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CURSED
[Illustration: The witch-woman, raising crooked claws against him,
hurled shrill curses at Briggs—wild, unintelligible things, in a
wail—_See page 29_]
CURSED
by
GEORGE ALLAN ENGLAND
Author of
The Alibi, Darkness and Dawn, Keep Off the Grass, etc.
Frontispiece by Modest Stein
[Illustration: LOGO]
Grosset & Dunlap
Publishers New York
Copyright, 1919,
By Small, Maynard & Company
(Incorporated)
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I AT BATU KAWAN 1
II ALPHEUS BRIGGS, BUCKO 6
III SCURLOCK GOES ASHORE 16
IV THE CURSE OF NENEK KABAYAN 22
V THE MALAY FLEET OF WAR 32
VI COUNCIL OF WAR 39
VII BEFORE THE BATTLE 47
VIII PARLEY AND DEATH 55
IX ONSET OF BATTLE 65
X KUALA PAHANG 70
XI HOME BOUND 77
XII AT LONG WHARF 84
XIII AFTER FIFTY YEARS 91
XIV A VISITOR FROM THE LONG AGO 100
XV TWO OLD MEN 107
XVI THE CAPTAIN SPEAKS 115
XVII VISIONS OF THE PAST 125
XVIII THE LOOMING SHADOW 131
XIX HAL SHOWS HIS TEETH 139
XX THE CAPTAIN COMMANDS 146
XXI SPECTERS OF THE PAST 153
XXII DR. FILHIOL STANDS BY 161
XXIII SUNSHINE 169
XXIV DARKENING SHADOWS 179
XXV TROUBLED SOULS 186
XXVI PLANS FOR RESCUE 191
XXVII GEYSER ROCK 197
XXVIII LAURA UNDERSTANDS 204
XXIX THE GARDEN OF GETHSEMANE 214
XXX HIS WORD OF HONOR 222
XXXI THE SAFE 233
XXXII THE READING OF THE CURSE 238
XXXIII ROBBERY 246
XXXIV SELF-SACRIFICE 257
XXXV TREACHERY 267
XXXVI THE DOCTOR SPEAKS 274
XXXVII THE CAPTAIN SEES 283
XXXVIII CAPTAIN BRIGGS FINDS THE WAY 292
XXXIX “ONE MUST DIE” 299
XL ON THE _Kittiwink_ 305
XLI FATE STRIKES 310
XLII IN EXTREMIS 319
XLIII CURARÉ 329
XLIV NEW DAWN 340
CURSED
CURSED
CHAPTER I
AT BATU KAWAN
Slashed across the copper bowl of sunset, the jagged silhouette of
tawny-shouldered mountains, fringed with areca-palms in black fretwork
against the swift-fading glow, divided the tropic sky. Above, day yet
lingered. Below, night’s dim shroud, here and there spangled with
glow-lights still or moving, had already folded earth in its obscurity.
Down from that mountain crest the descending slopes fell through grove
and plantation to the drowned paddy-fields and to the miasmatic swamps,
brooded by settling mists like thin, white breath of ghosts that in
this Malay land all men gave faith to.
Nearer still, it reached the squalid _campong_ of Batu Kawan.
Batu Kawan, huddled in filth, disorder and disease between the
steaming arsenical green of the lowlands and the muddy idleness of
the boat-jammed Timbago River. Batu Kawan, whence the New Bedford
clipper-ship, _Silver Fleece_, should have sailed two hours ago on the
high tide, this 18th day of February, 1868. Batu Kawan, pestilent,
malodorous, sinister, swarming with easy life, hemmed round with easier
death.
William Scurlock, mate, was looking townward, leaning with crossed arms
on rail. The umber smudge of half-light in the sky, fading over the
torn edge of the mountains, revealed something of his blond bigness,
freckled, weather-bitten, with close-cropped hair, a scarred jaw and
hard teeth that gripped his cutty-pipe in bulldog fashion.
Scurlock seemed to be engaged with inward visionings, rather than
outward. The occasional come-and-go of some dim figure in the waist
of the ship, the fan-tan game of four or five Malay seamen—for
the _Silver Fleece_ carried a checkerboard crew, white, yellow and
brown—as they squatted on their hunkers under the vague blur of a
lantern just forward of the mainmast, and the hiccoughing stridor of an
accordion in the fo’c’s’le, roused in him no reaction.
