The sun was setting when the doctor awoke from a dream of being somewhere undergoing a punishment for his sins by being buzzed at by flies that he could not knock off his face and ears.
He felt annoyed on seeing how the day was spent; but a little consideration told him that the men were almost knocked up by their exertions, and that they would be the better for the rest.
“Well,” said the doctor, “how are we to manage now? Will the stream grow deeper higher up?”
“No, master,” replied the Malay; “the boat can go no farther. We must walk.”
“Humph! and carry the provisions?” said the doctor.
“Yes, if the master wishes to go up to the mountains.”
“Why, you are afraid, Ismael!” said the doctor.
“Yes, master, we are both afraid; but if he says we must go, his servants will follow him right up where the spirits dwell. Look – see,” he whispered. “There is one waving its hands to us to tempt us. Don’t – no, don’t look, master, or you may die.”
The second Malay threw himself flat in the bottom of the boat, and covered his face with his hands.
“Well, I’ve seen worse things than that,” said the doctor, grimly. “Why, it’s a woman; and she’s coming this way.”
“The spirits come in all shapes from the mountains to tempt people,” said the trembling Malay. “Now, they are tigers, now they are crocodiles, and sometimes women and men.”
“Ah, the women are the worst kind of spirits,” said the doctor – “especially,” he added to himself, “if they are middle-aged and jealous of their husbands. Here, get up, sir; don’t lie there; you’re crushing my specimens. That’s only a Malay woman.”
The figure was struggling slowly along, the rugged, rock-strewn bank of the stream making her passage very arduous, for the little river was running now in the bottom of a ravine like a huge rift in the mountain side. The rocks towered up at a swift angle, and a traveller would have found the best road to be decidedly in the bed of the stream.
The woman ashore, however, evidently preferred the dry land, and kept on picking her way toilsomely from rock to rock, now descending into some rift, and anon climbing forth once more into sight, and more than once she seemed to fall.
She was quite a couple of hundred yards away still, and the doctor watched her approach with growing interest, feeling no little compassion for her, as he saw that she was evidently footsore, and struggled towards them in a weary, halting manner, that grew pitiable as she advanced.
At last the piled-up rocks grew evidently so difficult that the woman toiled slowly down to the bed of the stream, where the doctor saw her stoop and scoop up the sweet, cool water with her hand, evidently to drink with avidity. After this she made an effort to continue her course, but she seemed to totter and sink down upon a stone at the side of the stream, waving her brown hand once more as if for help.
“Poor thing!” said the doctor, stepping out of the boat into the shallow water, but only to be seized by the two Malays.
“No, no, master,” they cried together; “you must not go. It is a spirit, and it will kill you!”
“Let go, you silly, superstitious fellows!” cried the doctor, wrenching himself free. “Women are very dangerous creatures, but I think I shall get back safe.”
Then, to the horror of his two men, he waded up the stream to where the native woman sat back, half reclining against the rock, with her feet washed by the running water.
As it is well known, when once the sun is below the horizon, the twilight is extremely short in the tropics; and the fast-coming darkness was deepened by the depth of the rocky ravine, so that as the doctor waded carefully on to avoid a nasty fall, the figure of the woman in her gay plaid sarong was beginning to look filmy and indistinct enough to make anyone of superstitious tendencies doubtful of the reality of that upon which he gazed.
But the doctor was made of too stern stuff to be troubled in this way, even after the promptings of his companions; and wading on, with the water feeling deliciously cool as it plashed musically about his feet, he noted that the brown face looked fixed and strange, the lips parted, revealing the black, filed teeth, and such an air of exhaustion displayed in the eyes, that he hurried his steps.
“What is the matter?” he said, in the Malay tongue; but the woman did not reply, only raised one hand feebly and let it drop.
Black, brown, or white, it was the same to Dr Bolter. Here was a patient asking help in her mute way; and taking her hand, he quickly felt her pulse.
“No fever. Exhaustion,” he muttered, softly, laying her farther back, so that after dipping some of the cold water in the cup of his spirit-flask, and adding a few drops of some essence, he could trickle it gently between the sufferer’s lips.
She made an effort to swallow, and did so, uttering a low moan the next minute, followed by a piteous sigh.
