Bang! _Crash_!
The report of the brass lelah and the stroke of the iron ball as it
shivered the branches of the trees or buried itself in the trunk of some
palm-tree growing near the bank, but without injuring the occupants of
the sampan in the slightest degree.
The faces of Ismael and his companion were now of a curious muddy hue,
and they shivered with dread, but they held the doctor even more in awe,
and obeyed his orders to keep on paddling with such strength as was in
them left, and seemed ready enough to persevere as long as the boat
would float beneath them, hopeless as the case might be.
As the doctor very well knew, it was only a question of time, and had he
been alone he would not have hesitated about surrendering; but with
Helen in his charge, there was too much at stake. So he determined,
with all the stubbornness of an Englishman, to hold out to the very last
extremity.
"I'm a man of peace," he muttered, "but I've had to fight in my time,
and if I am driven to it, they shall buy Helen Perowne at the cost of
three or four lives at least; and if I can manage it, the chiefs shall
be one."
He glanced at Helen, who lay back with her eyes closed, and her swarthy
face seemed to rouse a bitter feeling of anger in the doctor's breast.
"The blackguards!" he growled. "To serve an English lady like that.
I'll make some of them pay for it, and dearly too."
"I say, Bolter," he muttered, "I'd no idea that you were such a brave
fellow. I don't feel half so nervous as I expected I should, and hang
me if I'll give up till I have fairly fought it out. I wonder whether I
could hit master Rajah Murad at this distance? Well, let him put his
head over the side of the boat, and I'll try--What, my dear," he cried,
as Helen spoke feebly.
"Is our position hopeless, Doctor?" she said.
"Hopeless? Not a bit of it, my dear. I'm going to exhibit another
medicine directly. You lie quite still and don't raise your head.
Trust to your medical man, my dear. Always have confidence in your
medical man."
For answer she turned her great dark eyes upon him with a look of such
hopeless misery that the doctor set his teeth hard.
"By Jove!" he cried, starting in spite of himself, as there was a sharp
report and a bullet whistled close by him. "Hi! you scoundrels! How
dare you fire upon a boat containing a Queen's officer."
He let the butt of his gun rest in the bottom of the vessel, and turned
and shook his fist threateningly at the advancing prahu; but the only
answer elicited was another shot, not by any means so well aimed as the
last, the sound of which seemed to ring in his ear as it whizzed by.
"The scoundrels shall smart for this!" he cried, furiously. "They've
fired--bear witness of this, Ismael--they've fired upon a boat
containing a British officer and an English lady, and--hang 'em! there
they go again!"
And this shot and another came whizzing by, but the rapid motion of the
sampan, the want of practice on the part of the Malays, and their bad
management of their clumsy gun, kept them from doing any mischief to the
fugitives.
"At last!" cried the doctor, as the dense mass of vegetation that
screened the mouth of the little river came in sight. "Now then, my
lads, keep up. You shall be rewarded handsomely for this. Make a good
dash for it, and we shall soon be clear."
Doctor Bolter's words were big, and his face was cheerful, but his hopes
were small, and his heart felt very sad, for he knew well enough that
unless as soon as they cleared the canes and bushes before them, and got
out into the open river, they found help or concealment, which was
extremely doubtful, they would be at a terrible disadvantage. For out
in the wide river the prahu would have plenty of room to manoeuvre; it
could be driven at full speed, turned easily, and would either run them
down or come alongside and grapple them without the slightest
difficulty.
"But I'll fight for it to the last," muttered the doctor, as he caught a
fresh glance from Helen's sorrowful eyes. "Poor little woman! what a
fidget she would be in if she only knew! Never mind, she would pat me
on the back for what I am doing; and whatever she might say against it
on my account, she'd want me to fight."
He looked back at the prahu, which was still advancing, and raised his
gun to fire, but only lowered it again.
"No," he muttered; "a waste of shot. I couldn't hit the steersman."
He stood thinking for a moment, and then, laying down his gun, he took
up a spare paddle and began working with all his might, striving to urge
the boat forward.
The help came when it was most needed, for the floating reeds and bushes
were no light obstacles to so small a boat, and they began to lose
ground now as they struggled through. But after a fierce interval of
effort, and just as the doctor was growing giddy with excitement, and
half blind with exertion, the last mass of bushes was passed, and they
floated clear into the swift stream of the main river.
"Now for it, my lads!" cried the doctor, manfully, the perspiration
streaming down his red-brown face, as he made the water flash from his
paddle; "we shall do it now."
But before they had gone fifty yards down the stream, at a far higher
rate than before, they heard the rustle and crashing of the big prahu
forcing its way through the bushes, and in another minute it, too, would
have been clear.
Fortune does, however, sometimes favour the brave; for just then there
was a sharp crack, and one of the prahu's sweeps broke short off, the
man who pulled it fell back heavily against his neighbour, who in turn
was thrown out, and like skittles, half a dozen of the rowers were in
confusion.
This happened at a critical moment, just as the men were rowing their
hardest, and the result of the check on one side was that the head of
the prahu was pulled sharply round, and the stem crashed in amongst the
bushes to the left of the steersman, ran right into the soft, muddy
bank, and the vessel lay across the stream.
Doctor Bolter could not tell what was wrong; but he could hear the noise
of shouting and the confusion that followed, enough to explain to him
that there was something very much amiss, and in the satisfaction that
it gave him he mentally exclaimed:
"I don't wish harm to any man upon the face of this little earth, but if
that prahu and all on board are going to the bottom, it will be a
blessing indeed."
This respite gave the Malay boatmen heart, and bending once more to
their task, they strove hard to send the sampan onward so as to get
round a curve of the stream where the trees of the jungle grew high upon
the bank and spread far out over the river. This bend once passed, they
would be out of sight when the prahu cleared the bushes.
It was a long way ahead, and the shouting and confusion seemed so
terribly close at hand that the doctor fully expected another shot; but
he paddled bravely on, and at last this part of their task was achieved,
giving them a fresh sensation of relief as they saw the wide, open
stretch of river before them, with its verdant, tree-shaded banks.
But they looked in vain for help: the stream was clear of boats, and the
doctor knew that concealment was now their only chance. The Malay--
Ismael--knew it too, for, raising his paddle from the water, he pointed
to a dense spot that seemed admirably adapted for a hiding-place; the
doctor nodded assent, and with a sweep of the paddle the course of the
boat was altered, her head being set across the stream. Then, as the
doctor looked back to see that they were not followed, a warning cry
from the boatmen made him lower his head, just as the sampan glided in
beneath the overhanging boughs, and they floated on in a pleasant arcade
of leafy boughs, the grateful shadows shutting them entirely from the
sight of passers-by upon the river, whose glittering surface they
surveyed through a thick screen of leaves.