen, having loads to carry, should be let off, and it was in fact arranged that the guard should be shared by Hoole, Haan, and himself. Each would have about an hour's duty.
They were not disturbed. As soon as dawn streaked the sky they were afoot. Haan, after a preliminary scanning of the sea and as much of the coastline as was visible, plunged among the trees, followed in single file by the rest. Birds chattered with shrill cries from tree and bush, and in the half light shadowy forms darted up the trunks. Under foot all was damp; moisture dripped from every leaf, and the air was full of the odour of rotting vegetation.
'Hadn't we better stick to the cliff?' asked Trentham, dismayed at the prospect of hours of toilsome march in such an atmosphere and with twining plants clogging their steps.
'De coast winds--we save miles and miles,' said Haan briefly.
Trentham could only defer to his guide's judgment, but he felt anxious, ill at ease. He took little heed of the strange scenes through which he was passing--the graceful palms, the fantastic screw pines, trees propped on aerial roots, trees surrounded by natural buttresses springing from the trunk twenty feet above the ground. He had no eye for the orchids festooned from tree to tree, or the gorgeous blooms that hung from branches high above his head. Many-hued parrots, white cockatoos, birds of paradise, tree kangaroos, all were barely noticed, so much preoccupied was he with troublous thought. How could Haan find his way through the trackless forest? What defence had they against the natives whom they were sure to meet sooner or later? Could they survive a week's travelling and camping in an atmosphere so fetid and unhealthy?
But he kept his thoughts to himself, and even gave a reassuring nod to Grinson, when the boatswain murmured that he saw no sign of food.
'Mr. Haan told us he had been in these parts before,' he said. 'We must trust him.'
As they penetrated deeper into the forest the undergrowth became more and more dense, and the order of their going was sometimes altered, each seeking his own path. It usually happened that Haan assumed his place as leader very quickly; but once, when Trentham and Hoole together had forced their way through a mass of tangled vegetation, they found that they had lost touch with him. To their surprise, they had emerged into a comparatively clear space, beyond which they caught sight of the sea, a dark motionless plain under a leaden sky. The beach was hidden from them, but in front and to the left stretched the rugged contours of the cliffs, while to the right, behind the trees, rose the tops of lofty hills.
They were about to call for Haan, when Hoole's eye was arrested by a cloud of smoke rising from beyond the edge of the cliff.
'By gum, Trentham!' he exclaimed. 'Is there a steamer below there? Let's have a look!'
They went a few paces forward, and had just caught sight of a number of dark figures moving up and down what appeared to be a steep slope, perhaps a mile away, near the cloud, when Haan came panting up behind them, and unceremoniously pulled them back.
'Shust in time!' he said in a husky whisper, rapidly, with every sign of agitation. 'Vy--vy--vy did you leave me? You vill ruin every zing!'
'Sorry!' said Trentham, as the man continued to draw them back. 'What's the matter?'
'Shust in time!' repeated the Dutchman, as if to himself; then, aloud, and with his former slow, careful utterance: 'Dere, between us and dat place, is de village of dose niggers what capture me.'
'That accounts for the smoke,' remarked Hoole. 'We 've escaped making a bad bloomer, seemingly.'
'My word, shust in time!' said Haan. 'If I had not come! Dose niggers--you saw dem--wild men, noding can tame dem, cannibals, ferocious--if dey had seen us, dere would soon be noding of us but our bones. Never, never leave me again!'
'It was quite accidental, Mr. Haan,' said Trentham. 'The bush was so thick----'
'Yes, yes,' said the man impatiently, 'but we gain no time going separate. I lead, you follow--remember dat!'
Trentham was inclined to resent a certain peremptoriness in the Dutchman's tone, but, catching Hoole's eye, he held his peace.
'He 's a bit unstrung,' whispered Hoole, as they returned to the spot where Haan had left the seamen, 'and I don't wonder. He doesn't want to fall into their clutches a second time.'
Haan quickly recovered his equanimity, and for nearly two hours they plodded on through the forest, keeping, apparently, the coast behind them. Then suddenly, through a break in the trees, the expected landmark loomed up on their left hand.
'Dat is Mushroom Hill,' said Haan. 'We now go quicker. We go round de hill on de north side, and go quicker still--and safer. De niggers on de oder side are not so fierce; dey do not eat men. Why? Dey are nearer Friedrich Wilhelmshafen, and dey have felt de weight of de German hand.'
'Poor devils!' said Trentham involuntarily, and surprised a strange look that gleamed for an instant in the Dutchman's eyes.
'Say, how far away is that hill of yours, Mr. Haan?' asked Hoole.
'Forty miles. We take dree days.'
'Well, I guess we 'll take a little food first. We shall have to rely on our biscuits; we haven't happened on any orchards yet.'
'Plenty bread-fruit yonder,' said Haan, waving his arm towards the hill, 'and coco-palms, and pawpaws. Yes, we eat our lunch and rest. De sun is bursting drough; it will be very hot. Last night we sleep little. A nap--forty vinks you call it--will refresh us, den we go stronger.'
'A capital idea!' said Trentham. 'I say, Mr. Haan, it was lucky you found us when you did.'
'Yes,' said Haan drily. 'But we must still be on guard. We must not all sleep togeder.'
'Of course not. We 'll take turns again--we three. Let the men off. They have the hardest job, though their loads will be lighter when we start again. I 'll take first watch, then you, Hoole. Mr. Haan must be more tired than we two.'
'It is no matter,' remarked Haan, 'and I am used to a hard life. I can stand fatigue better than you two young gentlemen. But certainly I can sleep wid pleasure. Two hours--dat will give forty minutes each. Yes; and I haf no watch; de niggers strip off my coat. You wake me, Mr. Hoole, and lend me your watch, so I wake you; and I give you no more dan forty minutes--not one second.'
He laughed in a clumsily roguish way. They cleared a space and sat down to their meal of biscuits and water. Haan was the first to throw himself on his back, his bald head shaded by the spreading candelabra-like branches of a screw pine. The rest were not slaw to follow his example, except Trentham, who sat on the keg, and lit a cigarette to keep himself awake.
Eighty minutes later Hoole, having completed his spell of watching, touched Haan lightly on the shoulder. The man did not stir. He tickled his ear with a spray of some feathery plant; Haan slept on.
'I 'll give him another five minutes,' thought Hoole, yawning.
At the end of that time, by dint of poking Haan in the ribs and pinching his nose, he succeeded in waking the Dutchman.
'Awfully sorry!' he said, 'but I can scarcely keep my eyes open. Here 's my watch; be sure and not let me oversleep.'
Haan got up. His movements were slow and clumsy, but his eyes were keen and alert.
'Forty minutes, Mr. Hoole,' he said with a smile. 'Not a second more.'
He did not sit on the keg as Hoole and Trentham had done, but posted himself a few paces from the rest of the party, at a spot where the ground rose slightly. Hoole, just before he closed his eyes, saw the stout figure pacing slowly up and down.
Rather more than two hours afterwards Meek, in his sleep, threw out his left leg, and dealt Grinson, who lay at his side, a smart kick on the shin.
'Belay, there!' shouted Grinson, starting up. 'What swab--what dirty lubber----'
''Twas a nightmare, Mr. Grinson,' said Meek penitently. 'I dreamt as a kangaroo was a-coming to peck me, and----'
'Peck you! A goose might----'
He paused and looked around. Hoole and Trentham were a few yards away, fast asleep. Haan was not in sight.
'Whose watch is this, Ephraim?' asked Grinson.
'I can't rightly say, but seeing as the two gentlemen be asleep, I can't help thinking 'tis the Dutchman's.'
Grinson got up.
'If so be he was a landsman,' he said, 'he might be doing a beat like a bobby; but a seaman ought to know better.'
He walked to the left, then to the right, followed by Meek.
'Can't see the chap, nor hear him. What d' you make of it, Ephraim?'
'He can't have fell overboard--must have strayed. Give him a hail with your powerful voice, Mr. Grinson. Save us all! I forgot the cannibals! Don't holler, for mercy's sake!'
'I nearly did, but you 're right, Ephraim. I 'll report to the skipper, which I mean Mr. Trentham.'
'Eh--what? The Dutchman absent from his post?' said Trentham sleepily, when Grinson had roused him. 'Hoole, wake up!'
'Sure I haven't been asleep forty minutes yet,' said Hoole. 'And I gave Haan five minutes extra.'
'Where is Haan?'
'Where is he? He was over there.'
'Grinson says he 's missing.'
'Missing! But----' He felt for his watch. 'What's the time? I lent him my watch.'
'Ten past four.'
'What?'
Trentham showed him his watch.
'Ten past four! It was two when I gave it him! What the deuce----'
He stopped, and stared blankly at Trentham.
'What did I say, Ephraim, me lad?' said Grinson, in what he intended for a whisper.
'What's that, Grinson?' demanded Trentham. 'What did you say?'
'Well, sir, as we come along, Meek and me was saying a few things about the Dutchman's trousers, and seeing as they 'd no mark of being in sea-water, it come into my head that he didn't get ashore swimming. And from that--which I know the little ways o' seamen--I somehow couldn't help guessing that he might 'a got restless like, and hopped the twig.'
'Deserted his ship, sir,' explained Meek.
'Got a bit wild like, and gone a-roaming,' added Grinson. 'Seemingly he's got it again.'
'Nonsense!' exclaimed Trentham. 'He isn't an ass!'
'Guess we 'd better look for him,' said Hoole. 'He 's got my watch.'
CHAPTER V
IN THE TOILS
Trentham looked round. Mushroom Hill reared its strange form into the sky on their left hand--forty miles away, Haan had said. Between it and them stretched unbroken forest, an undulating sea of green. There was forest on their right, in front, behind.
'It's like looking for the proverbial needle in the bundle of hay,' he said.
'But we might track him through the undergrowth,' suggested Hoole. 'He couldn't pass without leaving traces--a big fellow, with big boots.'
'Yes; a solid-looking fellow, too; not the kind of man to do anything so mad as Grinson suggests.'
'Ah, sir, 'tis them as are the worst when the feeling gets a hold,' said Grinson. 'There was once a messmate o' mine, Job Grindle by name----'
'Really we must lose no time,' Trentham interrupted. 'The sun will be down in two hours or less. He was on that side, Hoole? Then let us start from there, and all keep together.'
They examined the slight eminence where Hoole had last seen the Dutchman. The plants were beaten down over a space of a few yards, where the man had walked to and fro; but beyond this narrow area there was no sign of footsteps in any direction.
'Very odd,' said Trentham. 'He must have gone back the way we came.'
They retraced their steps towards the clearly marked track of their course through the forest.
''Tis my belief the cannibals come up and cotched him again,' said Meek.
'But they must have passed us before they reached him,' said Trentham. 'He would have sung out.'
'And even if they took him by surprise a big fellow like him wouldn't have been overpowered without a struggle,' added Hoole. 'There 's no sign of it. And they would hardly have been satisfied with one victim when they might have had five. I guess Grinson is right, after all. Now let us look at the proposition from that point of view. Say that Haan was seized with the roaming fever--that is, was more or less mad. There's a deal of cunning in madmen, and he 'd naturally try to cover up his tracks. He would expect us to go back over our course, so that's the very way he wouldn't go. What do you say?'
'It sounds reasonable, but where are his tracks? How could he cover them?'
'Let's go back to where I last saw him. I have an idea.'
Retracing their steps to the rising ground, they examined once more the few yards which Haan had trodden. Beyond this clear space trees of various species grew somewhat thickly together. Hoole went up to them and began to look closely at the trunks.
'Ah, maybe he 's sitting up aloft a-grinning at us,' said Grinson, peering up into the foliage--'for a joke, like.'
'I never could understand a joke,' murmured Meek.
'Here you are,' cried Hoole, laying his hand on a twisted and knobby trunk. 'He shinned up here.'
There were on the bark scratches that might have been made by nails in a heavy sole. But Haan was not discoverable amid the leaves above.
'The madman!' exclaimed Trentham.
'With a madman's cunning,' said Hoole. 'Clearly he wanted to throw us off, and he deserves to be left to his fate. But, of course, we can't leave him to his fate. I suppose he went from tree to tree, and then dropped to earth again when he thought he had done us. It would be a hopeless job to attempt to track him through the foliage; but we know the direction in which he went, and I dare say we 'll find his traces not far away. Let us go on; scatter a little; the forest isn't thick hereabouts, and we can see each other a few yards apart. If we don't find him by nightfall, we shall simply have to give it up, camp for the night, and then make tracks for Mushroom Hill.'
Following his suggestion, they went forward in a line, looking up into the foliage, and closely examining the undergrowth for signs of its having been trampled down. Every now and then they stopped to listen; they dared not shout, but Hoole sometimes ventured upon a low whistle.
After they had progressed slowly for about half an hour, Meek suddenly sniffed, and caught Grinson by the arm.
'Summat burning, Mr. Grinson,' he said.
'Well, you 've a long nose, Ephraim. You 're right, me lad; I smell it myself.' He coughed lightly to attract the attention of Trentham, a few yards on his right. The four men grouped themselves. Hoole took out his revolver. They stood in silence, listening, looking in the direction from which the smell of burning came. There was no sound of crackling, no sign of smoke, and after a minute or two they went forward cautiously.
Soon they halted in astonishment. They had come upon a stretch of blackened undergrowth, upon which lay a few trees that bore the mark of an axe; others, still erect, were black for many feet from their base. The air was full of the smell of burnt wood.
'Surely the madman didn't set fire to the trees?' said Trentham.
'This wasn't done to-day,' said Hoole, touching a blackened trunk. 'It's not hot. But it wasn't long ago. Look here; the remains of a ladder.'
