The order to take cover was given barely in time, for from every tree
and bush along the creek flew showers of small arrows and throwing
spears that whizzed and whirred over the crouching crew. And ever the
flames leaped higher. From a source unseen, but cunningly selected to
utilize wind and stream, fresh oil was poured on the water; the sides of
the brigantine crackled and blistered with an overpowering stench of tar
and oakum.
Seek as they might, their enemies remained invisible, and still the
shower of missiles kept up its intensity until the decks rang and
pattered with their falling, and left no space of a yard in area where a
man might stand safely. Barry watched through a scupper port, trying to
detect any one place from which arrows came thicker than elsewhere; and
at last, when one after another his white companions had called to him
about the precarious situation of launch and boat, he decided he had
found it.
"Here, all hands," he ordered, and shoved his rifle out of the scupper.
"Get an ax, Rolfe, and burst out a plank of the bulwarks." The ax was
swung, and a plank crashed into splinters, leaving a narrow loophole, a
foot wide and twelve feet long, through which the roaring flames darted
viciously. "When I give the word, all aim at that tree--" he pointed out
a round-headed, dwarfed clump of foliage that seemed to hiss with
twanging bowstrings--"then fire all together. That's the next best thing
to a riot gun I can think of." The crew crouched along the broken plank,
every muzzle converged on to a patch of leafy concealment a fathom
square, and the skipper barked:
"Fire!"
Twenty rifles crashed in one tremendous discharge, and the tree ceased
to vomit arrows as if suddenly capped with a vast extinguisher. But at
the same moment the flames roared in through the broken bulwarks and
drove every man away, scorched and singed. Houten handled his rifle
expertly and unhurriedly, though his fat face and immense body streamed
sweat at every pore, and his clothes were steaming with the fierce heat.
Blood dripped from his injured arm, but gave him not the slightest
concern. He said nothing, did not attempt to advise Barry, simply kept
up his end as one man of the crew, as if the last thing on earth he
worried about was the imminent destruction of thousands of guilders in
property. And Barry gave him silent thanks, untrammelled in his command
of the unequal fight. His own keen eyes told him the _Barang_ was
doomed; and any chance remaining for the crew hinged on that big launch
alongside. He peered over the rail. The launch was smoking. Her line was
almost burned through.
"Gordon and Little, follow me quickly," he cried, swiftly making his
decision. "Rolfe, Blunt, haul in on that line--easy now, or you'll break
it--and Mr. Houten, here's my cabin key. Take some men and get your gold
dust out of the safe."
Houten's streaming face lighted in a fat smile, and he beamed his
appreciation of Barry's thoughtfulness for his employer's interests
under the terrible circumstances. The mate and Bill Blunt hauled
cautiously on the launch painter until the big boat bumped alongside,
her white paint blistered and blackened, her white canvas awning a
tattered torch of smoldering rags. Then Barry sprang up, threw himself
over the rail, and Little and Gordon followed in silence. A small brown
man jumped after them and went directly to the launch's engine.
"Good man!" breathed Little, suddenly realizing that none of the others
knew anything about a steam engine. He gasped and gazed in awe at a
tongue of fire that snaked up the brigantine's side, twisted about the
fore rigging and roared about the tall masts of pine.
The fires were banked. The native engineer opened them up and applied a
small patent blower, while Barry and his companions crouched behind the
engine casing and kept their guns popping until steam began to hiss. On
board the ship the mates leaped from line to line, cutting adrift those
that had withstood the fire, and soon the current took hold and moved
her towards the entrance. Now that the creek was ablaze with light, it
was seen that the entrance cut through Vandersee's agency was simply a
channel scythed through the matted weeds and grasses, big enough to
admit the vessel if the way remained unobstructed. But the creek's
usually sluggish current was trebled in velocity by the outside siphon
effect of the rapid river rushing past the narrow entrance. The matted
grasses could be seen waving and writhing under the swift flow with a
terrible suggestion of remorseless power in their stems should any
unfortunate chance to be plunged among them.
