One Maid's Mischief

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were sought, and at last the sharp order was given to back out from among the branches; but the moment after the leader rescinded his order and seemed to be desirous of searching more, for he raised a broad-leaved bough, held on by it, and looked in once more beneath the shade, shot with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.

“Yes, she is there,” he said, in a low whisper. “I saw her before I saw you.”

“And now you are going to drag us back to Murad?” said the girl, adopting his tone. “How proud Hamet must feel now that he has become a slave-catcher!”

“I did not say I was going to take you back to Murad,” he said, laughing. “Do you wish me to take you back to have the kris?”

The girl shuddered, for she knew that this would be her fate; but with true Eastern spirit she recovered herself.

“What matter?” she said, indifferently. “I do not mind.”

“You do mind,” he said; “and you want to live.”

“Yes: then let me go,” she replied.

“No; I was sent to take you, and I have found you.”

“But you do not mean to take me back to Murad?” she cried, angrily.

He laughed again.

“It is for you to decide,” he continued, in a low voice. “I, Hamet, have loved you long now – ever since Murad grew tired of you and cast you off. You know it.”

“Yes,” she said, sullenly, “I know it. You have told me before; and if I had told the Sultan he would have had you slain.”

“Both of us,” said the tall Malay, coolly. “But now we are away from him and free. Will you listen to me?”

“I must,” she said, scornfully. “I cannot help it.”

“Yes; you could help it,” he said; “but you will not. I am obliged to take this opportunity, and I do, for I could not bear to see you hurt.”

“And yet you came to seek me?”

“Yes, and to save you. Two boats have been searching for you this afternoon, but only my eyes saw you. Had it been any others, you would have been in Murad’s power by now.”

“Did you come and see us sleeping?” she said, eagerly.

“Yes. How else could I have known that you were here waiting to be caught?”

“And now that you have caught me,” she said, indifferently, “what does Hamet mean to do?”

“Is it Hamet, Murad’s officer – or Hamet your friend?”

“How can I tell?” she said, indifferently. “You are a catcher of slaves, and you have taken two. Are you happy?”

“No,” he said, earnestly. “Make me happy.”

“How? Tell me what are your plans?”

“To save you if I can; but either you become my wife, or you go back to Murad. My orders are to take you.”

The girl remained perfectly silent for a few minutes, during which the tall Malay watched her intently.

“If I say I will be your wife, and go with you now back to your place, will you let her go free – where she will?” said the girl.

“Yes,” he said, eagerly. “I will not see her; she may go where she will.”

The girl hesitated for a few moments, and then tried to rise, but the Malay held her tightly by the wrist.

“I shall not try to run,” she said, scornfully. “Loose my arm.”

The Malay hesitated, gazing full in her eyes. He then tossed the girl’s arm lightly from him.

“I will trust you,” he said; and then he looked on curiously, as the Malay girl stooped softly over Helen, and just brushed her hair with her lips so gently that the sleeping girl did not stir. Then, turning to the Malay:

“Are you alone?” she asked.

“Yes: quite. I saw you before; but I did not want to capture you for Murad. Now, is it to be as I say? Will you come?”

The girl glanced once more at Helen; then placing her hand in that of the Malay, she let him lead her a few paces along the bank, and assist her into a seat, where, taking his place in the prow, he silently loosened the boat, guided it softly past the boughs, so that there was not even the rustle of a leaf; then, letting the pole dip into the water, he gave one powerful thrust, and the sampan darted out into mid-stream, and then rapidly glided out of sight, just as the shadows were deepening across the river and an orange glow began to tinge the surface of the leaves.

Volume Three – Chapter Eleven.

Through the Wilds

Helen woke with a start just as the boat disappeared round the curve at the end of the reach, and her first movement was towards where her companion had lain down.

At first she could not believe that she was alone, but sat waiting for the girl’s return, believing that she had awakened first, and had gone for a short distance to try for a better path; but as the minutes sped, and the darkness would, as she well knew, soon return, a strange sensation of horror began to trouble her, and she started to her feet, and began to search around in various directions, even going so far as to call in a low voice.

She dare not go far for fear that her companion should return and find her absent, so she kept making little excursions here and there where the denseness of the jungle was not so great, and then returned to where she had slept.

Parting the boughs on either side, she then crept as near to the river as she could, so as to look up and down stream, for what purpose she could not tell, though it seemed as if an instinct led her to gaze at the highway by which her companion had departed.

It was now rapidly growing dark, and the feeling of depression and alarm rapidly increased. So thoroughly frightened did she become at last that she would gladly have called for help, but her common-sense warned her that such a proceeding would only bring down her enemies upon her if they were in hearing; and at last, with her horror of her loneliness increasing fast, and a feeling of dread that some savage beast of prey had seized upon the Malay girl gradually overmastering her, she sank upon the earth, weeping bitterly, helpless as a child, and asking herself if she dared face all those she knew again, and whether she had not better die.