He had picked up at the foot of a tree what was clearly the charred remnant of a ladder of bamboo.
'Bless my eyes, sir, 'tis a village,' said Grinson. 'When I was at Moresby some years ago they showed me a photograph of one--a tree village, the little houses perched up aloft, and ladders to get to 'em. There 's been a fire, that's clear.'
'And no fire-engine,' said Meek. 'A terrible calamity, to be sure.'
Hoole had gone a few steps ahead.
'Here 's the sea,' he called. 'We 're on the edge of a cliff. And by Jove! Trentham, look here!'
The others went forward and joined him. They looked down upon a narrow ravine--a steep valley such as is called a chine in the South of England. At the foot of the thickly wooded banks a stream flowed out into a small bay almost landlocked by high cliffs. And in the middle of the bay lay a vessel--a long blue shape with a single funnel.
'The Raider!' ejaculated Grinson with an oath.
'THE RAIDER!'
'I guess you 're right,' said Hoole quietly. 'And there 's that cloud of smoke we saw in the distance this morning.'
A slight dark cloud was rising above the cliff near the vessel. It did not proceed from the Raider's funnel. Was it possible that a consort of hers lay beyond the point?
The four men, standing just within the forest verge, gazed for a few moments in silence at this unexpected scene. Then Trentham turned.
'We had better get back--to where we can see Mushroom Hill,' he said, a grave note in his voice.
'And give up Haan?' said Hoole.
'And give up Haan. Haan may go hang. Let us go at once; it 'll be dark soon.'
They retraced their steps through the burnt village, Hoole and Trentham walking side by side, the two seamen following.
'I wondered why the fellow spelt his name to us; you remember? H-a-a-n,' said Trentham. 'It's clear as daylight now. He 's a German; was on that raider; a petty officer, I suppose; his name 's Hahn.'
Hoole whistled under his breath.
'They played some devilry with the natives, I suppose,' Trentham went on; 'burnt their village, very likely; Hahn strayed and got collared--and we saved one of the ruffians who sunk us!'
'And he 's got away and rejoined--with my watch!' cried Hoole. 'What an almighty fool I was! And I gave him five minutes' extra sleep! That stings, Trentham, and will till my dying day.'
'He beat us: in slimness the Hun always will. I haven't a doubt he was playing tricks with us all the time. His Mushroom Hill--faugh!'
'You mean?'
'I mean that I don't believe that's our way at all. He reckoned on our getting hopelessly lost--starving--falling into the hands of the savages.'
'Well, for my part, I 'd as soon fall into their hands as the Germans'. You don't think he 'll send the Huns after us, then?'
'Not he! I don't suppose he 'll mention us, thinking us well out of the way. He 'll probably pitch some tall yarn about his clever escape from the cannibals--very likely write a book about it. Upon my word, Hoole, after what we know----'
'Well, I reckon we 're done pretty brown, but I 'm not inclined to give him best. We 'll get to Friedrich What-do-you-call-it in spite of him, and not by Mushroom Hill either. We 'll stick to the coast--confound him! He was so precious careful to keep us away from it.'
'We can only try; it's a ticklish affair, Hoole.'
'I know it is, old son. The food question.'
'Don't worry about that. Where there are men there must be food.'
'That's true; but I 'd rather find the food where there weren't men, if the men are like those dancing hoodlums on the beach. One thing; the Hun's frightfulness has probably scared away all the natives from these parts, so we 'll be able to rest in peace to-night and start afresh in the morning.'
'I hope so. We had better camp where Hahn left us; I 'll tell the men there.'
They went on over their former tracks. A wind was rising, and the foliage overhead rustled like the hissing of breakers on a shingly beach. Conversation ceased; each was busy with his own uneasy thoughts. The rays of the setting sun filtered through the trees from behind them, and presently they came in sight of the open space where Hahn had deserted them. And then the two young men suddenly halted; Trentham wheeled round and put his fingers over his lips in sight of the seamen.
In the middle of the clearing, just where Grinson had lain, a dark, naked figure was stooping and closely examining the ground. He had his back to them, but a moment after they had stopped he sprang up suddenly and turned towards them, his head raised like that of a wild animal that scents danger. For a few moments he stood motionless in the full glow of the sunlight--a tall lithe figure, like a statue in bronze. His right hand clutched a spear.
The watchers had time to notice his well-proportioned form; his colour, lighter than that of the natives they had already seen; a grace of bearing that gave him an indefinable distinction; then he was gone, as if by magic. Where he had been he was no longer; it was as if he had dissolved like Pepper's ghost.
After waiting a little, Hoole stole forward to reconnoitre. The space was vacant; there was no sign of savages lurking among the surrounding trees. He returned to the others.
'No one there,' he said under his breath.
'D' you think he saw us?' asked Trentham.
'No. I couldn't see you from the edge. But he was uneasy.'
'So am I! We had better avoid that spot. I 'd rather not meet any more natives just yet! We had better go rather deeply into the forest, and perch up in trees for the night. There 's only about half an hour of daylight left; we shall probably be pretty safe in the dark. In daylight--well, we shall have to look out.'
They had spoken in whispers. The seamen had watched them anxiously; Grinson, usually talkative enough, had not uttered a word for some time. Trentham in a few sentences explained his plan; then led the way with Hoole into the forest, in a direction at right angles to their former course.
The dying sunlight scarcely penetrated the thick canopy above them. The greenish gloom lent pallor to their cheeks. They stumbled, on through the brushwood, which grew more densely where the overhead leafage was thin. The wind had dropped as suddenly as it had arisen. They heard nothing but the swish of their feet through the vegetation and the fitful calls of night birds just awaking. Presently, however, Hoole stopped and whispered:
'Did you hear that?'
'What?'
'Some sound--I don't know what.'
'I heard nothing.'
They went on.
'There again!' said Hoole, a few seconds later. He looked round apprehensively. A slight groan came from Meek.
'What's the matter?' asked Trentham in a whisper, sharply. His nerves were a little on edge.
'I seed a face, sir,' murmured the man, staring into the gloom.
'Nonsense! It's too dark to see anything. We 'll stop in a few minutes, when it's quite dark; but we must get as far as we can from where we saw that native.'
They had not advanced more than a dozen yards when Hoole made a sudden dash among the bushes. The rest halted, drawing quick breaths. He came back after half a minute's absence.
'I distinctly heard a sound there,' he explained. 'No; it's not jumpiness. But I couldn't see any one or anything. I vote we stop, Trentham. We shall lose our bearings utterly if we go too far into the forest, where we can't see the sun to-morrow.'
'I think you 're right. Now to find trees we can climb, and big enough to give us safe perches. Grinson, put down your bag and have a look round.'
The boatswain had just risen from stooping to the ground; the others were standing by, looking up for broad forks which promised security, when with a sudden whish that took them all aback the brushwood around them parted and a score or more of dusky natives burst into the ring. Before they could raise a finger in self-defence they were thrown headlong, and sinewy hands were knotting pliant tendrils about their arms and legs, while others held them down. In a few minutes the binding was finished. The captors collected, and jabbered away among themselves. One of them had opened the bag, and was munching a biscuit. The bag was wrenched from his hands; and the four prisoners, lying on their backs, watched the gleeful savages consume their whole stock of provisions to the last crumb.
A SCORE OF DUSKY NATIVES BURST INTO THE RING.
CHAPTER VI
THE TOTEM
'They won't eat us now, will they, Mr. Grinson?' said Meek in a whisper, hopefully.
Grinson swore.
'Not after them biscuits, Mr. Grinson?' Meek persisted.
'Stow it, can't you?' growled Grinson. 'This ain't a time for jokes.'
Meek was so much astonished at being accused of joking that his jaw dropped, and he eyed the boatswain sadly. His expression turned to anguish as he listened to the low-toned conversation between Hoole and Trentham.
'We 're fairly in the cart,' said the former. 'See any way out?'
'No. We 're still alive. They might have killed us--those spears!'
'Better if they had, perhaps. Waiting is the deuce!'
'If we could only speak to them!'
'Try right now. Perhaps some of them know pidgin.'
'You boys belongina this place?' began Trentham in loud tones. 'You savvy English fella? English he like him black fella man too much, come this place look out black fella man, no fighting black fella man.'
The natives had stopped jabbering.
'You savvy all same what English fella man he say?' Trentham asked.
There was no answer. The Papuans, squatting in a line, gave an inarticulate grunt, then resumed their talk.
'No good!' said Trentham. 'They evidently haven't been to the ports. Very little chance for us with savages of the interior.'
'What are they waiting for, then? Look, that's the fellow we saw a while ago.'
The young native whom they had seen examining their tracks came out of the gloom, stood before the squatting men, and spoke to them. They stared at the four prisoners and grunted; the speaker disappeared among the trees.
'He 's left them on guard, and gone to report at headquarters,' said Trentham. 'A brief respite.'
'Till the rising of the moon, I suppose. Well, old boy, I hope it 'll be short--and both together.'
Trentham was silent. He had had many anxious moments since the Raider's first shell had flown screaming over the deck; but it was with a shock of a totally different kind that he now found himself looking with open eyes upon the imminence of death. To a man in health death is unrealisable. But he remembered those hideous figures on the beach, the pig's squeal, and he shuddered.
There was barely light enough to distinguish the savages from their surroundings; but it seemed to him, from their general appearance, that they were of the same tribe as the dancers--possibly they were the dancers themselves. In that case, baulked of one victim, they were only too likely to make the most of the four who had now fallen into their hands. It was not to be hoped that they would relax their watchfulness. Would their leader return at the rising of the moon?
Complete darkness enwrapped them. The blacks talked on endlessly, breaking at times into boisterous laughter.
'Have you tried the knots, Grinson?' Trentham asked.
'Did that first go off, sir,' replied the boatswain in doleful accents. 'I couldn't have tied 'em better myself.'
Each of the prisoners had in fact already wriggled and strained at his bonds, with total unsuccess.
They lay silent again. Presently Grinson let out a torrent of expletives with something like his old vigour. The others questioned him.
'Skeeters!' he cried furiously. 'They 're all over me, and I can't rub my nose.'
Hitherto insects had troubled them little, and the advent of mosquitoes was likely to enhance their physical discomfort.
'I guess we 're near water,' remarked Hoole; 'perhaps that stream we saw running into the bay. Have the mosquitoes bit you, Trentham?'
'Not yet.'
'Nor me. They 've taken a fancy for Grinson.'
'I 'm willing they should have a bite at me,' said Meek, 'if so be they 'd let Mr. Grinson alone.'
Grinson swore again; in his present mood Meek's devotion was only less irritating than the stabs of the insects.
A glint of moonlight stole through the trees, and revealed the faces of some of the natives--ugly faces of rusty black, daubed with red and white. The prisoners felt their heart-beats quicken. But though the moonbeams lengthened the savages made no move, nor did their leader return.
The hours dragged on. One after another the four men slumbered uneasily, waking with sudden starts and tremors, always to hear the harsh voices of their guards. Towards morning they slept heavily, and were only awakened by the touch of hands upon their legs. In the dim greenish light they saw that the savages had been rejoined by the young man who had left them in the evening, and by another native resembling him, but a good deal older, wearing a high plume of feathers. The bonds about the prisoners' legs were released; they were hauled to their feet, and the two leaders made signs that they were to march. So cramped that they could scarcely move their limbs, they followed their leaders; the Papuan guards, all armed with spears, tramping in single file behind them.
'Your poor face is all swollen, Mr. Grinson,' said Meek, with a look of commiseration.
'Shut your face!' growled the boatswain ill-temperedly.
With their arms still bound firmly to their sides, the prisoners, faint with hunger, stumbled through the forest, at the heels of the two leaders, along a well-worn track. It crossed deeply wooded ravines, shallow streams; wound round steep bluffs on which no trees grew. Presently they came to a wide clearing where naked children were running about, and women were busy with cooking. At their appearance, men came scrambling down ladders from the trees beyond, exchanged a few excited words with their escort, and, shouting with delight, joined themselves to the party.
'Quite a Roman triumph,' said Hoole with a sickly smile.
'Roman?' said Trentham, roused from the listlessness into which he had fallen. 'Those fellows in front might almost be Romans, bar the colour.'
'They 're a better breed than the crowd behind. Don't look like cannibals.'
'D' ye hear that?' Meek whispered to Grinson. 'Mr. Hoole says they ain't cannibals.'
'Mr. Hoole won't be the fust,' growled the boatswain.
Meek was half a minute or so in seeing the connection between Grinson's reply and his own statement. When light dawned, he contemplated the boatswain's rotundity with mournful composure.
The procession was swelled by accretions from two more villages during the next hour. Some of the new-comers pressed close to the prisoners, now almost overcome by heat, hunger, and weariness, and discussed them excitedly. Hoole and Trentham walked on with nonchalant disregard; Meek wore a deprecating look; Grinson turned upon them a truculent countenance, disfigured by the mosquitoes' attentions.
Another hour had passed; the captives were on the verge of collapse, even Grinson's face had lost its ruddy hue, when, emerging from the forest, they found themselves in a clearing several acres in extent, divided off into plots on which crops of various kinds were growing. Beyond stood a line of neatly thatched huts, and in the distance was what appeared to be a closely built stockade. A broad road ran through the midst of the settlement. At the approach of the procession, now some sixty strong, women and children flocked from the fields and gathered, wondering spectators, on the road, and men sprang up from the ground in front of the huts, and hastened to meet the new-comers.
The elder of the two leaders turned round and shouted a few words. All but ten of the Papuans halted. The ten continued their march behind the prisoners, through a lane between two of the huts, until they arrived at a narrow gateway in the stockade. This, on nearer view, proved to be a formidable wall of pandanus trunks cemented with earth, and with an earthen parapet that bore a strange resemblance to the machicolations of a mediæval castle.