Houten staggered on deck, followed by the men laden with the small,
heavy canvas bags taken by Little from the post. He stood a moment,
gazing abroad at the fiery expanse. He noted Barry's intention of towing
the brigantine out, and now he asserted his authority as owner.
"Don't bodder for the ship, Captain Barry," he shouted. "Take eferybotty
in dot launch to the odder side ouf the riffer. Neffer mind why. I
schall tell you in goot time. Let the ship drift by herself where she
will."
"Then get a move on, all hands!" shouted Barry. "This launch will be
ablaze too in five minutes."
Gordon left their task of pouring water over the straining towline they
had fastened around the red-hot brass bits and tore down the scraps of
fiery canvas from overhead. From the brigantine men leaped into the
smaller craft, kept in order and saved from panic by sturdy old Blunt's
cool advice, backed up by his never-failing good humor. And when Rolfe
and Houten and the old seaman alone remained, the launch was loaded to
her utmost capacity and was on fire in a dozen places.
"Come on down with you!" roared Barry angrily, for the three men left
were playing dignity, each seeking to be the last man to quit. "Blunt,
Rolfe, take told of Mr. Houten and dump him in if he won't move."
"Here ye go then, sir, excusin' me," said Bill, seizing the huge
Dutchman by an arm. Rolfe took the other one, the injured one, and
Houten laughed shakily and shook loose rather than suffer from the
mate's determined grip.
"Yoomp, with you den," he rumbled and mounted the rail. The others were
with him, and as all three poised to jump, the foremast fell with a
terrific smash, erupting sparks and flame, covering the decks and the
water around with fragments of fiery splinters, charred blocks, and
smoking serpents of rope.
"Oh, jump together!" Barry screamed, dancing on his own hot place and
blowing on his hands which were in agony from contact with the metal
wheel. The three leaped; and the launch's stern dipped perilously under
the tremendous influx of weight; the flaming oil alongside licked
ravenously at their smaller and nearer prey.
"Now keep your guns shooting!" was the skipper's final order, and he
sent the launch straight for the entrance, while the unseen foes on the
banks transferred their aim from the brigantine and made the forest ring
with their howls of rage.
In the narrowed entrance, forced to scrape the matted grass by the
eddying current, the launch soon resounded with the cries of wounded
seamen. Barry kept his hands on the wheel by sheer force of will, for
the little circle of brass scorched to the touch. The rifles burned the
hands of the men who used them; native riflemen began to look piteously
at their white leaders, afraid to slip fresh cartridges into smoking
breeches. And the arrows fell thicker than ever, the smoke from the
launch's furnace streamed away full of flame, the boat itself roared and
crackled from the water line to the gunwale. But the oil thinned out as
they sped; those rifles that kept shooting took heavier toll as the
range closed, and Barry prayed that his hands would hold out. His white
companions stood grimly to their guns, uttering no sound save to
encourage and soothe the natives. Then a cartridge exploded in a man's
hand, and the rifle was flung overboard with a howl of terror. Still
another shell burst with the fierce heat, and panic threatened. Bill
Blunt stopped it.
"Here ye go, then, Bullies!" he roared, flinging down his own gun. "Put
'em down, me sons, and git busy like me. Here's th' river close aboard,
lads, an' in a minit ye'll all be freezin'."
Tearing off his jacket he dragged it in the river when he came to a spot
bare of oil, then fell heartily to work beating down the fire along the
gunwale. The seamen gained heart, once safely quit of their dangerous
rifles, and followed the old fellow's lead, until the business of
fire-fighting drove from their minds the fear of flying missiles from
shoreward.