“Drink a little more,” he said, in the Malay tongue; and she obeyed mechanically, as he held the silver cup to her lips. “Poor girl,” he continued, to himself, “her feet are cut and bleeding, and she has hurt herself with falling – Here! hoi! Ismael! Ali!”
The rocks echoed his cry, and the two men approached tremblingly.
“Come along, you stupid fellows!” he cried. “It is nothing to be afraid of;” and after a few more angry admonitions the two boatmen came up and helped to carry the insensible girl down to the boat, when, a snug place close by in the rocks having been picked out, the sufferer was placed upon a roughly-prepared couch formed of the doctor’s overcoat and his waterproof sheet; then a macintosh was laid over her, and she seemed to fall off into a heavy sleep.
“That keeps us here for the night,” said the doctor; and being hungry, a fire was lit, and a capital little dinner of preserved game and fish prepared, of which all partook, and then made preparations for passing the night.
Volume Three – Chapter Thirteen.
Medical Aid
Doctor Bolter visited his patient two or three times, waking up with the greatest of regularity every two hours for the purpose, and administering a few drops of a cordial that he always carried wherever he went, it having wonderful qualities of its own, so the doctor said, and being competent to cure almost every disease, but smelling very strongly of brandy.
His patient slept heavily, and she was still sleeping as the doctor’s coffee was ready just before sunrise.
“Humph!” he muttered; “it’s a precious good job my wife isn’t here, or she’d be as cross as two sticks, for the poor thing is a wonderfully handsome girl in spite of her black, filed teeth, and dark skin. Poor lassie! how she has scratched herself. Why, her feet are cut and swollen and full of thorns. I’ll bet ten pounds to twopence she’s a runaway slave.”
There was no one to take the bet, and the doctor went on:
“Poor lass! she has put me in a fix. I can’t take her back with me, because nothing upsets Harley more than having to deal with the domestic institutions of the Malays; and if they get under the protection of the British flag a slave is a slave no longer. Then, too, there is Mrs Bolter. Bless that woman! what a pity it is that she is of such a jealous disposition.
“Tut, tut, tut! Hang the girl! why didn’t she run to someone else? It’s a pity she doesn’t wake, though, for a cup of coffee would do her good.
“Humph! Yes, she’s a very handsome girl,” muttered the doctor, thoughtfully. “What a pity it is that they can’t leave their pretty white teeth alone, instead of disfiguring them like that, and – Bless me – how strange! Where have I seen this girl before?”
He stood gazing down at her very thoughtfully, but his memory did not serve him.
“It must have been at the Inche Maida’s, and that makes it worse, for we don’t want to offend her – Ah! that’s right,” he said aloud in Malayan.
“How do you feel?”
For answer the girl, who had just opened a pair of large lustrous eyes, gazed at the doctor at first in a frightened way, and then caught his hand in hers, kissed it passionately, and held it to her breast.
“Oh, come, I say, my dear, this won’t do!” cried the doctor. “What the dickens do you think Mrs Bolter would say if she saw it? There’d be the prettiest row under the sun. Now, then, be calm, and lie still. You shall have a cup of coffee, and then I’ll extract some of the thorns from your feet, or you’ll be regularly crippled.”
There was a fresh burst of sobbing here, the girl striving to speak, but her sobs choked her utterance.
“There, there, there,” said the doctor, kindly, “don’t cry, my poor child; you are safe now, and I’ll take you back to the station in spite of Harley and Mrs Bolter herself. Hang the slave customs and all who practise them, I say! Now, my dear,” he added, in Malayan, “loose my hand and I will get you some coffee.”
He tried to withdraw his hand, but the girl clung to it the more tightly.
“No, no, Doctor,” she cried; “don’t leave me, pray!”
“What? The deuce!” exclaimed the little man, starting. “How the dickens did you know I was a doctor? I say; I know your voice; who – ”
“Don’t you know me again, Doctor?” she cried, passionately, and cutting short his speech.
“Know you? What – why? – It is? No. Yes: Helen Perowne!”
The poor girl burst into a frantic hysterical fit of crying.
