Buch lesen: «One Maid's Mischief», Seite 29

She ceased speaking, and Helen heard a loud rustling and panting noise, and a few minutes later a dark face rose to a level with hers, and she clasped the Malay girl towards her and began to sob.

The girl kissed her through the bars, there being just space enough for their faces to approach, and then, with an eager look at the sleeping figure, she whispered that it was time to act.

“But what shall we do – what can we do?” whispered Helen.

“You said you wanted to leave him, and that you would take me back with you to your own people. Will you do so now?”

“Oh, yes, yes,” whispered Helen, excitedly; “make haste and let us go!”

“But are you sure that you wish to leave him?” said the girl, dubiously.

“Oh, yes – yes – yes!” cried Helen, so eagerly that the girl uttered a warning “hush,” and then apparently satisfied, bade her be still while she tried to make a way to her.

For answer Helen stood listening, while the girl seemed to climb upwards and sidewise, standing with her feet resting upon the bars of the open window; and for some time there was a low tearing and rustling noise, as if an effort was being made to cut through the bamboo and cane-woven wall.

This went on for some time and then ceased, to Helen’s great relief, for Murad had several times moved uneasily, and it seemed to her that the noise had awakened him.

There was a slight rustling then, and the Malay girl came back to her former position.

“I cannot do it,” she whispered. “It would take strong men with parangs, and I am only a weak girl with a kris.”

“Can we not escape, then?” panted Helen, whose heart sank.

“Yes; but not that way. It must be through the roof, for the attap is only soft and the strings thin. I think I can manage to cut through there.”

As her words left her lips they both clung there as if paralysed, for, uttering a hoarse gasp, Murad struggled to his feet and staggered towards them with an angry cry.

Volume Three – Chapter Eight.
A Faithful Ally

The alarm was not of long duration, for it soon became evident that Murad was still under the influence of the powerful narcotic. He did not see either of the other occupants of the room, but staggered here and there for a few moments, and then sank heavily once more upon the mats, placing his head in an easy position, and falling into a heavy sleep, his breathing sounding deep and regular to the trembling girls.

“We need not mind,” said the Malay girl at last. “He cannot hear me. I will climb up.”

The bars of the window formed a ladder for her ascent, and she clambered slowly up till her feet were resting upon the topmost bar. Then there was a rustling and cutting noise, and every now and then a dull pat, as of something falling into the bushes below.

It was a terrible position for Helen, who, unable to assist, could only listen and keep her eyes fixed on Murad, whom she momentarily expected to see arise wrathfully and call for help to seize the brave girl working so hard without to obtain freedom for both.

Then, as the Rajah still remained breathing heavily, another form of dread attacked her; she felt sure that some of the guards or people must hear this loud rustling noise, so that it was with an intense feeling of relief that Helen heard the sounds cease. Then there was a louder rustling as of someone drawing herself up, and directly after the Malay girl climbed down into the room, Helen clasping her tightly in her arms.

The girl freed herself hastily and went across to where Murad lay sleeping, bent down over him, gazing steadily in his face, and then turned with a bitter laugh.

“I have said good-bye to him, so now let us go. If I look at him again I shall never be able to leave. Let us escape.”

“But how?” exclaimed Helen, helplessly.

“How?” said the girl. “Why, as I came in. I have opened the way,” and she pointed to the ragged hole in the palm thatch.

“I could not climb up there,” exclaimed Helen, with a look of helplessness and despair in her countenance; “it is impossible!”

“You white people!” cried the girl – “you are poor, and weak, and helpless! But come, you must go. Murad will soon waken, and what will you do then?”

The mention of that name and the prospect of the awaking seemed to nerve Helen to the effort she was called upon to make; and in answer to a fresh demand made upon her by her companion, she declared her readiness.

“I will go first,” said the girl, and with the nimbleness of a cat she seized the bars of the window, went up them like a ladder, and with an agility that made Helen, as she watched her in the dim light shed up there by the lamp, look upon her movements as almost miraculous.

Drawing herself quickly up, she passed through the hole in the attap roof, crawling right out; and directly after, having turned, Helen saw her leaning through.