"Here iss the riffer, mine friendts," Houten rumbled at last, and the
launch shot into the main stream, drawing thin threads of fire into her
eddying wake, leaving behind her the flying death and the devouring
blaze. Barry guided his craft straight over the river to the farther
bank, seeking for relief to his burning eyes in the cool blackness of
night. His hair and eyebrows were singed off close, his skin was a
scorched torment; but a glance at his companions proved that others had
suffered too, and he held on to his fast-cooling steering wheel while
old Bill Blunt led a final attack on the clinging fire about the launch.
They shot into the shadow of the bank and looked back on a scene of
terrific grandeur. As their faces cooled, and the air revived their
dulled vitality, a deeper significance in the picture came home to them.
For some minutes their brains could only grasp the fact that they had
escaped the fire as well as their enemies' range; but a shaft of fire
roared up through the trees, and the howl that responded hinted at the
truth.
"Gee! They're getting roasted in their own fire!" gasped Little.
So it was. The jungle on all sides of the creek began to blaze, and the
roar filled the river channel. At first only small patches of dead wood
and leaves burned, but when great hanging masses of moss caught fire,
the jungle drew the flames like a huge furnace, and in some of the trees
a score of men were trapped.
"Poor devils! Dose mans are murdered by Leyden," growled Houten. "He
shall pay, jah! It iss on his bill."
But despite the awful peril facing them, the little brown men over on
the creek worked on as if with a definite aim beyond the mere
destruction of a ship and the dispersing of her crew. Figures dancing in
the firelight were feverishly busy about the creek entrance, towards
which the blazing _Barang_ was drifting, gathering speed with every
fathom by which she drew nearer to the tremendously faster river stream
outside. Gradually the surface oil about the vessel thinned out and
died, as if the supply had been suddenly cut off. And the moment the
water ceased to blaze, canoes shot out from the shore, and frantic
little savages pushed and hauled at the bigger craft in obvious anxiety
that she should not reach out beyond the entrance. They succeeded in
pushing her on to the edge of the cleared channel, then the swift
current gripped her, swung her broadside in the entrance against the
matted grasses, and there she lay, heeling over slowly, burning away
merrily above water, but safe to stay there in the opposing elements of
fire and water whose contest must come to a climax when fire reached
water line.
"There goes the old _Barang_, sir," groaned Barry, his thoughts on his
ship as a good shipmaster's should be. "I could have saved her by towing
her out and sinking her. No trouble at all to raise her again. Did it
before, you know. Now she's gone."
"It iss better so," replied Houten. The amazing man was scanning the
nearby shore and gave no glance to his ruined ship. The skipper stared
at him blankly, meanwhile swabbing at his burns with oiled waste. "Yat,
it iss better so, mine friendt. It wass not arranged like this, but it
iss much better so, now ve haf lost no mans, after all. Schall ve put
into dot schmall cove dere, captain? It vill hide us from the riffer,
unt pretty soon our friendts vill be dere. The boat iss too full; unt
dese mans need cool grass."
Barry picked out the cove indicated, immediately opposite the flaming
creek, hidden from riverwards by an outflung, bush-capped hummock of
earth. There the launch was moored, and the last trace of fire danger
was beaten out with wet grasses and leafy branches. Of the entire party
but five men had escaped unhurt, but none of the hurts were more
serious than Houten's flesh wound unless the arrow that Gordon still
carried neatly spiked between two ribs proved serious. But Bill Blunt
thought not, and Houten produced his medical and surgical kit from the
launch in order that Bill's assertion might be tested. The seamen
soothed each other's burns, and those of them who had received arrow or
spear wounds waited in fear for the result of Blunt's attentions to
Gordon.
"Try an' laugh out loud, sir," muttered old Bill, as he snapped off the
arrow stem and Gordon winced involuntarily. "I knows it pinches, but we
got to fix up them natives too, an' them ain't werry brave, sir. Grin,
won't ye?"