The gate was thrown open; the two leaders, the prisoners, and their escort passed through, and the scene that met the white men's eyes filled them with astonishment. On either side stood a row of neat wooden houses with gabled roofs and long window openings. The woodwork showed crude attempts at decoration in red and white. In the centre was a larger, loftier building than the rest, also of wood, but constructed like a rough imitation of a castle keep.
Within this inner enclosure there were none but men, all of good stature, well proportioned, and with the arched nose and straight hair which the prisoners had remarked in the two leaders of the procession. In colour they were a bright bronze, contrasting forcibly with the lustreless black of the Papuan escort.
A few yards from the central building the prisoners were halted, and the young leader went forward alone, disappearing within an arched doorway. In a few minutes he returned, accompanied by a tall old man with white hair and wrinkled brow, naked like the others, except for a broader loin-cloth and a heavy gold chain, curiously wrought, about his neck.
'"The noblest Roman of them all!"' quoted Hoole, under his breath. 'Where on earth are we?'
The apprehensions of all the prisoners, were for the moment smothered by surprise and wonderment.
At the appearance of the old man in the doorway, the ten Papuans fell on one knee, like courtiers before a king. The chief gazed fixedly at the white men, appraising them one after another. A cruel smile dawned upon his face--a smile that in an instant revived in the prisoners the worst of their fears. During the march Trentham had buoyed himself with the hope that these natives of a higher type might turn out to be friendly; the hope died within him now. The chief had evidently heard all about the prisoners from the young man who had visited him during the night. He had now come to pronounce their doom.
'Rhadamanthus,' murmured Hoole. 'Try him with pidgin, Trentham. He hasn't heard our defence.'
'Chief, we English fella,' cried Trentham. 'Come this side look out black fella man; no fighting this time.'
The old man beckoned to one of the men who had come from the houses right and left, and now stood spectators of the scene. The man came forward, and after the chief had addressed a few words to him in his own tongue, he said to Trentham:
'White fella man no belongina this place. White fella man come this place, make fire houses belongina black fella man, fight black fella man all same too much; white man he belongina die.'
Trentham understood from this that he and his friends were supposed to be connected with the white men who had recently burnt the tree village and ill-treated the natives.
'We no belongina bad fella man,' he hastened to explain. 'Like you fella, no like bad fella come ship stop this place; ship no belongina me.'
The interpreter translated to the chief, who listened with a derisive air, shrugged his shoulders, and threw out his hands, and made answer:
'Chief he say all belongina gammon: you come all same place other white fella man, no look out good alonga him. He finish talk alonga you.'
'The Huns have queered our pitch,' said Trentham to Hoole, with a wry smile. 'We are at their mercy.'
'Wish I had my hands free,' said Hoole. 'What's the end to be?'
One of the Papuans, with every sign of humility, was addressing the chief. Into the old man's eyes crept the cruel smile which had already caused the prisoners to shiver. He spoke a few words; the Papuans sprang up gleefully, crowded about the white men, and jabbered with excitement. They gave scarcely a glance at Meek, who stood in his usual drooping attitude, open-eyed with fright. They stared critically at the two younger men, seemed to dispute for a few moments, then turned to Grinson and began to poke him in the ribs. The boatswain glared, cursed, kicked, only to be caught by the leg and thrown to the ground. Hoole and Trentham made a movement towards him, but were instantly seized by the natives standing by. After a vain struggle, Grinson lay inert. The Papuans hauled him to his feet, and marched him away towards the gate.
'Good-bye, Mr. Trentham; good-bye, Mr. Hoole!' he shouted. 'So long, Ephraim, me lad! The anchor's weighed. Remember me.'
Pale to the lips, the three others watched the chief as he followed the indomitable seaman with his eyes. When the gate was shut he turned to the young native who had first discovered the white men, and spoke to him, using, as it appeared to Trentham, a dialect differing somewhat from that in which he had addressed the Papuan and the interpreter. Now and then it had a nasal quality that reminded Trentham of French, and presently he caught a word or two that sounded like debased forms of French words he knew.
A drowning man will catch at a straw, and Trentham, incredible though it appeared that the natives hereabout should be familiar with French, as a last hope determined to try the effect of a word or two in that language.
'Monsieur parle français?' he said, using the first phrase that occurred to him, and anxiously watching the chief.
Both the old man and the young looked at him with astonishment.
'Monsieur parle français?' he repeated.
'Oui, flançais,' said the chief, and went on speaking in a gibberish which, though it had a French intonation, was utterly incomprehensible to Trentham.
'Nous sommes amis des Français,' he said.
'Oui, amis,' echoed the chief, and talked on. Then, apparently seeing that Trentham was bewildered, he called up the interpreter, and spoke to him in the Papuan dialect he had formerly used.
'Chief he say you savvy him talk, say you come this place belongina ship. What for come this place?'
Trentham almost despaired of finding his resources of pidgin English suffice to explain the situation of himself and his companions. But conscious how much depended on him, he did his best.
'Me belongina English ship; bad fella belongina another ship, he fighting me, no more ship. He no like white fella man; come fight this time black fella belongina all place. English fella man like Flansai fella, no like Toitsche fella--you savvy all same?'
He clenched his fist, and shook it in the direction where he supposed the Raider to lie. The explanation, translated, seemed to excite the chief, who turned to his young compatriot and entered into an animated discussion with him.
While they were still talking, the gate in the wall was once more thrown open, and to the white men's utter amazement, Grinson marched in at the head of a procession of his captors. His arms were unbound, his face was wreathed in smiles, his body was bare to the waist.
GRINSON MARCHED IN AT THE HEAD OF A PROCESSION.
'Ahoy, messmates!' he cried at the top of his voice, rather hoarsely. 'Beg pardon, young gents, but I mean to say--oh, cripes! Ephraim, me lad, I never thought I 'd see you again, 'cept as a ghost. Am I drunk? No, but I 'm darned merry, which I mean to say--I say, old cock,' turning to a Papuan, 'get me a drink--get us all a drink, and we 'll drink your health and say no more about it.' He raised his arm, and kissed a spot just below his shoulder. 'Kiss it too, ugly mug! Come on, all you lubbers, kiss it, or I 'll never love you no more!'
And to his friends' amazement the Papuans came to him one by one, and reverently kissed the spot, Grinson beaming on them.
'That's right! It tickles, and I don't like your ugly nose bones, but you 've good 'earts. No, you don't--once is enough,' he cried to a man who offered the salute a second time.
'"When I was young and had no sense!"--no, blamed if it wasn't the most sensiblest thing ever I did, and that's saying something.' He had now come up to his amazed companions. 'There it is--that's what done it. "A sweet little cherub what sits up aloft,"--beg pardon, sir, I feels like singing all the time. That's what done it!' He displayed his arm, on which was the blue tattooed effigy of a bird of paradise. 'They peeled off my shirt, and there was I looking for 'em to plunge the knife into my bare bussum, when dash me if they didn't start back with horror like as if I 'd the smallpox--and me vaccinated, too, twice, on this very arm. 'Twas the bird what done it, like the strawberry mark what proved to the Marchioness of Mayfair that the dustman was her long-lost son and heir, stole from his cradle by the lady's maid she 'd sacked for swilling of her eau de colony. The ugly mugs take me for a long-lost brother, and dash me if I ain't the best-looking of the family, Ephraim, me lad.'
While the hilarious mariner was reeling off his yarn, the Papuans had explained to the chief that, having discovered on his arm the image of the totem of their tribe, they had brought him back, to exchange him for one of the other prisoners, unless they too should prove to be sacrosanct. To their intense discontent, the chief had refused to allow them even to examine the arms of the three men; and while Trentham and his companions were still digesting the astounding story told by Grinson, the crestfallen savages stole out of the gate in sullen ill-humour.
CHAPTER VII
REMINISCENCES
'A most fortunate coincidence, Grinson, that you happened to be tattooed with the totem mark of these strange people,' said Trentham. 'But for that we might all have gone into the pot in turn.'
The four men were seated in a hut placed at their disposal by the chief, appeasing their famishment with a variety of more or less unfamiliar foods.
'Ay, ay, sir!' returned the boatswain; 'though I never heard it called a totem mark afore. True, my head was spinning like a teetotum when 'twas done, and if I 'd been a teetotaller--upon my word, sir, 'tis the remarkablest thing I ever heard on. Ephraim, me lad, you can bear me out: wasn't that the only time you ever saw me squiffed?'
'Which time was that, Mr. Grinson?' asked Meek.
'Why, the time I had this 'ere teetotum mark pricked into my biceps.'
'I 'm bound to say as how that was one of the times you was a trifle overcome, though nothing to what you might have been.'
'True, if I 'd been overripe they couldn't 'a done it, nor if I 'd had nothing at all, which it shows the good o' moderation, gentlemen. I was just comfortable; you know--when you 're pleased with everything and everybody. 'Twas like this. I was never like most sailormen, as gets tattooed their first voyage, and ever after has the sins o' their youth staring 'em in the face--like Ephraim, poor lad.'
Meek looked guiltily at his long bony wrists and tried to draw his sleeves down over the blue anchors tattooed on them.
'No,' Grinson went on, 'I was never a man for show. Well, some messmates of mine didn't understand my modest spirit, and laid their heads together for to give me the hall-mark as proves a seaman sterling, you may say. Ben Trouncer was at the bottom of it: the slyest sea-dog of a fellow you ever set eyes on. He come to me one night when I happened to be alone, all but Ephraim, in the bar-parlour of the "Jolly Sailors," and says, "Going to the meeting on Wednesday, Josy?" says he. "What meeting?" says I. "You don't mean to tell me you don't know!" says he. "I 'd never have believed it. All the others are going; meeting to form a sailors' goose club," says he. "Fust I heard of it," says I. "What's a goose club?" "Why," says he, "you pay so much a week, and at Christmas every sailor-man gets a goose, wherever he is--Melbourne, Shanghai, Buenos Ayres, anywhere you like. Fancy you not knowing of it! Why, they all expect you to be made treasurer of the club. Let's have another pot, and I 'll tell you all I knows."
'Well, Ben went on talking like a gramophone as won't run down--about subscriptions and foreign agents, and what a heap of money there 'd be to take charge of, and he hoped I 'd be made treasurer, because some of 'em wanted a scag called Joe Pettigrew, a fellow you wouldn't trust with the price of a pot of four-half, which I agreed with, and said if Joe was made treasurer he 'd get no subscriptions out of me. "Well," says Ben, "Joe 's the only man I 'm afraid of, and I 'll tell you why. Them as wants him are going to propose that no one as ain't tattooed is to be edible for membership--see? Just to keep you out, 'cos they know there ain't a speck of blue about you." "Ho!" says I. "That 's their game. Well, they can make Joe treasurer, and he 'll pinch all your money, but not mine, 'cos I can't join, not if I want to."
'Well, he calls for another pot and goes on talking, and by long and short he worked me up to believe as how the whole thing would bust up if I wasn't treasurer, and the picture he drored of the sailorman going without his Christmas goose was worse than onions for tickling your eyeballs. Then he told me how I 'd take the wind out o' Joe's sails if I had a nice fat goose tattooed on my shoulder out of sight, and spring it on 'em when they was cocksure I wasn't edible for membership. Having had three or four pots, the notion tickled my fancy, and I had it done by a Jap as was the cleverest hand at tattooing you ever set eyes on. Ben had left him in the bar till he talked me over.
'Well, I went to the meeting, and Joe and his mates sniggered when they saw me. Ben proposed the club; carried unanimous. Some one else proposed about the tattooing; carried unanimous. Then Ben proposed me for treasurer. Up jumps one of Joe's friends and said I couldn't be treasurer, 'cos I couldn't even be a member, not being tattooed. "Ho!" says I, "who says I ain't tattooed?" They laughed. "Who don't know that?" says they. "Ho!" says I, "you knows a lot," and I stripped and showed 'em the finest goose as ever hung in Leadenhall Market.
'WHO SAYS I AIN'T TATTOOED?'
'Well, after that they made me treasurer, unanimous, even Joe voting for me, which it surprised me at the time. Then Ben said that, me being treasurer, 'twas for me to propose what the subscription should be. "Right," says I. "Then I propose three-pence a week." I was fair flabbergasted when Ben got up and spun a long yarn which I couldn't make head or tail on, and ended by proposing they didn't have no subscription at all. Carried unanimous. It was a plant, you see, gentlemen. I was fair done. There never was no goose club, and only one goose, and that was me, my mother said when I told her all about it.'
'And your goose is a bird of paradise,' said Trentham.
'A bird of---- Ho, here 's ugly mug! What might he want now?'
In the open doorway stood the interpreter.
'Chief he say white man fella come alonga him,' said the man, looking at Trentham.
'A royal command,' remarked Trentham, rising. 'I 'll try to get him to provide us with guides to Wilhelmshafen.'
Some ten minutes after Trentham's departure the rest were startled by a long-drawn howl, like the sound of hundreds of men hooting an unpopular speaker.
'Blue murder!' exclaimed Grinson, as he hurried with the others to the doorway. The noise came from beyond the stockade. The gate was shut, and the natives within the enclosure were strolling about with no appearance of concern. Trentham was not visible.
'I 'm afeard they 've took Mr. Trentham instead,' said Meek lugubriously.
'Nonsense!' cried Hoole. 'That wasn't a cry of delight. But I 'll just run across to the chief's house; Mr. Trentham is probably there.'
At the entrance of the house he was stopped by two natives, armed with spears, who stood there on guard.
'You there, Trentham?' he called into the interior.
'Yes; I 'll be with you shortly,' came the answer.
Reassured, Hoole returned to the hut.
'It's all right, Meek,' he said. 'Don't get the wind up.'