“Now, come – quick!” whispered the girl. “Step up the window-bars as I did, and then give me your hands. You shall not fall; I will hold you.”

Helen made a couple of weak, ineffective trials to climb up and reach her friend, but sank back, and was ready to burst into feeble tears and give up in despair; but Murad uttered some angry words and threw out one arm, which fell heavily back upon the floor.

The noise electrified Helen, who darted to the window-bars, and how she managed she hardly knew, but she climbed up, caught spasmodically at the Malay girl’s hand, at the bamboo rafters, and partly by her own effort, partly by the girl’s exertion, was dragged up through the palm-leaf roof, and sat with her companion holding on tightly to the steep slope.

Here she rested, panting and trembling, so that the girl did not make any further effort for a few minutes, and even then it was Helen who proposed that they should move, placing her lips close to the other’s ear, and asking wildly what they should do next.

For answer the girl climbed over her, made Helen move slightly, and then, seating herself with the legs through the hole, she took off the sarong worn veil-fashion over her shoulders, and twisting it tightly, tied it to the one Helen wore, making of the two a strong silken rope, one end of which she secured to the trembling prisoner’s left wrist.

“Now,” she whispered, “I will hold you by this. Let yourself slide softly till you touch the bars with your feet, and then climb down. Afterwards hang from the sarongs, and I will lower you as far as I can.”

Helen drew a long, deep breath, trembling the while, for the height and position in which they were seemed to her to be awful!

But she did not shrink now; she felt committed to the desperate enterprise; and holding on by the tough palm-leaves, she lowered herself down the steep roof, and then clung to the woodwork with all her strength, as her feet were suspended now over the darkness, and she sought foothold for them with desperate haste.

But for the steady strain upon her wrist she would have fallen; but this encouraged her to renewed effort, and after a few trials, and just as she began to feel that her task was hopeless, her right foot touched and rested upon one of the bars, and taking a fresh hold, she stepped down, slipped, was held by the tight tension of the silken rope, saved herself, and the next minute stood panting, with hands and feet sustained by the stout bamboo trellis of the window.

Here she paused for a few moments, when once more it was Murad who startled her into action, and she lowered herself down till she was hanging by the sill of the window, seeking for some support for her feet, her companion jerking the sarong sharply to urge her on.

But Helen had exhausted herself by her efforts, and could do no more. She tried once feebly, but there was no result; and to make matters worse, the Malay girl was now straining the sarong, as if afraid that she would fall.

There was a faint cry, a slip, the sarong was held tightly, and Helen fell with a jerk that seemed to drag her left arm from the socket. She swung for a moment, and the silken rope was lowered so rapidly that she seemed to be falling. Then she did fall with a crash amongst the bushes, what seemed to her to be an immense distance, though it was only some half-dozen feet, and she lay perfectly still, feeling that she was terribly hurt.

She was half stunned by the fall and the excitement; but her companion climbed down lightly, and bent over her in the darkness.

“Quick!” she whispered. “Someone must have heard you fall? Are you hurt?”

“I don’t know. Not much,” faltered Helen, as she struggled to her feet, the girl meanwhile hastily rolling the sarong round Helen’s arm, catching then at her hand, and half dragging her through the tangled bushes, whose thorns checked them, tearing their garb, while every now and then they had to stoop and creep beneath the trees.

In this way they had made some fifty yards towards safety, when a fierce snarling growl, which they both knew well enough to be that of a tiger, sounded away in front; and almost simultaneously there was the report of a gun, then of another, and lights could be seen in the direction from which they had come.

“Which is it to be,” said the girl, hoarsely, “Murad or the tiger? Say which you will choose, for they will either of them kill us without mercy?”

Volume Three – Chapter Nine.
Another Escape

“The Inche Maida need have someone to drill and discipline her men,” whispered Chumbley to his companion, as, after walking up and down for a few minutes, they saw the two Malays, whose duty it evidently was to guard their prison, light their pipes and then stroll away, their course being for a time indistinctly made out by the faint glow of one of the bowls.

Mutually regretting that they had not made an attempt to escape sooner, since they were finding the task so easy, Hilton led the way, going cautiously step by step upon their blind quest of a path which should lead them to the river.