Gordon laughed, but his lip ran blood. The arrowhead was pulled through
and out, and the cut bound together, and after that the seamen submitted
to the same surgery like sheep. Blunt kept them quiet by subtle blarney,
telling them they couldn't let white folks beat them out for stoicism.
In this manner the camp settled into quiet rest, food and water, spirits
and fresh clothes coming from the fully equipped launch. Then came a cry
from their lookout on the hummock crest, and they climbed up beside him.
The man pointed silently back over the flat country beyond the tangle of
the river margin, but nothing could be distinguished in the darkness.
"No look--lissen, sar!" chattered the sailor.
There was no sound save the rustling of grasses and the lapping of
waters. Then, after a moment of hush, far away in the black void a shot
rang out, followed by others in swift succession. Silence again, and
more shots, nearer than before, and a solitary cry. The ensuing period
of quiet was longer than the last; but when again rifle shots crashed
out, they were so near that the watchers on the hummock could see and
count the flashes.
"Seven, I counted," said Little. "What is it?"
"Cap'n, there's men right beside us, along th' bank," Bill Blunt
reported. "They ain't natives, neither. More like them navy chaps."
"Better line out in case they're like those fellows who put you on the
ant hills, Barry," said Gordon anxiously. "Of course, they may be right,
but--"
"Haf no fears, mine friendts," rumbled. Houten, looming up like a hill
in the blackness. "All dis iss planned. Dose mans beside us are real
navy mans. I toldt you all iss vell. It iss mooch better dis vay."
"Then it must be Vandersee's big drive," exclaimed Barry, suddenly
enlightened. "How about a little light to help him, hey, Houten?"
"Goot. Jah, make a fire, Captain."
Rolfe and some hands hastily built a huge bonfire of dry brushwood on
the damp grass behind the hummock, and beaters were set to prevent the
fire spreading out of hand. Then, as a match was set to it and little
tongues of flame began to take hold, Barry lined out his men and waited
for a clear sight of events. Shots now crashed out so near that the men
firing could be seen in the intensifying light of the crackling fire;
still no shot came back in answer. The steady, relentless pursuit drew
near, and the fugitives began to whimper and howl in panic. They broke
and drove blindly for the river, to meet the colossal bulk of Houten,
silent, impassive, standing out like a mountain to bar their flight; and
the _Barang's_ men, lined beside him, joined the first of a line of
cool, steady naval seamen whose end numbers were still beyond the
lighted area.
"Throw down your guns, or we'll drop you!" cried Barry, and the flying
fugitives halted in dismay while two white men, the leaders, cursed them
venomously and bade them fight.
"Stop, Barry, don't fire!" came back the level, placid voice of
Vandersee, and then the completeness of the spider's web could be
distinguished. For from up river and down, the silent line of naval
seamen drew near, herding the trapped fugitives into a circle that
always narrowed in diameter. Then, as the cordon seemed complete beyond
escape, the two white men broke into a desperate dash and plunged for
the river.
With one impulse Little and Barry sprang out to intercept them; and even
in his heat the skipper wondered why, now that the time had come,
neither Gordon nor Vandersee was anxious to get his hands on Leyden. For
that Leyden was one of those two plunging whites neither doubted.
But Rolfe's bonfire blazed higher, and every face and form stood
clearly revealed. The skipper and Tom Little hurled themselves headlong
at their quarry's legs and brought them down in a smashing football
tackle, then, from their position on the ground, astride of their
captives, they took in the surprising circle about them. Vandersee's
red, smooth face shone in a beatific smile as he directed the seizing
and securing of the trapped men. He had no apparent interest in the two
whites,--and an interchange of scrutiny satisfied Barry and Little that
neither of their men was Leyden. Instead of giving thought to the white
captives, Vandersee merely left them in their captors' hands until their
turn came to be tied up, and gave Barry still another amazing shock by
stepping over to Houten and embracing him in full view of all hands. And
big, emotionless Houten, with no change of demeanor, returned the
embrace in kind.