“Why, my poor darling! my dear child! my poor little woman!” cried the doctor, raising her head to his breast, and holding her there, kissing her again and again as the tears ran down his ruddy face. “My poor little bairnie! This is dreadful! There, there, there, my dear, you are quite safe now,” he continued, patting her and caressing her as a father would a favourite child. “But there; what a milksop I am; crying like a great girl, I declare, when I ought to shout hooray! to think I have found you safe, if not quite sound. Why, my dear child, Perowne will hug me for this. Poor old boy, he has been half frantic.”
“But, Doctor,” she sobbed, “they will catch me again, and drag me back to that dreadful place. Look here,” she cried, with a mingling of pitiful appeal and angry indignation, and she held out her scratched and torn brown hands, and then turned her face and showed her teeth to him. “I have been cruelly used. They made me look like one of his wretched wives, so that I should not be known.”
“But who – who did all this?”
“Murad, and I have been kept a prisoner here at a dreadful place, deep in the jungle, where I saw no one but his wretched creatures. Oh, Doctor, Doctor, kill me, or I shall go mad!”
“Kill you? of course I won’t, my dear. The dog! the scoundrel! the smooth-faced hypocrite! I’ll blow his brains out! I’ll skin him and make a specimen of him to take him back to England and exhibit him as a demon. Hang him! I don’t know what I won’t do!” cried the doctor, stamping with passion. “Here, you two,” he cried, “don’t stand staring like that, but bring the young lady some coffee.”
The two Malay boatmen, who had been terribly puzzled at their master’s behaviour with one they took to be an escaped slave, obeyed his orders at once, looking very peculiar the while.
“Don’t you see who it is, you scoundrels?” cried the doctor, storming. “What are you thinking about?”
“Nothing, master,” said the elder boatman, submissively, for what so great a man as the doctor – one who could bring people back to life, as he had the reputation of having done before now – chose to do must be good and right.
“That’s better,” exclaimed the doctor, energetically. “Now some biscuits. Come, my dear, try and eat and drink. I wish to goodness my little woman were here! Come, eat; it will give you strength.”
Helen made a lame effort or two, but the food seemed to choke her.
“And I’d come out to find Solomon’s gold,” muttered the doctor. “Solomon’s Ophir; I seem instead to have found Solomon’s wives, or rather one of them. Bless my heart! bless my soul! Well, really I never did!”
He looked at Helen wonderingly, and then ran mentally over the trouble at the station as he longed to question his “new specimen,” as he called her, but felt some delicacy in speaking.
“Come, come,” he said at last, “you do not eat.”
“Oh, no, no, Doctor!” she cried, in hysterical tones. “I cannot eat: what shall I do?”
“One moment,” said the doctor; “tell me, do I apprehend rightly, that you have escaped from that scoundrel?”
“Yes,” she whispered, hoarsely; and she shuddered as she spoke. “He came yesterday – no, it must have been days ago. I don’t know: my head is troubled. He came, and I said I would escape and die in the jungle if I could not get to the station.”
“Yes, yes,” said the doctor, feeling her pulse, for she seemed to grow more composed.
“And I did escape: one of the Rajah’s women helped me, and we fled together through the jungle, toiling on amongst thorns and canes, and always ready to drop, till we sank down wearily to sleep.”
“Yes, my poor child,” said the doctor; “but where is your companion?”
“I – I don’t know,” said Helen, in a strange, dazed way. “She must be somewhere. I went to sleep, and she was with me, and I awoke and she was gone. But, Doctor, dear Doctor Bolter, I am not what I was. Pray do not let me fall into that wretch’s hands again!”
“Never fear,” exclaimed the doctor, to give her confidence, and he assumed a matter-of-fact, confident air as he spoke. “Look here, my dear child, eat and drink to gain strength, and I will then take you back in my boat. Don’t be alarmed. You will be quite safe.”
Helen made an effort to partake of the coffee, and as the doctor drank his own, it suddenly struck him that he used to have a great dislike to Helen Perowne, while now he had been treating her with the most affectionate solicitude.
“And quite right, too,” he muttered. “Her position enlists sympathy. Why, I should be a brute if I did not behave kindly and well.”
The difficulties of his position became more apparent to him as he thought the matter over.
Murad had carried off Helen no doubt in accordance with a deeply-laid scheme; and knowing what his position would be if the latter were discovered, of course he would spare no pains to recapture his prisoner.