How that night passed Helen never knew. Sometimes she sank into a weary kind of stupor, full of troublous dreams, from which she started awake with a sense of horror, and a full belief that some terrible creature was about to spring upon her. At times too, as if to carry out this illusion, she listened with beating heart to the distant howl of some wandering beast, or to one or other of the mysterious noises heard during the night in the primeval wilds.

The darkness seemed as if it would never end, and the rushing river, as it sped on like a stream of ink full of stars’ reflections, hissed and writhed, and at times lapped the bank upon which she sat as if it were a huge serpent seeking to make her its prey.

This idea suggested the loathsome monsters that she knew would haunt the hot, steamy jungle close to the river side; and with starting eyes, when some low rustle was heard amongst the leaves, she tried to pierce the darkness, believing over and over again that she saw some lithe, undulating reptile gradually approaching her; and at such times it required all her strength of mind to determine that it was but a mere fancy, and as unreal as the images of fierce creatures that she more than once believed that she saw coming out of the jungle.

Then her busy brain reminded her of other and more real perils of her position – the more dangerous from their insidious nature and approach. Depressed in spirit as she was, she could not help recalling the accounts she had heard of the deadly fevers, and the certainty of their attacking anyone who passed the night upon the bare earth.

Still, it would only mean death at the worst, she thought, in a weary, despondent way; and her misery was so great now that she felt ready to give up her very life sooner than fall again into Murad’s hands.

Then her thoughts flew to Harley, with whom she seemed to associate any hope that she might have of the future; and for a time she would brighten up, and contrast her present position with that of some few hours back. She was a prisoner then, and in terrible peril; now she was free, and the chances were, she hopefully told herself, that she might fall in with some party sent in search of her, for she would not believe Murad’s version of her disappearance to be true.

It seemed to her as if the morning would never come, and the first herald of its approach was a dank, chilling breath that came to her laden with the mist of the river; and as she sat and shivered she felt that her clothes were saturated with the heavy dew, and longed now for the coming of the sun with its warm, inspiring beams and hopeful light.

Her teeth chattered, and her limbs ached as the day broke. She had been awake for quite a couple of hours; and the weariness and oppression that troubled her was now supplemented by a throbbing headache, which was at times almost more than she could bear.

As the sun sent his beams glancing through the jungle, Helen rose painfully to her feet, gladly seizing the bough of a tree to cling to and support herself till the giddy sensation that oppressed her wore off.

And now, in place of the chill from which she had suffered, she began to burn; hands, cheeks, temples seemed as if they were on fire; there was a misty unreality in the waving branches of the tree as it overhung the river; and as she stood there, trying to master the giddiness that oppressed her, she felt as if this were only the continuance of one of the disturbed dreams that had haunted her during the darkness.

Then the fit passed away almost as suddenly as it had come; and trying to shake off the wearisome lassitude that oppressed her, she began to move forward along the slightly-beaten track that ran onward a few yards from the edge of the river, one evidently made by the wild creatures that from time to time came down to drink, or made the banks of the river their home.

It was an arduous journey, for she had constantly to stoop down to enable her to pass beneath the interlacing boughs and parasites that crossed the path in all directions; but still she progressed, sometimes strong, and hopeful, more often wearied by lassitude, and at times compelled to cling to the branches as she struggled on, her head reeling, her eyes blinded by pain, and the feeling of unreality coming on more strongly with each attack; till at last she went on, forcing her way through the jungle in a state of wild delirium, muttering incoherently as she staggered on.

A blind kind of instinct seemed to keep her to the savage track near the bank of the river, and the same strange instinct led her from time to time to lie down in some convenient place to lap the cool, fresh water from her hand, and bathe her burning cheeks and brow.

As the day wore on and the heat increased, Helen’s journey became to her a blind kind of dream. She had a sort of instinct as guide that she must get farther away – struggle on at any cost, in spite of heat, weariness, and the delirium that robbed her of her reason; and staggering forward with the hands bleeding that beat back the thorns and parasites enlacing her path, sunset still found her at the task.

How long this lasted Helen could not tell. She had a sort of memory of always hearing the rushing liver, and of sometimes lying down to bathe her face and drink. She knew, too, that she was in pain, and that the thorns cut her feet and tore her clothes; but pain and suffering were as nothing so long as she could struggle on.

Then a feeling of anger came over her at the Malay girl’s desertion, for this was a new light in which she viewed her absence; and at last she toiled on till the trees seemed to come to an end, and it was only her weary torn feet now that were hindered by low, thorny, interlacing bushes. These, too, at last almost came to an end; and she seemed to be climbing, slipping, and falling over rocks that sloped rapidly down to the river. Sometimes she had to clamber right away, because the rocks towered up above her head and became impassable.

Then once more she would be slipping and falling lower and lower towards where the river foamed, and flashed, and gurgled, plashing over stones, rushing over masses of rock, but ever singing a pleasant kind of music to her ear, for it seemed to be her friend and guide.

It never seemed to occur to her confused brain that in place of going down the river towards civilisation, she was painfully climbing up towards the mountains, where the river had its rise in the wildest parts, in a district only inhabited by the Sakais – the aborigines of the country – or as they were generally called, the hill-men.