'No, Ephraim, me lad,' said Grinson, 'don't strain at your anchor. 'Tis your great fault.'
It was half an hour or so before Trentham rejoined them.
'The strangest story I 've ever heard,' he said. 'It wasn't easy to make out that fellow's pidgin English, but I 'll tell you what I understand of it. Long ago, soon after the beginning of the world, a big ship came ashore after a great storm. (That's our wreck, of course.) The ship's white chief, a great medicine-man, had come to assist the forefathers of this tribe, then at war with many powerful neighbours. By the power of his fire magic--blunderbusses, no doubt--their enemies were defeated; but I suppose his ammunition gave out, for, as the chief put it, the fire magic was lost.
'The ship's captain was evidently a Frenchman. Finding it impossible to leave the island, he and his crew settled down and took wives among the tribe, and became the ruling caste. The present chief is probably the great-grandson of the Frenchman; he has no idea how old he is, or how many generations come between him and his ancestor. From the portrait of Louis XVI. we saw in the cabin, it's pretty clear that this happened a hundred and twenty odd years ago. In that time, of course, the French stock has degenerated; as you heard, they 've retained a word or two of the French language, and they 've tried to keep themselves select by banishing from their inner enclosure all who take after the aborigines in feature, retaining only those who have something of the European cast of face. That, as I understood the story, has led to trouble. It's a case of plebs and patricians over again. The patricians are gradually weakening, the plebs becoming stronger; and the chief seems to be decidedly jumpy; his authority is waning. You heard that howl just now?'
'We did,' replied Hoole. 'Meek made sure you 'd been thrown to the dogs.'
Trentham smiled.
'The fact is, the plebs were disappointed of their feast. They are cannibals; the patricians are not. A big fellow came up as spokesman of the plebs, and declared they must have one of us four. Grinson is protected by his goose, and the chief wouldn't give them you, Hoole, or me, because we know French. But he suggested that we might dispense with Meek.'
'Me, sir!' cried Meek.
'Yes. I gathered that the chief was anxious to conciliate his rather unruly subjects, and I had a good deal of difficulty in begging you off, pointing out (I hope you don't mind) that you are rather lean and scraggy----'
'Danged if that ain't too bad!' cried Meek with unwonted vehemence.
'Well, really, I thought it the best way to get you off.'
''Tis not that I mind, sir--not at all, and I 'm obliged to you. I was always skin and bone, no matter what I eat----'
'Like the lean cattle in the Bible, Ephraim,' said Grinson, 'what ate up the fat uns and you 'd never have knowed it.'
'True, so I was born,' Meek went on, 'and so I must be. But the idea of eating me, just because I never had no goose pricked on my arm nor can't parly-voo! Danged if there 's any justice in this world--not a morsel.'
'Well, you 're safe now, anyway,' said Hoole, smiling. 'Did you hear anything about Hahn, Trentham?'
'Yes. It appears that the numbers here have recently been increased by the influx of people from one or two small coast villages that have been destroyed by the Germans. This place, being farther from the sea, has escaped as yet; but the chief is rather alarmed, and has scouting parties constantly out to give warning if the white men from the ship approach. Apparently Hahn fell into the hands of one of those parties. The chief told me that a white man had been taken down to the shore to be sacrificed in the hope of averting disaster. The sacrificial party has not returned yet, and I thought it wiser to say nothing about the rescue of the victim; it wouldn't tend to make us popular with the plebs. The worst of it is, the chief seems to think we 'll be useful to him. When I talked about his helping us to get away he suddenly became deaf, and I couldn't help judging from his manner that he wants to keep us, either to prop him up against his troublesome people, or to protect him from the Germans. We had better humour him for the moment. At any rate we shall get food. By and by we can take our bearings, possibly make or get hold of a canoe. It's no good our attempting to make our way overland to Wilhelmshafen through a country infested by cannibals.'
'And precious little good our staying to help him against the Germans with nothing but a revolver and our knives,' said Hoole. 'Still, there 's nothing else for it. If we can gain the people's confidence they may help us in the end--especially if the Raider clears off, and I guess it won't remain in these waters for ever. But it's deuced unpleasant.'
'Ay, and there 's neither justice nor mercy in this world,' sighed Meek. 'Eat me! Br-r-r!'
CHAPTER VIII
A RECONNAISSANCE
The hut allotted to the four white men, like all the others in the inner enclosure, was built of logs, and in shape resembled an expanded sentry-box. It had no furniture except a few grass mats laid upon the earthen floor, and a clumsy rack of sticks, containing some crude platters of clay, and a couple of heavy wooden clubs. Worn out by their recent experiences, the occupants slept soundly through their first night as the chief's guests, only disturbed at intervals by the visitations of cockroaches which the darkness drew from crevices in the walls.
Next morning they were given a breakfast of bananas and nuts, and water brought to them in long bamboo stalks, which had been cleaned of their partitions except at the end.
'We are not supposed to wash,' remarked Trentham, 'and we can't shave; before long we shall all be as hairy as Meek.'
Meek looked apologetic, and Grinson passed a hand over his cheeks and chin, already dark with stubble.
'A regular Jack ashore, sir,' he said, 'and no barber round the corner. What is to be will be, and I only hope I make a better show than Ephraim; his whiskers ain't much of an ornament, I must say.'
'I ought to have shaved young,' sighed Meek. ''Tis too late now, Mr. Grinson.'
'Truly, Ephraim, you 've lost your chance, poor lad. But you might look worse, that's one comfort.'
While they were at breakfast the man who had interpreted on the previous day came with a message from the chief. They were free to move about the enclosure, but the gate was forbidden them.
'We 're prisoners, then,' said Hoole.
'I fancy he doesn't trust the cannibals outside,' said Trentham. 'For the present I dare say we are safer where we are. But I don't know how we are to kill time.'
'Here you are, sir,' said Grinson, producing a greasy pack of cards. 'A rubber or two 'll be good for the digestion. Ephraim plays a good hand, though you might not think it.'
While they were playing cards a man came from the chief's house and looked in on them through the doorway. His shadow caused them to glance up, and Hoole and Trentham recognised him as the patrician leader of the party from whom they had rescued Hahn. They wondered whether the recognition was mutual, feeling that it might go hardly with them if they were known; but the man, after a prolonged stare of curiosity, departed without giving any sign of suspicion. It came out afterwards that his party, finding the chimney blocked, had had to wait for the ebb tide and then walk for some miles along the shore before they reached a practicable path up the cliffs. They had then returned to the chimney, removed the obstruction from its top, and sought to track the fugitives; but they had lost the trail in the forest.
Several days passed--days of tedium and growing irritation. The prisoners were given regular meals of bananas, sweet potatoes, and other roots, sometimes a bird or a pig; but movement beyond the stockade was still interdicted. They saw nothing of the chief, and one day, when Trentham sent him a message, asking that they might be allowed to go out and see what the Germans were doing, the answer was that he was sick, and could not attend to them until he was out and about again. Hoole suggested that it was a diplomatic illness, but the sight of the hideously painted figure of the tribal medicine-man going every day into the chief's house seemed to show that the reason given was genuine.
One afternoon there were signs of much excitement in the village. From beyond the stockade came a babel of voices; a man admitted through the gate gave those within some news which appeared to agitate them, and a few minutes after he had entered the chief's house the interpreter came running to the hut, and said that the chief wished to see the 'white man fella' at once.
'Release at last!' said Trentham when he returned. Alone of the four, Meek showed no sign of pleasure.
'The old fellow is in a pretty bad way,' Trentham went on. 'The medicine-man was chanting incantations over him, and he looked pathetically resigned. He had just heard bad news. It appears that his son, whose name I understood to be Flanso--a corruption of François, I fancy--went out yesterday with a small scouting party, and had just got through that burnt village when they were surprised by a number of white men and collared; only the messenger escaped. Among the party was Kafulu, the head-man of the natives outside, and it's to that fact we owe our chance. I offered to go out and see if I could discover what had become of the prisoners, anticipating the chief's request. He jumped at it, and told me that the cannibals outside, when they understand what our errand is, won't do us any harm. But only you and I are to go, Hoole; the others must remain as hostages.'
'A dirty trick, sir,' said Meek. 'As sure as your back is turned, they 'll eat me; I know they will.'
'Don't you take on, Ephraim,' said Grinson. ''Tis true I 'd rather go with the gentlemen, but I 'll protect you, me lad. Before they eat you, they 'll have to cook my goose.'
Early next morning, Hoole and Trentham started with half a dozen of the chief's best men and the interpreter. Hoole had his revolver, Trentham a spear like those with which the escort were armed. They marched rapidly through the forest, reached the burnt village about midday, and found there the bodies of two of the scouting party, shot by the Germans. From this point they moved with great circumspection, the guide leading them through a maze of vegetation by a winding track that bore downhill, crossing narrow gullies and swift hill streams.
Late in the afternoon they entered a tract of country strewn with rounded boulders, which had no doubt been brought down in remote ages by glacial action from the mountain range in the interior. Here the ground sloped steeply to the edge of the cliffs, and they had a view far over the sea. Deprived of cover by the lack of vegetation, they bore away towards the forest on the right. Though they had approached by a different route, the white men now recognised the spot from which they had caught sight of the Raider lying in the cove below the cliffs. Half-way down the forest-clad slope Trentham called a halt.
'We know where we are now, Hoole,' he said, 'and I think we had better leave the natives here under cover while we go on by ourselves. They 'll be no good to us in reconnoitring, and the fewer the better on a job like this.'
He instructed the interpreter to remain with the men on guard, and if not rejoined by nightfall, to return to the village.
A very rough and narrow track led through the trees and scrub with which the whole face of the cliff was covered. The two men crept cautiously down this for some distance; then it occurred to Hoole that it would be safer to make a way of their own through the bush, for at some turn of the track they might suddenly meet some one ascending, or emerge unexpectedly into view from the beach. Accordingly they turned off to the right, and continued their course as quickly as possible under cover, moving parallel with the track.
Not many minutes had passed before they had reason to be glad that the precaution had occurred to Hoole in time. Less than a hundred yards below the spot where they had quitted the track they came to the edge of a space from which the vegetation had been cleared away. The path ran through this, and at one side of it stood a rough log hut where a German sailor, armed with a rifle, was standing on guard. Trentham, a little in advance of Hoole, was the first to catch sight of the man. He motioned to Hoole to halt, peered out for a few moments at the scene before him, then went back.
'There 's a sentry-post below,' he said in a low tone. 'The man's back was towards me; he was watching something going on below him. We shall have to creep round. It's pretty rough going; take care you don't slip.'
Keeping on the seaward side of the sentry, they wormed their way through the bush. With every step the descent became steeper, and they had to cling to branches and roots in order to keep their footing. The contour of the cliff hid them from the sentry, but the dislodging of a loose stone might at any moment betray their presence, and they let themselves down inch by inch with great care.
WITH EVERY STEP THE DESCENT BECAME STEEPER.
As they had noticed on the occasion of their previous visit, the cove in which the Raider lay was almost encircled. The cliff which they were now scaling jutted out in a kind of spit on the eastern side. When they finally reached its base they found themselves among a tangle of jagged rocks. The tide was coming in, and they realised from the banks of seaweed that the rocks were covered at the flood, and that they had little time to spare if their reconnaissance was to lead them much farther and they had to return by the same route.
After a precautionary glance seaward they began to make their way through the mass of rocks, clambering, springing from one to another, always careful not to expose themselves to the view of the sentry somewhere high up on their left. Presently, between two high rocks at the outer edge, they caught sight of blue water. Entering the gap, they looked out, and found that almost the whole of the cove was before them.
'She 's gone,' said Hoole.
The well-remembered vessel was no longer at her anchorage. No craft of any kind lay within the cove. But men were moving about the beach. To the left, near the base of the cliff, above high-water mark, were two large sheds; a little further on was a third shed, still larger. Between them the beach was covered with much miscellaneous litter, the nature of which the observers could not at present determine. What interested them most, and for a time puzzled them, was the sight of many dark figures working on a natural ledge some eighty feet above the sea level on the opposite side of the cove. They heard the sound of picks, and saw black men bringing baskets from a narrow tunnel in the cliff face, and emptying them on to the beach below. From the spot where the contents fell clouds of black dust rose high into the air. A white man was walking up and down the ledge, occasionally moving his right arm in a curiously jerky manner; and amid the other sounds came now and then rough shouts and sharp cracks.
'By George, Hoole!' exclaimed Trentham under his breath, 'that particular mystery is solved. They are working coal! There must be an outcrop in the cliff; of course they are not mining. The Raider can't rely on filling her bunkers from captures, apparently, or they wouldn't go to all this trouble.'
'I guess it's the niggers get the trouble,' remarked Hoole. 'That fellow--in the distance he 's mighty like Halm--is making good play with his whip. You may bet your bottom dollar they snapped up Flanso and the rest to increase the number of their hands. Say, d' you hear that purr?'
He swung round and looked seaward, shading his eyes with his hands.
'There she is,' he exclaimed a few moments later. 'Skip behind the rock, Trentham; she 's diving right here.'
'The seaplane?'
'Yes. Can't you see her? She 's cut off her engines, making a very pretty swoop. See her now?'
'Yes; you 've better eyes than mine, Hoole.'
Hoole smiled. His eyes were fixed on the machine with an intense admiring interest.
'She blips,' he said, as the engine spluttered for a second or two. 'Now she 's cut off again. The pilot knows his job. I wonder where she 'll come down.'