“He knows it’s death, and a complete finish of his Rajahship,” muttered the doctor; “and sooner than be found out the reptile would shoot me down like a dog – if I don’t get the chance to shoot him first; and hang me if I don’t feel just now as if I could send a charge of shot through him with the greatest pleasure in life!”
He felt that if the followers of Murad were to find out the direction taken by the fugitive they would soon be on her track, and he would be almost helpless – one against a strongly-manned boat, whose crew would know their lives depended upon the success of their efforts.
Under these circumstances he determined to draw the boat well up among the rocks, and then to lie in concealment until the evening, when they might float down under cover of the darkness.
But no sooner had he determined upon this than the thought of the difficulties of the navigation came uppermost in his mind. It was hard enough to get safely up the little river by daylight. In the darkness he was compelled to own that it would be impossible.
“I must run all risks,” he said; “there is nothing else for it. We must get down to the mouth of the river and out into the main stream as soon as possible,” and having fully made up his mind what he would do, he turned to Helen Perowne.
“I am going to start at once,” he said; “but before we set off – I say this so as to help me, perhaps, in our effort to get away – ”
“Effort to get away?” she said, piteously. “No, no; I don’t quite mean that,” he said; “but before we set off would you not like to make yourself look a little more like an English lady?”
She looked up at him with an imploring look, and the tears began to trickle down her cheeks.
“Only too gladly, doctor; but you do not understand. They managed their cruel task only too well! Do you not see? – this is a stain, and it cannot be removed!”
The doctor frowned as he thought of his store of drugs and chemicals at home in his little palm-thatched cottage, where he wished they were themselves; and then he wondered whether there was anything amongst them that would remove the brown tint from his companion’s face.
She rose as he held out his hand, but trembled so much, and seemed so agitated, that when he led her to the boat she would have tottered and fallen had not the doctor caught her in his arms, and lifted her in; while directly after the two stout Malays thrust the boat over the shallow sands and gravel till deeper water was reached, the current helping them in their task, which was a long and arduous one, for there were long stretches of shallow and rapid, over which the bottom of the sampan grated before the paddles could be used.
And all this time the doctor noted that his companion’s wild eyes were constantly searching the shore for danger, such as he was fain to confess might be encountered at any moment, and in view of which he carefully charged his revolver, and altered the cartridges in both barrels of his gun.
At last, though, the boatmen were able to give up wading, and seizing their paddles, they leaped into the boat, making it glide down the stream, whose course here was very swift.
The doctor talked to his companion, but she was very silent, and they were soon both of them occupied in watching the shores, the doctor growing more uneasy moment by moment; while Helen, in her ignorance, felt that every paddle-stroke took her farther and farther from pursuit – made her safer from being recaptured by him who caused a shudder – when literally she was now every hour being taken nearer to the house that had been her prison all through those weary days.
As the time wore on the doctor asked her a few questions about her adventures, but he noted that she trembled so, and became so painfully agitated, that from sheer kindness he soon refrained; and leaving her to make what confidences she chose, he sat with his gun across his knee, watching the shore for enemies, and they journeyed on almost in silence.
The Malay boatmen saw that there was danger. They had not recognised Helen at first; but now that they knew her they coupled the meeting in their own minds with the troubles at the station, and from time to time they cast uneasy glances at the doctor’s revolver as it lay upon the seat, and from that began watchfully to scan such portions of the shore as might be deemed dangerous from affording opportunities for an ambush from which spears would come whizzing with unerring aim.
In the ardour of his pursuit after the favourite myth of his imagination the doctor had not noticed the distance he had ascended this narrow, winding stream; but now that he was all anxiety to reach the great river, it seemed as if it would never end.
The sun poured down his ardent rays, and but for the awning of boughs that the Malays had cut and spread over her head, the heat to the rescued girl would have been unbearable. Everything, however, that could alleviate her position was done, and more than once she gave the doctor a grateful look, as in a weary, broken-spirited way, she faltered her thanks.
“Not much like the Helen Perowne of the past,” he muttered, as he resumed his seat, after supplying his patient with water, and once more scanning the sides of the river for danger.
There was nothing to be seen, though, for they had descended now to where rocks had given place to jungle, and the banks were one impenetrable mass of creeper-enlaced trees, the monotony being hardly enlivened now by the sight of a bird.