That such a path would exist they felt pretty sure, the river being the great highway of the land; and paths were so few, that they were pretty certain of its being the right one if they should hit upon a track.

In spite of their efforts, though, first one and then the other leading, no path was found; and at last, in utter despair, after being driven back again and again by the density of the jungle, they were compelled to sit down amongst the bushes edging the forest to wait for day.

It was a grievous disappointment after escaping from the house and evading the guards. They had hoped to be miles away towards the river before daybreak, whereas now the chances were that they would hardly place to their credit a hundred paces even if they avoided the guards.

Day seemed as if it would never come, and yet so persevering had been their efforts that the first streaks of dawn began to appear in less than an hour after they had seated themselves in what proved to be a very fair hiding-place; and almost as they made their first step to reconnoitre, there was a flash of orange and gold in the sky.

Chumbley pressed his companion’s hand, pointing as he did so to what was evidently the pathway they had sought for; and after a glance round they were about to step out into the open, and then run as quickly as they could into the shelter, pushing rapidly on to make the best of their way into the depths of the jungle.

Hilton gave his companion a glance, and they were about to start off when a couple of spear-armed Malays took up their position on one side of the Inche Maida’s house, a couple more starting up from beneath a tree where they had been sleeping, and so near that the officers must have nearly trodden upon them as they passed.

Had the two young men not sunk down in their hiding-place they must have been seen, and it was evident now that the Inche Maida’s followers watched a part of the night, after which they lay down to sleep, and rose again at daybreak to continue their guard.

Regrets were unavailing, and it was as useless to wish themselves back in their comfortable prison, there to rest till night, when they could have easily got away with the knowledge they possessed.

Hilton uttered a weary sigh as he lay there trying to devise some means of escape; and meanwhile the sun rose higher, lighting up the dark places beyond where they lay, and showing them more and more that the slightest movement meant being seen and offering themselves as marks to the Malays’ spears.

They exchanged glances and lay perfectly still, with one of the Malays coming to and fro past them as he kept guard, and so near, that had he looked in their direction at the right moment, he must have seen them.

A couple of hours had passed away when the outcry that the fugitives had been expecting arose, the Inche Maida herself giving the alarm and furiously bidding her people to join pursuit.

Quite twenty well-armed men darted off through the opening into the jungle, the Princess following them at the end of a few minutes with half a dozen more of her followers, leaving the palm and bamboo edifice apparently deserted, and the way free.

“Now is our time, Chum!” whispered Hilton, and cautiously rising, they began to look for another path – one that would lead them to the water by a different route.

They ran round the house twice, and then gazed at each other in despair.

There was but one path, which led right to the opening in which the house was built. All around was impassable jungle; and the only way to escape was to follow the Inche Maida and her men.

The place was a regular trap, and could have been defended by a few resolute fellows against hundreds if there was an attack.

“What’s to be done, Chum?” said Hilton.

“Go in and hide somewhere, and wait till night.”

“With those women to tell the Princess where we have hidden ourselves!” said Hilton, angrily, pointing to a group of half a dozen women standing in the doorway and watching their movements.

Chumbley made a few steps as if to go to them, when they scuttled off like so many rabbits in an English warren; and there were but two courses open to them – either to follow their would-be pursuers, or to calmly go back and wait for the Inche Maida’s return.

“It will be taking trouble for nothing to go after them,” said Chumbley, wearily. “Let’s go back to our room and order the women to bring us some breakfast.”

“What? And give up without making an effort?” cried Hilton. “I’d sooner die!”

“I wouldn’t. But all right,” said Chumbley. “I’m with you; but we may as well be armed.”

He ran into the house, and as he expected, had no difficulty in finding a couple of krisses and spears, one of each of which he handed to his friend; and then they struck boldly into the jungle, following the path taken by their enemies hour after hour; and, though momentarily expecting to hear them returning, continuing their course in the most uninterrupted way.

It was always the same; a dense wall of verdure to right and left; tall trees shutting out the sunshine, and the greatest care necessary to keep from falling into one or other of the great elephant holes.