Crouching behind the rocks they watched the seaplane as it made a circling movement, diving all the time, until it swept round and headed straight for the entrance to the cove. From a height of about two hundred feet it swooped down towards the sea, 'blipped' again, then descended lightly upon the surface, ran a few yards, and at last came to rest a little distance from the beach. Several bare-legged German sailors had already emerged from one of the nearer sheds. They waded into the water. Two of them carried the occupants of the seaplane on their backs to the shore, then returned to help their comrades to pull the machine in. It glided smoothly up the beach until it rested just below the sheds.
'Gliders all complete,' said Hoole.
'What do you mean?'
'They 've laid down boards on the beach; you can't see them from here. They are well greased, too, to judge by the speed the floats slid up them. Those Germans are pretty thorough, Trentham.'
'Where did you pick up all these details?' asked Trentham curiously.
'Oh, I 've seen that sort of thing once or twice before. But hadn't we better get back? There 's nothing more to be seen from this quarter, and I presume Flanso and his men are on that ledge yonder, or near about.'
'That farthest shed is the officers' quarters, by the look of it. The two airmen have just gone inside. We 've learnt the lie of the land and not much else, I 'm afraid. Can't we go a little farther along the shore, behind the rocks, and climb the cliff nearer the sheds?'
'We can try, but 'ware the sentry.'
They had not gone far, however, before the incoming tide forced them to leave the rocks and clamber up through the bushes. The ascent was even more difficult than the descent had been, and a miscalculation of the direction of the path on which this sentry-box stood almost led to their undoing. They had supposed that it ran fairly straight to the sheds from the point at which they had left it; but the nature of the ground had necessitated its being carried a good many yards farther along the cliff, and then it bent round and formed a loop, approaching the sheds in the same direction as Hoole and Trentham were now going. Unaware of this, they were slowly climbing when Trentham slipped, displacing a mass of loose earth which went rattling down the cliff. They were not greatly alarmed, thinking that the sentry was too far away to have heard the sound through the noise of the coal-tipping across the cove. But footsteps not far above them caused them to snuggle behind a thick bush. The rustle of movement above drew nearer. Through the bush they saw the sentry stepping cautiously down, and prodding the vegetation with his bayonet. Hoole fingered his revolver, but Trentham signed to him that if any weapon had to be used it must be the spear. The sentry, however, stopped ten or a dozen yards above them, then, apparently satisfied that the landslide was accidental, laboriously climbed up the cliff.
Much relieved, for violent measures would have been fatal to the success of their reconnaissance, the two men waited for a quarter of an hour or so, then struck up the cliff some distance to the left of the spot where the sentry had appeared, and wormed their way to the path, far beyond his box, by a wide circuit. It was almost dark by the time they rejoined the natives. They marched a few miles until night descended upon them; then they rested for a while, discussing the results of their expedition.
'I 'm afraid the chief will be disappointed at our returning without his son,' said Trentham, 'but I hope he 'll see reason. We couldn't possibly have rescued him.'
'Clearly not,' said Hoole. 'There wasn't time to discover exactly where the Germans keep their slaves. I guess we 'll have to reconnoitre again, from the other side, before we can see our way clear. The absence of the Raider would help us considerably, for there appeared to be only about half a dozen Germans on the spot. I wish I could have seen whether that fellow cracking the whip was Hahn.'
'Why?'
'Well, we don't owe the skunk a great deal; besides, he 's got my watch.'
CHAPTER IX
COMPLICATIONS
'Does my eye squint, Ephraim, me lad?' asked Grinson, looking up into the face of his taller companion.
Meek gazed so earnestly at his questioner that his eyes converged.
'I don't see no sign of it, Mr. Grinson,' he said, 'and I wouldn't suppose as how you 'd be visited with that affliction at your time of life.'
'That's what I thought. Then why the mischief can't I hit that tree?'
Meek looked sadly at the tree in question, as if mutely reproaching it for declining to be hit.
'Maybe there 's a bias in the spear, like in bowls,' he said. 'My spear 's just the same, for dash me if I can hit the trunk neither.'
The two seamen, with half a dozen natives, were on outpost duty in a glade a few miles on the seaward side of the village. Trentham had reported the result of his reconnaissance to the ailing chief, who realised at once that an attempt to release his men by force from an enemy equipped with the fire magic that his ancestors had lost was bound to fail. When Trentham pointed out that the Germans would probably make further raids, to increase the number of their slaves, and suggested the propriety of establishing outpost stations where watch might be kept, he assented, and agreed that Grinson and Meek should take their turns with the rest. Each band of natives chosen for this duty was accompanied by one who belonged to the chief's own caste, so that Meek's dread of being eaten, though not wholly removed, was a good deal lessened. The two men beguiled the tedious hours by practising spear-throwing under the tuition of the natives, but after three days had gained little skill. Grinson was more vigorous than accurate in his casts, while Meek, handling his spear as if it were a paper dart, could throw neither far nor straight; he was a model of patient ineptitude.
'I tell you what it is, Ephraim,' said the boatswain, sitting on the grass, 'spears ain't tools for Christians, and I 'd scorn to demean myself to these poor heathens, what knows no better. We 'll leave 'em to 'em, me lad. Not that they 'd be any good if the Germans come with guns.'
'D' you think they will, Mr. Grinson?'
''Course they will, if they come at all. I don't know what the gents mean by sticking on here. We can't do no good, and if they 'd listen to me we 'd slip off and chance our luck.'
'Aye, my vittals don't agree wi' me. I 'm falling away, Mr. Grinson. Look here.'
Meek was drawing together the band of his trousers to show how much he had fallen away, when Hoole came into the glade.
'Grinson, come with me,' he said. 'I want you to relieve Mr. Trentham at a new post we 've fixed up about a mile away. Carry on till I come back, Meek; I 'll relieve you then for a spell.'
Meek looked far from happy when left alone with the natives. Having nothing else to do, he picked up his spear and resumed his feeble practice. While he was so engaged, the natives, who had been seated, solemnly watching him, suddenly sprang to their feet and gazed expectantly towards the trees. Meek had heard nothing, and as he ambled forward to retrieve his spear he was startled by the silent appearance of Kafulu, one of the men who had been captured. Still more amazed was he to see that the Papuan carried a rifle.
The natives greeted their comrade with cries of joy, and crowded about him, plying him with questions. In a few moments they fell silent, and listened intently as Kafulu eagerly addressed them. Meek, a little in the background, watched his gestures, wondering what he was saying, and why he continually brandished the gun. Presently Kafulu turned and pointed in the direction from which he had come, and then Meek noticed that his back was seamed with scarcely healed weals. His attention was immediately diverted, for among the trees at which Kafulu was pointing he caught sight of the faces of several white men, who appeared to be making signs of friendship. Now thoroughly alarmed, he turned to flee; but the Germans issued suddenly from the forest; one of them made a sign to Kafulu, who sprinted across the glade with some of his companions, sprang upon Meek from behind, and hauled him back.
KAFULU SPRANG UPON MEEK FROM BEHIND.
'Mr. Grinson. Ahoy, Mr. Grinson!' shouted Meek.
His last word was smothered by a big hand laid across his mouth, and his eyes widened with amazement when he looked into the face of his captor. There were six Germans, armed with rifles. Forming a guard round the natives, they hurried them into the forest, with Meek helpless in their midst.
About an hour later Hoole and Trentham returned to the spot.
'Hullo! There's no one here,' said Trentham. 'Meek understood that he was to wait here until relieved?'
'Yes. He looked a trifle uneasy, but he wouldn't desert his post. Surely----'
'They couldn't resist the temptation, you mean? I hope it's not so bad as that. Let us see if we can trace the way he 's gone. Here 's his spear on the ground.'
'And here are his footprints. By gum, Trentham, look here: a good many European boots have been treading the grass. They came from the forest, and went back again. Germans, sure!'
'It looks like it. But it's unaccountable. The natives are too sharp-eared to have been taken by surprise. They ought to have got Meek away in time.'
'I 'll be shot if they haven't gone too! These are prints of bare feet, aren't they?'
'There 's no doubt about that. They must have been surprised and collared, without a shot fired. This is pretty bad, Hoole.'
'I guess they wanted more miners. Wonder they haven't raided the village long before this.'
'I suppose they didn't think it worth while to come so far from the cove and make an organised raid. Bows and spears wouldn't be much use against firearms, of course; but the Germans might have lost a few men in a regular attack, and they preferred to snap up small parties here and there.'
'Any good going after them?'
'Not an atom. You may be sure they 're armed, and we have--one revolver. Things are in a deuce of a mess, Hoole. If the natives are such poor scouts we stand to lose more of these outposts. We shall have to drop the scheme. And the immediate thing now is to go and bring Grinson back; he 'll be mad at losing Meek. We had better talk things over with him, and see if anything can be done; for the life of me I can't think what.'
Trentham's contempt of the Papuans' scouting ability was not justified, as he would have known could he have heard and understood what Kafulu had said to his comrades. He had told them that the white men had the fire magic of which they had heard. It was hidden in the stick he showed them. If they would work for the white men, they too would be given sticks like the one he carried, and then they would be the lords of the village. Kafulu was Hahn's dupe and decoy.
When Grinson heard that his companion of twenty-five years had been captured, his eyes became moist, and at first he seemed incapable of speech. Then his lips were pressed together rigidly; he flung away his spear, snatched out his knife, and cried:
'Which way, sir? Let me get at 'em.'
'You 'd do no good, Grinson,' said Trentham. 'They 'd shoot you down.'
'But 'tis Ephraim, sir--the lad as has been wi' me all over the seven seas. I can't fool about and do nothing when my mate is digging coal for those blackguard Germans. I put it to you, young gentlemen----'
'Yes, we understand; but you must see that we three are not in a position to attack goodness knows how many men armed with rifles. We should only be killed or collared too. The sole chance of rescuing Meek----'
'Say the word, sir,' said Grinson as Trentham paused.
'Well, I confess I see no chance at the present moment; but at any rate it will be hopeless if we get into the Germans' clutches ourselves. Some plan may occur to us. Meanwhile let us get back. I 'm afraid the chief will be cut up at the loss of more of his men.'
With the natives of the outposts they set off towards the village. Long before they reached it there came through the forest a long-drawn mournful howl, or rather a chorus of howls, like the cries of hundreds of dumb animals in pain. Ejaculations broke from the lips of the natives. They looked at one another with expressions of dismay, then set off at a trot, howling as they went.
'They 've already got wind of it at the village,' said Hoole. 'Perhaps one or two fellows escaped.'
''Tis worse than that, sir,' said Grinson. 'It means death. I heard the niggers howl like that, the time I was at Moresby. It fair chills your blood, though they 'll laugh like hyenas as soon as the funeral's over.'
Hurrying on, with the horrible sound growing ever louder, they arrived at the village, and found the whole population assembled in front of the stockade, rocking themselves to and fro, and howling incessantly. Dark looks greeted the white men as they passed through the midst of the throng and entered at the open gate. Within, all was silent. No one was to be seen except the medicine-man, who was just issuing from the chief's house. He stalked slowly through the enclosure and out at the gate. Then the people emerged from their huts, and a number of the elder men formed up in procession and marched slowly into the house. When they had disappeared, the interpreter came up to Trentham.
'Chief fella, he gone dead,' he murmured.
CHAPTER X
THE CAST OF THE DIE
An hour after the white men's return, they watched from their hut the funeral procession winding towards the gate. Some of the younger men led the way; then followed four bearers, with the body of the dead chief encased in his sleeping-mat. Behind marched his relatives and the whole of the population of the enclosure, the men wearing towering head-dresses of feathers, the women carrying small branches.
'Shall we follow?' asked Hoole.
'Perhaps the people would like it,' replied Trentham.
But when they reached the gate at the tail of the procession they were stopped by the interpreter.
'New chief he say no come alonga,' said he. 'Me fella people say old chief he die alonga you; all proper mad.'
'That accounts for their scowls as we came in,' remarked Trentham. 'I suppose the medicine-man accuses us of giving the evil eye. But the new chief, whoever he is, evidently doesn't want us to be pulled to pieces.'
'Things are going from bad to worse,' said Hoole. 'Our news won't make them better pleased with us. I guess there 'll be trouble.'
The death of the chief and the absence of his son had in fact kindled a slumbering spark of revolt in the Papuan community. A chief in New Guinea at no time wields great authority over his tribe, and the prestige of the dominant caste had already fallen low. Authority was assumed by a cousin of the dead man, but he had no moral qualities to support it. After the funeral, when Trentham reported to him, through the interpreter, the capture of the outpost, his agitation bordered on hysteria. The Papuans already connected their recent misfortunes with the arrival of the white men, who, they declared, were in league with the white men from the ship, and were responsible for the capture of their leader Kafulu and the late chief's son. The disappearance of the outpost would confirm their dark suspicions, and the fact that Meek also had gone would seem to them proof of collusion.
Trentham offered to relieve the chief of anxiety by quitting the place with his companions, but this suggestion only increased his distress, and it dawned upon Trentham that he was inclined to cling to the white men as upholders of his feebleness. How feeble he was became apparent before Trentham left the house. A number of the Papuans came to the outer gate and demanded an interview with their new chief. On being admitted, their spokesman recounted the disasters that had befallen the tribe since the strangers came, and insisted on the two younger men being given to them for a cannibal feast. Was it not the custom, they asked, within the memory of the elder men, for a sacrifice to be made on the death of a chief? The victims were at hand. As for the fat man who bore the totem mark on his shoulder, they must spare him, but being a white man he must be sent away; let him go into the forest.
The chief was on the point of yielding, in the hope of gaining popularity with his unruly subjects, when one of the elder patricians interposed. The late chief had spared the white men, he said; they were friends of Flanso, who would rightfully have succeeded his father; and if Flanso returned he would certainly vent his wrath on any one who did them harm. This firm stand on the part of a man of weight caused the unstable chief to veer. With an effort to assume a firm and dignified attitude he dismissed the deputation, who retired in undisguised dissatisfaction and anger.