“Look! – look!” whispered Helen, suddenly. “That is where they took me from the boat!” and she pointed to an opening in the jungle, the doctor recognising the spot which he had noticed as they came up the river, and here was where the prahu had turned.
“There is a house inland from here, then?” said the doctor.
Helen shuddered.
“Yes,” she said, faintly; “my prison. I cannot bear to talk about it now.”
The doctor nodded: and feeling that this was the critical part of the journey, he bade the Malays eat and drink as they paddled on, so as to gain strength for any energetic push they might have to make. For his own part he was decided enough as to the course he would pursue, meaning to trust to flight if possible, but if pursued he vowed to himself that he would fire upon his pursuers.
“And I am an Englishman!” he said to himself, proudly. “They dare not fire upon me!”
“Double pay if you get us safely back to the station,” he said, “and in quicker time.”
The boatmen nodded and smiled, toiled harder with their paddles, and they were half-way back to the great river at least, when plainly heard upon the still afternoon air, came the loud beat of the many oars of a great prahu.
Volume Three – Chapter Fourteen.
Preparing for a Start
“Now look here, boy,” said Chumbley. “I grant the possibility of the Inche Maida having assisted in carrying off Helen, but we do not know that she did. What we do know is – ”
“That she confessed – ”
“Not to helping, or anything of the kind. She told us that she was another man’s wife by now.”
“Well, that shows that she was cognisant of the matter; and I say that we ought to make a clean breast of the affair.”
“Well, I’m such a pusillanimous coward, that I can’t screw myself up to doing anything of the kind. One can’t help feeling foolish over the matter. Hang it all, no, keep it quiet! We are in an out-of-the-way place certainly; but this is an awfully small marble of a world, and if we tell our story, it would get into the Straits Times, and from that into the Calcutta papers; and once there, the tit-bit of two officers being carried off by a wicked Eastern princess will soon run over to England, and go the round of the press. Why, hang it, man, we had better retire from the service!”
Hilton stood leaning half out of the window of their quarters listening to his friend.
“It would be awkward,” he said.
“Awkward’s nothing to it, my dear boy. And besides, you know what comes about if we make all known. Harley will consider that he is in duty bound to arrest the Inche Maida, or something of the kind, and then look at the consequences!”
“But the woman ought to be punished.”
“Yes, of course; but the punishment is coming. You see by her act she has shut herself out from all connection with the station, and I daresay if the truth is known she has collected her valuables and fled.”
“I hope she has,” replied Hilton, “for if steps are taken to arrest her, I should be, I confess, sorry for her to be caught.”
“Let it slide then,” cried Chumbley; “we can’t war against a woman. Come, you’ll oblige me, old fellow, greatly, by giving way.”
“What do you want me to do then?”
“A little ill that good may come: keep to our story of having been seized and not knowing where we were taken.”
Hilton nodded and looked thoughtful.
“You give way then?”
“Yes, I give way.”
“Hilton, old fellow, I’m much obliged. I know we shall have, perhaps, to do a little bit of invention, but it is invention to save a woman, and there is a lot of truth in it. Then, too, see how it saves us.”
“Still, I can’t help thinking that, if she had anything to do with carrying off Helen Perowne, she ought to be punished; and mind this, though I care nothing for Helen now, if it proves afterwards that she helped in that cruel affair, I’ll have no mercy upon her.”
“She had nothing to do with it, take my word,” said Chumbley, who had grown so excited that he forgot to drawl. “Here’s the case, depend upon it. She got to know that Murad meant to carry off Helen, and she thought that she would do the same by you.”
“Wretched creature!”
“Say silly child,” said Chumbley. “These people have half of them the cleverness and weak, petty ways of children combined.”
“Then you feel certain that Murad alone carried off Helen?”
“I lay a hundred to one he has. Harley’s right. When do we start?”
“In an hour’s time. The scoundrel has not been seen by any of his people in Sindang, so they say.”
“We shall have some warm work up there in the jungle.”
“No doubt of it; but we’ll rout the serpent out – Oh, here is Harley!”
The Resident was coming up hastily from the landing-stage, followed by a couple of soldiers leading a Malay between them.