At last they came upon a place where the pathway forked; and after a moment’s hesitation they chose the path to the right, that to the left being the one most likely to bring them nearer to their friends, and, therefore, probably the one their pursuers had taken.

In fact, hardly had they gone a hundred yards down the way they had chosen, before they heard voices across the jungle, evidently those of their returning pursuers.

This lent fresh wings to their feet, and they hurried on, finding to their dismay that the enemy had turned into this path, and were now following them fast.

It was a race for liberty, perhaps for life; and whither the path led they could not tell. Whenever they paused for a moment to listen, they could hear the voices of their pursuers; and at last, panting, streaming with perspiration, their faces bleeding from contact with thorns, they glanced at each other, when, by mutual consent, they made another effort. The path took a turn, and Hilton uttered a cry of joy, for at the end of a long green tunnel there was the brilliant sunshine upon the river.

This put new life into them; and racing onward, they reached the water’s edge just as a couple of Malay fishermen were securing their sampan to a post.

The sight of the weapons, and the threatening words used by the desperate fugitives, silenced any opposition the fishermen might have made; and as the two officers sprang aboard, the men loosened the rope, took their paddles, and the boat was round the bend of the river and out of sight before the Inche Maida’s followers reached the water’s edge.

Before night the Residency island was in sight.

Hilton had been very silent for some time, but at last he spoke:

“Chum, old fellow,” he said, “I’ve been thinking about what we are to say.”

“Hilton, old fellow, I’ve been thinking the very same thing.”

“It would be too ridiculous to say that we had been carried off by a woman.”

“We should be roasted to death!” said Chumbley.

“But she ought to be punished.”

“Can’t go and carry sword and fire into the woman’s home because she took a fancy to you.”

“What are we to say, then? I dare not own to this affair!”

“I swear I won’t!” said Chumbley.

“Then what is to be done?”

“The only thing seems to me to be that we had better say we were carried off by the Malays.”

“Which is a fact,” said Hilton.

“And we were taken to a place that we had never seen before.”

“Another fact,” said Hilton.

“And kept prisoners.”

“Which is another fact.”

“I think that’s best,” said Chumbley. “It would be horrible to go and take revenge upon this woman.”

“But she deserves to be well punished.”

“Well, we are punishing her,” said Chumbley, “by coming away, and leaving her in a horrible stew, for she is safe to imagine that we shall go back with a company, and destroy her place. Besides, she will never dare to show her face at the settlement again.”

“Well, let the matter rest for the present,” said Hilton. “Only let us thank our stars that we have escaped.”

“To be sure!” said Chumbley, with a sigh of relief. “Poor woman, I should not like her to be hurt, she behaved so well; and – Hurrah! there’s Harley! Row, you ruffians – row! There – to that landing-stage!”

Then, as the men, who were in a great state of dread as to whether they should be allowed to depart, tremblingly placed the boat alongside the bamboo landing-stage, Hilton sprang out, Chumbley following, after placing some silver coin in the men’s hands, and sending them rejoicing away.

“What’s that?” cried Chumbley, as he caught part of a sentence and the Resident’s hand at the same moment. “Miss Perowne missing?”

“Yes; carried off, I suppose now,” said the Resident, between his teeth. “The same brain must have contrived your absence, though for what I don’t know, unless it was for ransom.”

Hilton and Chumbley exchanged glances. “Only one brain here could have plotted this,” cried the Resident, as he mastered the fact of his friends having been made prisoners in some out-of-the-way place; “and the brain was that of the doubly-dyed, treacherous scoundrel who has all along professed to be our friend. I always suspected it: Helen Perowne is a prisoner in Rajah Murad’s hands.”

Volume Three – Chapter Ten.
Hamet

The disposition on the part of Helen Perowne and her companion seemed to be to trust the beasts of the jungle sooner than the Rajah; and after a few moments’ pause to listen, they went cautiously on, with the cries of the great cat-like creature that they knew to be in their neighbourhood seeming to grow more distant, as if it had been driven off by the noise and firing at the house.