It was only after they had departed that Trentham learnt from the interpreter what their object had been, and how their request had been received. Watching the scene intently, he had noted the indecision of the chief and the mischief that blazed in the eyes of the Papuans.
'I 'm afraid there 's trouble brewing,' he said on returning to his hut. 'The new chief's a man of straw; he 'll give way to the cannibals one of these times, and then----'
'I guess we won't wait for that,' said Hoole. 'We should be no worse off in the forest, and I vote we clear out one dark night and take our chance.'
'What about Ephraim, sir?' asked Grinson. 'I say nothing about you two gentlemen, but only speak for myself, and I swear I won't leave these 'ere parts without Ephraim.'
'Sure,' said Hoole. 'I 'm with you all the time. But you 'll allow it requires a little consideration, Grinson, and my proposition is that we all put on our thinking caps and see if we can hit on one of those cunning plots you read of in story-books. I only wish I had a pipe. Smoke clears the air.'
Trentham smiled; Grinson opened his tobacco-box.
'Chewing won't do the trick, I suppose, sir,' he said. 'I 've enough twist for two quids.'
'No, no; I 've never chewed anything hotter than gum,' said Hoole. 'Keep your baccy, man. I say, it's time for our supper. They 're late this evening. Do they keep a fast after a funeral?'
'I fancy I hear 'em coming now, sir. Maybe it's an extra spread.'
But the native brought only the food to which they were accustomed, and of which they were heartily tired. It was dark by the time they had finished their meal. They had no light, but they squatted on their mats, chatting quietly until sleepiness should steal upon them. The sounds from beyond the stockade died down as usual; it seemed, indeed, that stillness had fallen upon the village earlier than on any previous night. Grinson was the first to close his eyes; the other two were still talking in low tones when a sudden commotion from the direction of the gate caused them to spring up and rush to the doorway, where Grinson immediately joined them. They could see nothing in the darkness, but the cries of the two men who always stood on guard were drowned by a chorus of savage yells. Men were heard rushing across the enclosure; then came the whistling of spears and sharp cracks of clubs falling on solid skulls.
'The beggars outside are attacking the stockade,' said Trentham.
''Tis rank mutiny and rebellion,' growled Grinson. 'Shall we lend a hand, sir?'
Hoole had whipped out his revolver.
'Hold hard,' said Trentham; 'we may want that for a later occasion. I think we had better let them fight it out. For one thing, we 're not used to their weapons; then, if we take sides, we 're hopelessly done with the Papuans, and shouldn't dare to show our faces among them.'
'But we 'll have to fight for our lives if they break in,' said Hoole. 'We might get away now.'
'I don't think they 'll break in. The stockade 's very stout. Don't you think we might turn the crisis to account?'
'How do you mean?'
'Let us wait a little and see how the fight goes. Whichever side wins, I think we may have a trump card.'
They stood listening to the din, which appeared to be concentrated in the neighbourhood of the gate. It lasted only a few minutes. The sentries had detected the stealthy approach of the Papuans in the nick of time. The stockade was manned before the attack gathered force; its stout timbers resisted all the onslaughts of the undisciplined savages, who drew off, baffled, carrying away those who had been disabled by the weapons of the defenders.
'Now 's the time for us to chip in,' said Trentham. 'It's clear that we are responsible, partly at any rate, for the situation. The Papuans suspect us of complicity with the Germans; they are angry because they can't feast on us; and they believe it's due to us that their friends have been captured. The present chief is no good; he 'll either give way to them in the end, or will ultimately be beaten by sheer weight of numbers. Nothing will restore the position but the return of the rightful chief--that young fellow Flanso.'
'Who 's a prisoner,' remarked Hoole.
'Exactly. Well, we must rescue him and the other prisoners, including Meek. By that means we shall please everybody.'
'You 've got a plan?'
'An idea came into my head suddenly just now when the fight was going on. With care and luck it may work. If you like it, I 'll go and see the chief, and we can start to-morrow.'
During the next twenty minutes the three men were engaged in an earnest discussion. Then Trentham made his way to the chief's house, where most of the important men of the community were assembled. Half an hour later he returned to his friends.
'It's all right,' he said. 'By Jove! talking pidgin is the most tiring job I know. In the morning the chief will make an oration at the gate. He 's not at all keen on his new job, and would like to see Flanso back. He believes the rebels will be willing to give us a chance. Then it's up to us.'
The chief turned out to be better as an orator than as a man of action--Cicero rather than Coriolanus, as Trentham suggested. His speech brought about an instant change of feeling in the Papuans. If the white men restored Kafulu and his comrades to them, they would let bygones be bygones. If Flanso also was restored to his people, they would dutifully accept his authority.
Two hours after sunrise the whole population, a silent throng, gathered at the sides of the track to watch the white men start on their enterprise. Three stalwart natives accompanied them, each of whom carried, wound about his body, a long coil of grass rope. Grinson was himself again.
'Good-bye, old ugly mug,' he cried as he passed the man who had discovered his totem mark. 'Wait till the clouds roll by. Farewell, sweet maid'--to a hideous old woman; 'for they all love Jack, and you 'll meet us coming back, and there 'll be dancing with the lasses on the green, oh! It pleases 'em, sir,' he said, apologetically, to Trentham, 'though they don't understand, poor heathens. But I 've been told I 've got a very good singing voice.'
'Let's hope you won't sing another tune before the day 's over,' said Trentham.
CHAPTER XI
THE ORDEAL OF EPHRAIM MEEK
Meek's mind worked slowly. For some little time, as he marched shorewards among his fellow captives, he realised merely the fact that he was a prisoner in the hands of the Germans. He did not ask himself why he had been captured, or throw his imagination forward in an effort to forecast his fate. With his usual shambling gait he trudged on, glancing now at the Papuans, now at the Germans, and occasionally stroking his thin whiskers in the manner of one who finds the world a great puzzle.
Presently illumination came to him. Fixing his eyes on the stout figure of the man who led the party, he muttered 'Trousers!' and thought of Mr. Grinson. Yes, to be sure, this was the extraordinary mariner who had swum ashore from a wreck without soiling his trousers, who had been saved from the cannibals' cooking pot, and had mysteriously disappeared when leading his rescuers to Mushroom Hill. His trousers were not so clean as they had been; there were black smudges on them. What would Mr. Grinson say to that?
Before Meek had got much further in his cogitations, he found himself fully occupied in keeping his footing on a rugged zigzag path that scored the surface of a steep downward slope. Then, lifting his eyes, he beheld the sea, and below, in a still cove, a vessel painted bright blue lying close inshore, and moored stem and stern. In shape she resembled the raider which had sunk the Berenisa a few weeks before, but she had had a new coat of paint. Meek saw at a glance that she had steam up, and wondered whether she was short-handed and he had been impressed to make up her complement.
A turn in the path shut the vessel from his view, but opened up another scene. On the left a number of natives were felling small trees, in charge of a European who every now and then cracked a long whip. 'I don't hold with nigger-driving!' thought Meek, shaking his head as he passed on.
The path becoming easier, he was now able to think of something more than his feet. ''Tis the Raider,' he said to himself, 'though never did I see a ship of her tonnage painted sky blue afore. Trousers is a German, without a doubt. Now what 's he think he 's going to do with me? I 'll not sign on with a German pirate--never!'
Another turn brought the cove again into view. The seaplane had just risen from the surface, and was now soaring towards the western horn. A few seconds afterwards Hahn and his party reached the sentry, who saluted, looking curiously at Meek. Hahn struck to the left, and presently, after another steep descent, came to the broad ledge on which natives were moving up and down, carrying baskets out of a shallow tunnel. The full baskets were tipped over on to the beach, then taken back to the tunnel to be refilled. In charge of the toilers was a sturdy German seaman, who had a rifle slung over his back and held in his right hand a long, evil-looking whip.
Meek's ideas were becoming clarified. As a seaman he knew what a great expenditure of coal was involved in keeping the Raider with steam up, even though the fires were banked. Clearly the Germans had been scouring the neighbourhood for men to work the seam which they had discovered in the cliff side. But he was still wondering what he had to do with all this, when he received a rude shock.
'Another batch for you, Hans,' said Hahn in German to the overseer. 'There 's an Englishman among them as you see. It's almost time to knock off now. Put him in the compound with the rest; we 'll set him at work to-morrow.'
The man grinned. Herding the new batch of prisoners into an enclosure like a sheep pen, adjacent to the mouth of the tunnel, he drew a hurdle across the entrance, and returned to superintend the last operations of the day. Hahn, meanwhile, had descended to the beach and entered the officers' shed.
Meek, of course, had not understood what Hahn had said. Without suspicion of the morrow's destiny, he found himself penned up with half a dozen black men, and felt the indignity of his position.
'Like sheep!' he muttered. 'Like sheep! What would Mr. Grinson say?'
He was no longer beset by fears of being eaten. The natives squatted apart, talking among themselves, and watching their comrades on the ledge. If Meek could have understood their speech, he would have known that they were already suspicious of Kafulu, who had quitted them a little while before. Was it for this that he had enticed them away--to carry heavy baskets of black rock from a dark fearsome hole? How long would it be before they received the firesticks promised them? Their comrades looked unhappy. How quiet they were! How they shrank away when they passed the man with the whip! Where was Flanso?
Presently a whistle sounded below. The men who had empty baskets set them down against the wall of the ledge and stood in line. Those whose baskets were full tipped their contents on to the beach, and joined their fellows. From the mouth of the tunnel streamed the niggers, blinking as they came into the light. Wearily they dragged themselves to their places in the line--silent, cowed, miserable. Among them was Flanso, and at sight of him the six natives in the pen drew in their breath. His cheeks were hollowed; his skin was no longer a glistening bronze, but the dull black of coal dust.
The German counted the men as they formed up. When he had counted twenty-eight he cracked his whip, and the limp nerveless creatures turned to the right and marched into the pen, where they flung themselves down in utter dejection. They scarcely heeded the newcomers; only Flanso started on seeing Meek, and turned upon him a look of agonised inquiry, of which the seaman was unconscious.
A few minutes later four seamen came from below, each carrying two pails. They set these down within the pen, and at a signal from Hans the natives approached one by one, and took their food in their hands. Each man had as much as his two hands would hold of a sort of thick porridge. When Meek's turn came, he shook his head.
'No, it ain't proper,' he said. 'Not for a white man. I can't do it.'
Hans knew no English, but Meek's objection was obvious. He laughed, and when the seamen returned with pails of water he said to them: 'The English swine won't eat out of his hands. Tell the quarter-master.'
They jeered at Meek, took up the empty pails and departed. When they came back for the water-pails, one of them carried a basin of porridge, a spoon, and a mug of water, which he handed to Meek with an oath. While Meek ate his supper the Germans stood around him, uttering flouts and jibes, which, being incomprehensible, did not spoil his appetite. When he had finished they left with the utensils, another man came to relieve Hans for the night, and the prisoners were left in the pen until it was almost dark. Then the sentry cracked his whip, the natives sprang to their feet and lined up, and Meek looked on in astonishment as they were marched into the tunnel, the entrance to which, when all had gone in, was closed by means of a stout wooden grating. He was left alone in the pen.
'I don't rightly know if this is what they call slavery,' he murmured, 'but it do seem so. I don't hold with it. What would Mr. Grinson say?'
The night was chilly, and Meek slept uneasily. Once he was awakened by a flash from a lantern, and saw another German staring at him curiously.
'Aha, John Bull!' said the man with a grin.
Meek turned over and went to sleep again.
When he awoke, cramped and stiff, in the morning, the natives were filing into the pen. Breakfast was a repetition of supper, and after the meal Hans appeared, and drove the men back to their work. Three of the new prisoners were sent into the tunnel to dig, the other three were made carriers. Meek was again left alone.
About ten o'clock Hahn came up, with two of his fellow officers, who stared at Meek, laughed, talked in their own language, and departed, leaving Hahn behind.
'Your, name is Meek, I zink so?' said the German.
'Ay, Ephraim Meek, that's my name.'
'So! Veil, Ephraim Meek, never I exbected to haf ze bleasure to see you again. Ze ozers--vere are zey?'
Meek looked at him for a few moments in silence. The German was not aware, then, that the other three had been with him in the native village. Slow-witted though he was, Meek had an inspiration. To tell the truth might harm his friends. He had a brief struggle with his conscience, decided for a compromise, and said:
'I don't know. They may be eat.'
'So!' Hahn looked pleased. 'Zey vere fatter as you. Ze niggers keep you to fatten, eh? Veil, Ephraim Meek, I save you, see? I bring you here. You are safe. Of course, you must make yourself useful. You shall eat, zerefore shall you vork. You shall find a pick or a basket--and zere is blenty of coal.'
Meek stroked his whiskers, looked at the German, then shook his head.
'No; I can't do it,' he said. 'Not coal.' Hahn laughed.
'You do look like a broken-kneed horse,' he said. 'Not equal to ze niggers; but you haf strength enough for zis job.'
'Not coal,' Meek repeated, in his mournful tones.
'Vy not coal? You are afraid to soil ze hands? Ach! Is coal more dirty as ze tar of your ropes? A seaman's hands! Ha! ha! You are funny man, Meek!'
Hahn laughed heartily; it seemed to him a very good joke. Meek, however, had thrust his hands into his pockets and set his lips doggedly.
'Come,' said Hahn impatiently. 'Zis is to vaste time. You shall----'
'True, it is waste time,' Meek interrupted. Speaking with a firmness which Grinson would hardly have recognised, he went on: 'I 'll dig no coal for Germans, not I. I 'll not soil my hands with it. Not for German pirates. Never in the world.'