This was nothing to her, for her blind instinct led her to struggle on till, as in a dream, she saw the help that she had believed would come.

Her brain was more beclouded than ever, but she had some instinct of what she ought to do, and that was to make signals.

Then she blindly struggled on towards that help, grew faint, and her power left her. She fell, and lay moaning on the rocky earth; struggled up once more to continue her efforts to reach friends, but in vain; her power seemed to leave her now for good, and she sank down unable to rise again, her next recollection being that she was lying back upon a rough couch, with a familiar face bending over her, and then all was mist.

Then she was back at the old school, and in trouble with her instructresses for insisting upon going out upon a hot day with insufficient protection to her head. She was feverish and slightly delirious, and the doctor had been sent for. How familiar his voice sounded and how cool and pleasant his hands were to her heated brow; and she lay back there wondering why Grey Stuart did not come; why it was so long before a letter came from her father in the Malay peninsula; and then her head began to throb, for she had had, she felt, a terrible dream about having joined him there and been seized and carried off, as she had read in books of hapless maidens being abducted from their homes. It seemed so real that terrible dream, that she could picture the face of the man who had dragged her away.

Then mist once more, and a sort of awakening, as if sunlight had come through the mist, and she was in the garden with the Reverend Arthur Rosebury, who looked strange in his long coat, as he stooped to pick her flowers, and handed one to her that had a shape like a cup; and he said to her “Drink – drink!” and in her dream she seemed to drink, expecting to find that out of that flower-cup she would drink honey, while this was intensely bitter; and it was not a flower-cup, but metal, and it was not the Reverend Arthur Rosebury who offered the cup to her, but someone else; and while she was trying to listen who it was, for she could not see, all became silent once again, and blank, and she knew no more.

Volume Three – Chapter Twelve.

Doctor Bolter’s Spirit

Gold! What ideas that one word opens out – what magic it contains! But credit must be given to Doctor Bolter for the fact that it was no sordid love of the yellow metal that prompted him to search for gold.

He wanted it for no luxury; he had no wealthy man’s desires to quell; all he wished was to make that grand discovery that would prove the Malay Peninsula to have been the Ophir to which King Solomon’s ships came in search of treasure; and of this he wanted ample proof, such as he could lay before a committee of learned men. How was it to be obtained?

Doctor Bolter asked himself this question a dozen times over, but no answer came. He asked the question as he stood there up to his knees in water, examining his pannikins full of sand and gravel, which he took from the bottom of the little river, where it now displayed all the characteristics of a mountain stream.

He tried several pannikins full, scooping up the sand and gravel from likely places, and after picking out the larger stones, washing carefully till nothing remained after the water had been drained off but pure sand.

This he would examine in the full light of the sun, seeking in vain for little water-worn nuggets or specks and scales of gold; but for some time his efforts were unsuccessful; and they went on higher and higher, the shallowness, and the difficulties of the journey increasing at every stride, till, trying at a spot where the rapid stream swirled round the end of a great mass of stone, the doctor washed a pannikin of sand, and then uttered a grunt of satisfaction, for there at the bottom, glittering in the sunshine, were dozens of tiny specks of gold mingled with the grit.

“Plenty like that, master, the farther up the stream we go,” said the chief boatman. “It comes out of the mountains where the wicked spirits live.”

“Indeed,” said the doctor, sarcastically; “then we must go up and see the wicked spirits. Do you think they will be at home?”

“It is very dreadful, master, and we shall all be killed! They send down little specks of gold like that in the water; but if we went up to try and get the great pieces stuck in the mountain side, they would smite us, and our people would see us no more.”

“Well, we will risk that,” said the doctor. “Go on.”

The Malays sighed, and looked piteously at the doctor, whom they considered as dangerous as a spirit if not obeyed; for they knew he had strange medicines, and a lightning apparatus that sent sparks through them, and made their hands hold tightly by a couple of handles. Yes, he was a wonderful and dangerous man that doctor, whom nothing seemed to hurt, and they felt compelled to obey him.

They plied the paddles, then, sending the sampan through the sparkling water, till a few minutes after, when there was a loud grating noise, for they were aground.

The Malays sprang out, and wading and lifting the boat, they dragged it on into deeper water, jumped in and paddled on again, but only to get once more aground; and this occurred for a few times, after which the paddles had to be set aside, and the men waded and dragged the boat to a standstill.

The doctor had found gold in small quantities, and that proved gold to be there, but nothing more, and he rubbed his ear with a vexatious movement.

He knew that there was gold in the little streams that came down from the mountains, and probably there was a great deal more there in the mass. But that did not prove this to have been the place visited by Solomon’s ships, and he was as far off the goal as ever.

“One thing is very evident,” muttered the doctor, ill-humouredly, as he made a vicious blow at and missed a teasing fly, “Solomon’s ships never came up this river, and we can get no farther without walking. Here, drag the boat under the shelter of that rock, and let’s have a feed and a rest. The sun is unbearable!”