It was terrible work that flight; and had she been alone Helen would have given up in sheer despair, for every atom of growth in the jungle seemed to be enlisted in the Rajah’s service, and strove to check the fugitives as they fled. Great thorns hooked and clung to their clothes; ratan canes wound across and across their way, tripping them up, so that again and again they fell heavily; while the dense undergrowth rose up constantly like a wall of verdure, as impenetrable as some monstrous hedge.

Streaming with perspiration, panting with exhaustion, and ready to give up in despair, Helen struggled on, nerved to making fresh attempts by the courage of her companion; but at last the jungle was so dense that any further effort seemed like so much madness, and they paused to rest, Helen sinking down amidst the thorns and leaves, too much exhausted to move.

The Malay girl did not speak, but stood leaning against a tree-trunk, listening for tokens of pursuit, but there was not a sound; and by degrees it dawned upon them that the Rajah’s people had taken alarm at the noise, and then, seeing nothing, hearing nothing more, they had quietly returned to their rest; for the probabilities were that they would not venture to disturb the Rajah, who would sleep on in his stupor perhaps till mid-day.

After a time the girl laid her hand upon Helen’s shoulder.

“We must try again,” she said; and with a weary sigh the fugitive rose and staggered on, following her companion as she tore aside the canes, pushed back thorny growth, and utterly regardless of self, kept on making a way for Helen to follow.

There was a strong display of kindness in her manner, but it was not unmingled with contempt for the helplessness of the English girl, who had to trust entirely to her for every step of their progress.

Just at the very worst time, when they had again become entangled in the wild jungly maze, the Malay girl stopped once more to take breath; and then making an angry effort to free herself from a bramble-like growth that was tearing her sarong into shreds, she uttered a cry of joy, for she found that she had broken through quite a thorny hedge of growth, and was now standing in a narrow pathway, evidently the track made by elephant, buffalo, or other large creatures of the jungle.

Her cheery words aroused Helen to fresh exertion; and following the track, painful as it was, and full of crossing strands and canes, they got on for the next two or three hours pretty well, when they seemed to have descended into marshy ground through which the track led.

Here they found a fresh difficulty, for if the Malay girl had had any doubt before that they were in an elephant path, it was made evident now by the series of great footprints, every one of which was a pitfall of mud and water, the custom of these huge beasts being to step invariably in the tracks left by those that have passed before, believing them to be indications of safety; and the result is that in a short time the path becomes in a wet soil one long series of muddy holes.

It was along such a way as this that Helen and her companion struggled on till the sun had risen and the rich shafts of orange and gold came pouring through the dense foliage above their heads.

With the sunrise came light and hope. The sombre forest seemed to be less depressing, and when they had struggled on for another hour, until the heat began to be steamy, a brighter light shone through the trees ahead, and they awakened to the fact that they were near the little river, whose banks they at last reached, to lie down beneath the spreading branches of a huge tree. The boughs formed a screen from everyone who might be passing in a boat; and here the Malay girl produced some food which she had had the foresight to bring; and this they ate, watching the rapid, sparkling stream, whose path through the jungle was all sunshine and light, while that of the fugitives had been one of gloom.

As they sat there resting, they now and then directed their attention to the stream, gazing up and down as far as their eyes would reach in search of danger; but sparkling water, blossom-burdened trees, and the occasional glint of some brightly-plumaged bird darting from side to side, was all that met their sight.

They both meant to be watchful, and as soon as they were rested to once more continue their flight, but the exhaustion produced by their unwonted exertions proved to be too much for them, and as the heat increased they both fell into a deep sleep.

Helen and her companion had been slumbering heavily for several hours, ignorant of the flight of time, and in these brief restful moments thoughts of peaceful days had come back to both; while in the sunshine beyond the tree that formed their shelter birds flitted here and there, the brilliant armour-clad beetles winged their reckless flight, making a whirring hum as they dashed over the stream. The surface of the river was flecked with the rising of the bright scaled fish, and what with the varied greens and the beauty of the blossoms that made the sides of the little river quite a garden, all looked peaceful, and as if trouble could not exist upon earth. But danger was near, for two of the Rajah’s boats came slowly up-stream with their occupants parting the leaves with bamboo poles, and peering beneath on either side in search of the fugitives; while, in utter ignorance of their proximity, the wearied girls slept on.