For a few moments Hahn stared at the seaman as though he were a strange animal, a curiosity in the natural world. Then he guffawed scornfully.
'So!' he ejaculated. 'You are a lord, eh? A prince, eh? You vill not vork, eh? And you exbect to haf good food for nozink, a broken-kneed swine of a sailor. Hans,' he cried, speaking in German, 'take this hound of an Englishman and tie him to yonder stump, and leave him there until he comes to his senses. He refuses to work. Not a morsel of food, not a drop of water. See to that!'
The man grinned, laid aside his whip, came into the pen, and seized Meek by the arm. And then Meek belied his name. His mild countenance was transfigured. Wrenching his arm from the German's grasp, he doubled his fist, and let out with a drive that sent the man staggering back against the fence. Though his frame was slight, and his legs were neither shapely nor firm, he had not served a lifetime at sea without developing a certain muscular force. But his active resentment, natural as it was, was nevertheless unwise. The two Germans sprang on him together. His struggles were vain. Twisting his arms, his captors dragged him out of the pen to the tree-stump which Hahn had indicated, and in a minute had lashed him firmly to it. Hahn kicked him; the other picked up his whip and flicked the helpless prisoner, then rushed among the natives, who had halted to watch the scene, and smote right and left among them. With a parting jeer, Hahn descended the path to the beach, leaving Hans in charge.
Meek's face was towards the sea, and he had a full view of the ledge and of the cove below. The natives passed in and out of the tunnel, glistening with perspiration, urged to utmost exertion by fear of the merciless whip. They tipped their baskets over the brink of the ledge, coughing as clouds of black dust rose and enveloped them. On the beach some of the Raider's crew moved idly about. At the door of the shed Hahn stood talking to an officer, apparently the captain of the vessel; they both glanced up at the ledge, laughed, and evidently found amusement in discussing the plight of their victim. Meek noticed that there were no uniforms among the Germans, but a something indefinable in their air and gait bred the conviction that they were men of the navy.
It was not long before Meek was suffering torture from the heat and his bonds. He could not move either arms or legs; his throat was filled with coal dust; he longed for water to moisten his parched lips. Now and then the overseer passed him, grinning in his face, uttering words of mockery which affected Meek only by their tone. To him it was so much ugly bad language. He spoke no word, did not deign to beg for mercy, even though, as the hours passed, he felt that exhaustion and presently death itself must overtake him. In this time of trial it appeared that a new spirit had assumed possession of him--or rather the old spirit of British seadogs, the spirit that would scorn to show sign of flinching.
About midday Hahn came up to the ledge, and stood with arms akimbo, contemplating his prisoner.
'You see?' he said. 'You haf now enough? You vill obey?'
Meek gazed at him out of haggard eyes, but said never a word.
Hahn pointed to a man carrying a well-loaded tray into the officers' shed below.
'Blenty of food. Beer--English beer. A pint of 'alf-an'-'alf, eh? Zere is zome for you--ven you get coal. I am not hard, no. You say you vill dig, and I loose you--you shall haf a glass beer before you dig; zat is not hard? You say yes?'
Meek moved his tongue over his dry lips.
'Not for German pirates!' he muttered huskily.
'Pirates, you dog!' cried Hahn with a fierce scowl, and seemed to be about to argue the point, but changed his mind. Cursing Meek as an English fool, he went away.
During the greater part of the day Meek was partly shaded from the sun by the cliff towering behind him; but in the afternoon the rays beat upon his head, and his agony increased. With all his strength of will he resisted the faintness that threatened to overpower him. He felt that he must not give way before these black men, who passed up and down hour after hour until his bloodshot eyes were dazzled.
The time came for work to cease. Again the natives were herded into the pen, and the seamen brought them their food. The Germans jeered at the helpless prisoner as they passed him; one of them dangled a pail of water under his eyes. Then exhausted nature could endure no more. Meek's head lolled forward. Hans rushed up, looked at him, and called down to the beach that the Englishman had fainted.
'Fling a pail of water over him!' shouted Hahn. 'I am coming.'
THE GERMAN FLUNG A PAIL OF WATER OVER THE UNCONSCIOUS MEEK.
When Hahn appeared, Meek had revived.
'You are a fool!' cried the German angrily. He was feeling very sore. Meek had been the theme of discussion in the officers' mess, and Hahn had had to endure a good deal of heavy raillery on his account. He was told that he had been sent out to catch niggers; why had he burdened himself with a pig of an Englishman? Where had he found the man? How had a solitary Englishman, a seaman, come to be among natives in this remote part of the island? They supposed he had been shipwrecked; then why had Hahn not left the man to meet his fate among cannibals? Hahn was in a difficulty, because he had said nothing about the other white men, told nothing about his rescue by them. His escape from the cannibals, according to his story, had been due to his own ingenuity. He could not satisfactorily account for Meek, and he wished that, instead of bringing him as a prisoner, he had knocked him on the head or shot him at once.
Now, however, he was actuated by another motive. The Englishman, to his vast surprise, had defied him, and his fellow-officers had chaffed him about it. The Englishman's spirit must be broken.
'You are a fool,' he repeated. 'You bring all zis on yourself.. You shall haf food to-night; I am not hard, but you shall be tied up still. It is German discipline. To-morrow must you vork--understand? You are bad example to ze ozers. Zere is ze night for zinking. You shall zink. In ze morning you shall haf sense, and vork.'
'Never!' cried Meek hoarsely. 'Not coal. Not for German pirates!'
'Pig! I say you shall zink about it all night,' roared Hahn, exasperated. 'To-morrow you shall vork, or I vill shoot you dead. Understand?'
Meek made no reply. Hahn savagely bade Hans give him a little food and order the sentries to keep an eye on him during the night. Then he returned to the beach, and Meek was left to contemplate the prospect of twelve hours' torture before a bullet put an end to it all.
CHAPTER XII
THE LEDGE
About an hour before sunset, two men were warily feeling their way among the boulders that strewed the steep declivity above the ledge. Slowly they moved downwards, rarely rising to their full height, but stooping as they dodged in and out between the largest of the stones, and heeding their feet with strained watchfulness. They were Trentham and Hoole. Grinson, with the rest of their party, had been left in hiding near the burnt village, unwillingly; but Trentham had remarked that his bulky form was ill suited to reconnaissance work; a call would be made on his resources later.
The calm surface of the cove was spread out nearly two hundred feet below them. They could see two of the sheds, a few men moving about, and the seaplane lying high up on the beach; but the Raider, moored near the innermost shore, was at present invisible. Nor could they see the ledge, almost perpendicularly beneath them, but now and then they heard the crack of the overseer's whip, and the crash of coals as they fell upon the beach. In front of them the air was slightly darkened by dust wafted up the face of the cliff.
As they climbed lower they moved still more slowly and cautiously, often pausing to rest. At one of these halts Trentham leant against a large boulder, and started back in haste as it moved, swaying slightly and noiselessly like those rocking stones which are to be found here and there on our coasts, and which, insecurely poised though they seem, are rarely moved from their seats. The risk of disturbing the boulder and betraying his presence brought a momentary pallor to his cheeks. When they moved on again, they tested every upstanding rock before putting any pressure upon it, and found more than one which very little force would cause to fall.
The boulders gave effective cover from observation from the beach, and the contour of the cliff hid them from the sentry on the cliff path several hundreds of yards away. But presently the descent became steeper; they caught sight of the top of the Raider's wireless mast; the sounds from the ledge and the beach grew more distinct and the dust cloud denser. They seemed to have come to the end of the scattered mass of boulders, and peering over, they saw a fairly smooth slope, too steep to climb, lacking in cover, and ending in a sharp edge between fifty and sixty feet below. Any boulders that in times past may have rolled here had found no lodgment, or, at any rate, must have long since fallen into the cove.
While they were crouching behind the lowest of the boulders, wondering how they could determine the exact position of the prisoners, they heard a shout from beyond the ledge, followed by an answering call, fainter, more distant. They shrank back, half fearing that they had been seen; but the shouts were not repeated, and there was no sign of excitement among the men on the beach.
A few minutes later, apparently from a spot immediately beneath them, came the sound of a voice speaking in loud tones, yet not so clearly that they could distinguish the words. It broke off once or twice, and they listened for an answering voice, but heard none. Then one shouted word struck distinctly upon their ears. 'Pig!' Stretching forward, they strained their hearing. 'You shall zink all night ... shoot you dead. Understand?'
There was silence. Trentham's and Hoole's eyes met.
'Hahn?' murmured Trentham.
Hoole nodded.
'Bullying Meek,' he whispered.
Trentham cast his eye along the irregular line of boulders. A few yards from the spot where they were crouching, two jagged rocks, between four and five feet high and about three feet wide at the base, stood almost parallel with the edge of the slope, and about two feet apart. Crawling to them, Trentham pushed them gently from behind, then more firmly, finally with all his strength. They did not yield by the smallest fraction of an inch. Carefully marking their position, the two men clambered back among the boulders, gained the top of the ridge more quickly than they had descended, and hastened to rejoin their party, guiding themselves by the trunks of trees and bushes which Hoole had been careful to 'blaze' as they came. There was just light enough to see the marks.
When they regained the thicket where they had left the others, Grinson came forward eagerly to meet them.
'Any luck, sir?' he asked anxiously. 'Did ye find Ephraim?'
'We know pretty well where he is,' replied Trentham.
'Safe and sound?'
'That I can't say exactly, but he 's sound enough to make Hahn call him a pig.'
'Pig! A lamb like Ephraim! By thunder, sir, if I get my fingers on that there Hahn I 'll teach him! Ephraim a pig! Blast my--
'Steady, Grinson,' interrupted Hoole. 'Meek isn't damaged by Hahn's abuse. Things are more serious than that. From what we overheard, it's pretty sure that Meek has refused to do something that Hahn ordered.'
'Good lad! I 'll----'
'Wait. Hahn has given him all night to think it over; he threatens to shoot him.'
Grinson was silenced. His heat was quenched by speechless care. Fixing his eyes anxiously on Trentham, he said quietly:
'Anything you order, sir.'
'We 'll save him if we can,' said Trentham. 'We 've hard work in front of us, but with care and good fortune--by the way, Hoole, can you find your way back in the dark?'
'The moon 's up, my son. She 's riding low, but she 'll last long enough for this stunt, I reckon.'
'Good! Now, Grinson, cut a stout pole from a tree--as strong as you can find, three to four feet long.'
'Ay, ay, sir!' responded the boatswain, whipping out his knife.
While he was gone about his task, Trentham explained to Lafoa, the interpreter, that the position of the prisoners had been roughly located, and asked him to inform the rest of the party. They would have to march to the cliff in the waning moonlight, keeping absolute silence, and be ready to do instantly and exactly what they were ordered. The safety of their chief Flanso and his fellow prisoners would depend on their prompt obedience.
On Grinson's return, Trentham ordered one of the men to unwind the rope from his body, and the boatswain to fasten one end of it to the pole. He then slung the pole over a thick branch of a tree, and bade half the party of natives hang on to it, while Grinson and the other half held the loose end of the rope. The test being satisfactory, and the rope having been wound over the pole, they formed up in single file, and, Hoole leading, set out over their former tracks for the cliff. Not a word was spoken. The bare feet of the natives made no sound; the footsteps of the white men could scarcely have been heard if any watchers had been lurking in the bush. The rays of the moon, near its setting, gave Hoole light enough to distinguish the blazed trees, and they marched rapidly. Presently the prevailing stillness was invaded by the soft rustle of the surf, and they caught sight of the glistening path of the moonlight stretching far across the sea. Slackening his pace a little, so as to reduce the slight sounds made by the white men's boots, Hoole led the party unerringly to the crest of the boulder-strewn slope. There they halted.
There were whispered explanations and instructions. Grinson, in spite of his anxiety for Meek, was a little daunted by the difficulties of the plan unfolded to him. The exact position of the prisoners on the ledge was unknown. A sentry would certainly be on guard. An incautious movement, the accidental disturbance of a stone, a misjudgment of distance in the dark, might involve not only the failure of the scheme, but death to its authors. Trentham did not minimise the dangers; they had all been canvassed by Hoole and himself; indeed, he was prepared to find that some factor which he had been unable to take into account would render his plan unworkable.
'But we are not going to attempt the impossible, Grinson,' he said. 'We shall first discover what 's possible, and then--well, you 're not the man to jib at a risk.'
'True, sir, and Ephraim is worth it. I 'll say no more.'
They waited until the sinking moon gave just light enough to see the two rocks which Trentham and Hoole had marked on their previous visit; then they stole down the slope among the boulders. For greater security the white men had removed their boots. On reaching the furthermost of the boulders they halted again. Trentham placed the log of wood across the gap between the two rocks, and got Grinson to loop the loose end of the rope under his armpits. When the moon had wholly disappeared below the hills behind, and the face of the cliff was dark, he crawled inch by inch down the bare slope, and peeped cautiously over the edge.
The cove, the beach, the ledge--all were now within his range of vision. His eyes were first attracted by lights below. There was a glimmering lamp on the Raider's deck forward; the deck appeared to be unoccupied, and no lights shone from the portholes. All three sheds were illuminated, and from the murmur of voices Trentham guessed that the Germans were at their evening meal. No one was moving on the beach. Then he noticed a slight intermittent glow some distance away on his right; behind it a face was momentarily lit up. Without doubt it proceeded from the pipe of the sentry on the ledge. Trentham recalled the position as he had seen it from the other side of the cove when he made his first reconnaissance. The sentry was evidently posted at the inner end of the ledge, where one path led to the beach, another wound round the cliff. These were the only avenues of escape; the other end of the ledge was blocked. The fact that the sentry was smoking argued that discipline was less strict here than it would have been on board ship; probably vigilance also was less rigid. What had the Germans to fear from their cowed slaves, and the natives of the village they had terrorised?
Withdrawing his eyes from this extremity of the ledge, Trentham could just distinguish the outlines of baskets laid against the cliff wall. Then he started, and felt his pulses quicken. Surely that pallid object below him, a little to his left, was a man's face. He closed his eyes, and reopening them after a few moments found that he could see more clearly. Beyond doubt a white man was standing close against the wall. His attitude was peculiarly rigid. The explanation flashed upon Trentham; Meek was tied up.
Trentham looked up and down the ledge for the native prisoners. Black though they were, he expected to be able to discover them, even in the darkness, by some movement or sound. He was as much perplexed as surprised at discerning no sign of them. Where, then, were they kept?
Meek, however, was his first concern. How long had the seaman been tied up? Was he conscious, and able to assist in his release? It was impossible to tell. Wriggling along the edge of the slope until he was exactly over Meek's position, Trentham took a short peg from his pocket, drove it into the soil, and attached to it a thin line of fibre which he had brought with him. Then, holding the line, he crawled carefully up the slope, and rejoined his party.
In a few whispered words he related the extent of his discoveries.
'Better 'n we could expect, sir,' murmured Grinson, with a long breath of relief. 'If the look-out is smoking----'
'Yes,' interrupted Trentham, 'but we mustn't rely too much on that. He may be relieved at any minute; we can't tell. We must get to work while the men are still feeding. Ready, Hoole?'
'Sure!' was the reply.
Following the guiding line, of which Grinson now held the upper end, the two men crept down the slope. Grinson understood that the line would be used to signal how to deal with the thicker rope, which was coiled round the log laid across the two rocks. When they reached the edge, Trentham transferred the coil of rope from his own arms to those of Hoole, who was to descend first on to the ledge. They were both conscious that this was a critical moment. A fall of earth as the rope strained over the edge could hardly fail to arouse the sentry. A man issuing from one of the sheds might notice, even in the dark, the white clothes of the climber, stained though they were. The first misfortune might be avoided with care; the second was at the mercy of chance.
Hoole felt with his hand for a hard smooth spot upon the edge, over which the rope might pass without risk of displacing earth. Then he peered along the ledge from end to end. The sentry was still smoking; no one was visible but Meek. Sounds of talking came from the shed, punctuated by the regular recurring swish of the surf.
'Good luck!' Trentham whispered.
Hoole gave three jerks on the thin line he carried, then slid over the edge. The rope tightened under his armpits; the natives above slowly paid it out. He sank out of sight, and it seemed an age to Trentham before two jerks signalled that he had reached the ledge. A few seconds later a single jerk indicated that the rope might be drawn up. When it came over the edge, Trentham instantly passed the loop over his shoulders, repeated the signal for lowering, and in half a minute was standing beside Hoole, close against the cliff wall.
Both were panting with excitement. No fresh sound was added to those they had already heard; their descent had been unperceived.
Each went at once about the task previously agreed on. Hoole took a few paces towards the sentry, and revolver in hand, stood on guard, while Trentham, with quick, silent cuts of his knife, released the half-unconscious seaman.
'Not a word, Meek,' whispered Trentham, as he placed the loop under the man's shoulders. 'Grinson is waiting for you above.'
He jerked on the line. Meek slowly ascended, and his clothes being dark, his form could scarcely be distinguished against the cliff. He had only just disappeared over the edge when a light was suddenly thrown on the beach by the opening of the door of one of the sheds. There was a burst of louder talking, and a group of seamen issued forth, and ambled down to a dinghy lying a few yards above the surf. Hoole and Trentham slipped silently down, and lay flat against the wall. They heard the scrape of the boat as it was hauled over the sand, the clatter of boots as the men climbed into it, then the rattle of oars in the rowlocks. The men were boarding the Raider; from her deck they might see movements on the ledge. Was this to be the end of the adventure?
For a few minutes the voices of the Germans rose from the vessel; then they ceased, and Hoole, raising his head cautiously, saw that the deck was clear.
'Now for the sentry!' he whispered.
Foreseeing that the native prisoners, when they should be discovered and released, might hail their deliverance with shouts of joy, Trentham had arranged with Grinson that Lafoa, the interpreter, should be lowered to the ledge when he gave the signal. But he had not expected any difficulty in finding the prisoners' whereabouts. The presence of the sentry showed that they were somewhere on the ledge, and he felt some anxiety lest they were near the German, and would be disturbed as Hoole went forward to deal with him. For this reason, when Hoole was about to grope his way along the ledge, Trentham detained him by a whisper, and signalled to Grinson by means of the line. A minute later he heard a sound above as the Papuan came dangling down at the end of the rope--a sound so slight that it could not have been heard by the sentry amid the rustle of the surf. He caught Lafoa about the body, released him from the rope, and then, in the briefest sentences of which pidgin English is capable, instructed him in the part he was to play presently.
Hoole started, stealing along inch by inch under the cliff wall, taking advantage of its inequalities and of the baskets which were ranged in line against it. He had gone forward only about a dozen yards, however, when Trentham, who could just distinguish his form, saw him halt, crouching low. The sentry's pipe was still emitting its glow at regular intervals as the man puffed. It was clear that he had not been disturbed, and Trentham, wondering why Hoole had stopped, stole forward to join him, carrying the rope with which Meek had been bound.
The American was lying almost flat, peering between the bars of a wooden grating that covered a hole in the cliff.
'Listen!' he whispered, as Trentham came up behind him.
And then Trentham heard, from behind the grating, sounds of deep breathing, as of many men asleep. Nothing could be seen in the pitch blackness within; but the two men concluded that they had found the place in which the natives were confined. Worn out by long hours of fatiguing work to which they were unused, the prisoners, no doubt, were sleeping the heavy sleep of exhaustion.
Hoole was about to go forward, when he was arrested by a sound some distance ahead. He dropped flat again, and taking up handfuls of coal dust, rubbed it all over his clothes. Trentham followed his example. They now identified the sound as footsteps; in a few moments they heard a voice, then a tapping.
'Sentry being relieved; knocking out his pipe,' Hoole whispered.
They lay watching, listening, with their hearts in their mouths. Would the Germans come to look at the man they had tied up? Or would the relieving sentry be satisfied by his comrade's report that all was well, and take up his post without investigation? If both should come along the ledge together, it was hopeless to expect that they could be silenced without one or other having time to give the alarm. They might even see the white clothes, in spite of the coating of coal dust, before they came within reach. A single shout would arouse the Germans below, and all would be over.
The footsteps drew nearer; two voices were heard. The new sentry exchanged a few words with his comrade; then the heavy boots of the latter rang on the path leading downwards to the beach. The risk was halved! A match was struck; the newcomer lit his pipe, and for a minute or two paced up and down a short stretch of the ledge. Hoole hoped that he would soon tire of this, and sit, as his comrade presumably had done, smoking placidly, dreaming perhaps of a little cottage somewhere in the Fatherland.
But presently the slow footsteps approached. The scent of tobacco smoke touched the nostrils of the waiting men. The sentry was coming to look at his prisoner. Trentham and Hoole crawled back silently a few yards, and effaced themselves as well as they could behind the baskets. The German came slowly on, humming between his closed lips. He reached the tunnel, and stood at the grating for a few moments; the watchers saw the reflection of his glowing pipe on his face as he pressed it close against the bars. Humming again, he sauntered on towards the post where Meek had been tied, walking outside the line of baskets, and passing the hidden men within a couple of yards.
Now was the critical moment. Feeling that the whole success of the enterprise hung on the next few seconds, Hoole pulled himself together, got to his feet, and noiselessly on his stocking soles tip-toed after the German. From below came the restless murmur of the surf. Hoole's footsteps could not have been heard, yet the German, perhaps moved by that strange sense one has of being followed, was on the point of turning round, when a hard fist caught him with the force of a sledge-hammer behind his right ear, and he fell like a log. Trentham, who had followed stealthily, instantly dashed forward, and before the stunned man regained consciousness he was bound hand and foot with the rope that had tortured Meek, and a gag, torn from Hoole's coat, was firmly wedged between his teeth.
NOISELESSLY ON HIS STOCKING SOLES TIP-TOED AFTER THE GERMAN.
Leaving him where he lay, the two men summoned Lafoa to join them, and led him to the tunnel. Groping over the grating, Hoole discovered the wooden bolt with which it was fastened, quietly removed the cover, and signed to Lafoa to go in.
There was another moment of tense anxiety. Grunts, ejaculations, the stir of movement, were heard from the depths of the tunnel. Something fell with a sharp crack--a pick which one of the men had displaced. At the mouth of the tunnel it sounded like a pistol shot, and Hoole and Trentham swung round and looked apprehensively towards the beach. All was still, there. No doubt the wash of the sea was loud enough to smother the single sharp sound at a distance.
It was evident that Lafoa had intelligently grasped his instructions, for the natives, as they filed out, though their movements were quick and urgent, made scarcely a sound. In a long string they followed Trentham to the spot where the rope dangled over the wall of the ledge. Trentham found that his hands were trembling as he slid the rope over the shoulders of the first man. If only he could have multiplied the rope! Each ascent would take at least half a minute. How many men were there? What might not happen before they were all in safety above? One by one he looped them, saw them rise, caught the descending rope. Hoole, who had counted them out, came up to them and whispered 'Thirty-four.' More than a quarter of an hour must elapse before the last man had ascended, and some of those at the end of the line were showing signs of restlessness, grunting, sighing, clicking with their tongues. Moment by moment Trentham expected some of them to whoop with excitement. 'Make all fella no talkee!' he whispered to Lafoa, and the man went along the line muttering fierce threats.
The thirty-fourth man had gone. Lafoa followed him, then Hoole. Not a sound had been heard from below but the murmur of the sea and the muffled voices of the men in the sheds. With intense relief, and the feeling that fortune could hardly betray them now, Trentham looped himself and signalled to be hoisted. He was barely half way to the top when a sharp clatter above made his blood run cold. Crack followed crack, then for a second there were a number of dull thuds, and finally, a tremendous crash on the ledge below, waking echoes around the cove. One of the natives, in climbing among the boulders, had displaced a large rock.
The doors of the sheds were burst open. Lights shone across the cove. Men came rushing out, calling to one another, to the sentry above, to the men on the Raider. 'Faster! Faster!' Trentham cried inwardly, as he was jerked upward. He was just over the edge when a blinding light swept across the face of the cliff. The searchlight's beams fell full upon Trentham's white-clad form. Slipping out of the loop, he scrambled on hands and knees up the sloping ascent towards the boulders. Below him there was a sputtering rattle, and he felt himself splashed with earth and stones as the rain of machine-gun bullets pecked at the cliff. Something hot stung his leg; he crawled faster; in another moment his shoulders were grasped by sinewy hands, and Grinson and Hoole between them lugged him over the brink and behind the protecting boulders.
'Thanks be for all mercies!' panted Grinson. 'And as for that clumsy lubber that kicked down the rock----'
'Shoo!' whistled Hoole, 'it's time, sure, to cut and run!'
CHAPTER XIII
A FORCED LANDING
'For goodness' sake keep them quiet!' gasped Trentham, clambering up among the boulders to the top of the slope. The native prisoners, hysterical in their joy, were laughing and shouting and smacking their thighs.
'Say, Lafoa,' said Hoole, 'tell that chief of yours to stop the hullabaloo. Black fella no talkee this time.'
Flanso gathered his men together, and reduced the hubbub somewhat. Meanwhile Trentham had gained the top.
'We must get out of reach at once,' he said. 'The searchlight's no good to them now, nor the machine-gun; but if these fellows make such a row the Germans will track us.'
'We make for the village?' asked Hoole.
'Not directly; the Germans are sure to put men on the paths. But I fancy they won't risk a regular pursuit in the dark, and if we get away from the coast and avoid the direct route to the village, we shall at any rate not run into them. How 's Meek?'
'Just alive, sir, that's all I can say,' replied Grinson. 'What they 've been doing to him----'
'Can he walk?' Trentham interrupted.
'Says he ain't got no feeling in his legs. But what's the odds? I 'll heave him across my back. Lucky you 're lean, Ephraim, me lad!'
'Come, let's start at once. Where's Lafoa?'
He explained his plan to the interpreter, who imparted it to the young chief, and the whole party moved off silently into the forest, Grinson mounting Meek pickaback.
Trentham's inferences as to the actions of the enemy were better justified than he knew. All the Germans with the exception of Hahn had been thrown into a state of utter consternation by the discovery that Meek was not the only white man in their neighbourhood. Hahn, professing himself to be as much surprised as the rest, had discreetly held his tongue. Consequently the commander, ignorant of the number of the rescuers, had contented himself with posting parties of the crew on the paths which the fugitives must cross to regain their village, postponing organised pursuit until the morning.
It was slow going in the darkness. Several of the natives who had been longest enslaved were weak from overwork, ill-treatment, and confinement. The stronger among them, eager to press on, were restrained by fear of the dark and the necessity of helping the weaker. Hoole noticed that Trentham was limping.
'Hurt your leg?' he asked.
'Got a bullet, I think, but it's nothing.'
'Shucks! Let me have a look at it right now. You might bleed to death.'
He knelt down and groped for the wound.
'The bullet has ploughed up a bit of your calf,' he said in a minute or two. 'Lucky it's no worse. Wait half a second while I tie it up; then I guess you can go on till we strike some water.'
They went on, struggling over rough country amid thick bush and trees. Even the natives were at a loss in the darkness. They could not choose a definite direction, and it seemed obvious to the white men that some of them would soon collapse. Grinson was panting under his load, light though it was, but steadfastly refused to allow the others to take turns with him. At length, coming to a patch of open ground, Trentham called a halt.