A tall, fierce-looking Malay, in a brilliantly-tinted sarong, stood in the prow of the boat nearest to the fugitives, and he was so indefatigable in his efforts to examine every foot of the way, that it seemed impossible for the girls to escape his search.

Nearer came his boat, and still those the crew sought lay insensible to danger, and with Helen’s thoughts far back in the past of her pleasant days with her friends at the little settlement. The tall Malay used the light pole he held with the utmost skill, and parted bough after bough, raising this one, depressing that, until it was down in the swift, pure water.

Every now and then he gave some short, sharp order to the men who paddled the boat, so that they sent it in closer or forced it back, giving him abundant opportunity for seeing anyone upon the bank; and in this way they approached the great tree beneath whose umbrageous foliage the two girls slept.

The boat was sent close in, and the swarthy face of the Malay peered between the branches, which he moved with the pole, so that over and over again they helped to shelter those who were sought, and at last the sharp order was given to back out from among the branches; but the moment after the leader rescinded his order and seemed to be desirous of searching more, for he raised a broad-leaved bough, held on by it, and looked in once more beneath the shade, shot with brilliant rays, and with flies dancing up and down in one broad band of sunshine.

That broad band of sunshine shone right athwart the Malay girl’s face, and as the searcher saw it a grim smile of satisfaction played for a moment about his lip, and then left him stern-looking and calm.

“Go on,” he exclaimed, in his own tongue, as he loosed the branch whose leaves hid the sleeping girl from sight, and the boat went forward, the Malay peering back for a moment with his great opalescent eyeballs rolling as he looked up and down the great tree, as if fixing it in his mind with the surroundings on either side of the stream. After this he went on in the same matter-of-fact way, pressing the branches aside and examining his bank of the river for quite an hour longer, when the leader of the other boat, which was well in advance, hailed him, and proposed that they should give up the search as of no avail.

The other searcher made a little demur, when the other became more pressing.

“They could not have wandered up so far as this,” he said; and the tall Malay reluctantly acquiescing, the two boats were turned, a man placed a paddle over the stern for steering purposes, the other paddles were laid in by the weary rowers, who, leaving the boats to descend the swift stream, settled themselves in easy attitudes, pulled out their betel boxes and leaves, and each man, after smearing a sirih leaf with a little paste of lime, rolled up in it a fragment of the popular betel-nut, and sat back with half-closed eyes, chewing, as if that were the be-all and end-all of existence.

The boats sped rapidly down-stream, past the glorious panorama of tropic vegetation spread on either side: but it was not noticed once save by the tall Malay, who sat back in the prow with his bamboo pole balanced in his hands, lazily peering out of his half-closed eyes.

As they approached the huge tree, beneath whose shade the two weary girls lay resting, the Malay’s dark eyes opened slightly, as if he were again carefully observant of the place. Then they half-closed once more, then quite closed, and he seemed to go fast asleep.

Then the two boats rapidly glided down with the current and disappeared.

The sun, which had before been shining straight down upon the river, had gone westward, and had begun to cast shadows across the foaming stream, when once more a boat appeared, but only propelled by one man, who, armed with a long pole, stood in the stern, as he kept close in under the trees, and thrusting the pole down in the bubbling water, forced the little vessel along at a rapid rate.

He did not look either to right or left, but aimed straight for the great tree, and even then passed it, but only to alter the course of the boat a little, and let it glide back right beneath the branches and close in shore, where he silently secured it, and then stepped out to where the Malay girl still lay sleeping.

He stood looking at her for a few moments before kneeling softly down at her side, when, with a light, firm touch, he placed one hand upon her right wrist and the other upon her lips.

The girl started into wakefulness, and would have shrieked, but the hand across her lips stayed her. She would have seized the kris with which she was armed, but her wrist was pinioned.

She gazed with fierce and angry eyes straight into her captor’s face, and thus for some moments they remained till he raised his hand.

“Well,” she said, “you have taken me.”

“Yes; at last,” he replied, in the same low voice as that in which the captured girl had spoken.

Involuntarily the Malay girl’s eyes turned towards her companion, but she closed them directly, believing that Helen had not been seen.