Nor, as he lolled there under the awning, did he appear to take heed of
the mud-clogged river with its jumble of sampans and house-boats, or of
the thatched huts and tiled _godowns_ past which the colorful swarm of
Oriental life was idling along the bund. This stewing caldron of heat,
haze, odors, dusk where fruit-bats staggered against the appearing
stars said nothing whatever to the mate. All he could see in it was
inefficiency, delay and loss.
Not all its wizardry of gleaming lights in hut and shop, its firefly
paper lanterns, its murmuring strangeness could weigh against the
vexing fact that his ship had missed the tide, and that—though
her full cargo of tea, rattan, tapioca, cacao and opium was under
hatches—she still lay made fast to the bamboo mooring-piles. What
could offset the annoyance that Captain Alpheus Briggs, ashore on
business of his own, was still delaying the vital business of working
downstream on the ebb?
“Devil of a cap’n!” grumbled Scurlock. He spat moodily into the dark
waters, and sucked at his pipe. “Ain’t it enough for him to have put
in a hundred boxes of raw opium, which is liable to land us all in
hell, without stealin’ a nigger wench an’ now drinkin’ samshu, ashore?
Trouble comin’—mutiny an’ murder an’ damnation with trimmin’s, or I’m
no Gloucester man!”
Savagely he growled in his deep throat. Scurlock disapproved of Batu
Kawan and of all its works, especially of its women and its raw
rice-whisky. The East grated on his taut nerves. Vague singing in huts
and the twangle of musically discordant strings set his teeth on edge.
He hated the smells of the place, all seemingly compounded of curry and
spices and mud and smoke of wood fires, through which the perfumes of
strange fruits and heavy flowers drifted insistently.
The voices of mothers calling their naked little ones within their
doors, lest Mambang Kuning, the yellow devil who dwells in the
dusk, should snatch them, jarred upon his evil temper. So, too, the
monotonous _tunk-tunk-tunk_ of metal-workers’ hammers in some unseen
place; the snuffling grunt of carabaos wallowing in the mud-swale
beyond the guava clump, up-stream; the nasal chatter of gharry-drivers
and Kling boatmen; the whining sing-song of Malay pedlers with
shouldered poles, whence swung baskets of sugar-cane and mangosteens.
Scurlock abominated all that shuffling, chattering tangle of dark,
half-clad life. The gorge of his trim, efficient, New England soul rose
up against it, in hot scorn.
“Damn the Straits!” he grumbled, passing his hand over his forehead,
sweaty in the breathless heat. “An’ damn Briggs, too! It’s my last
voyage East, by joycus!”
Which was, indeed, the living truth, though by no means as Scurlock
meant or understood it.
A plaintive hail from the rough brick coping of the bund drew his
atrabilious attention. The mate saw that a brown, beardless fellow was
making gestures at him. A lantern on the quarterdeck flung unsteady
rays upon the Malay’s nakedness, complete save for the breech-clout
through which a kris was thrust. In his left hand he gripped a
loose-woven coir bag, heavily full. His left held out, on open palm,
three or four shining globules. Scurlock viewed with resentment the
lean, grinning face, lips reddened and teeth jet-black by reason of
long years of chewing lime and betel.
“Turtle egg, sar, sellum piecee cheap,” crooned the Malay. “Buyum
turtle egg, sar?”
Scurlock’s answer was to bend, reach for a piece of holystone in a
bucket by the rail, and catapult it at the vagabond who had made so
bold as to interrupt his musings. The Malay swung aside; the holystone
crunched into the sack of eggs and slid to earth.
The screaming curse of the barbarian hardly crossed the rail ahead of
the flung kris. The wavy, poisoned blade flickered, spinning. Scurlock
stooped away; the fraction of an eyewink later would have done his
life’s business very neatly. Into the mizzen-mast drove the kris, and
quivered there.
Scurlock turned, strode to it and plucked it out, swearing in his
rage. The Malays at fan-tan by the gleam of the slush-light under the
awning grew silent. Their fantastic little cards, of gaudy hue, dropped
unheeded; for they had heard the name of Ratna Mutnu Manikam, god who
brings death. Wherefore they shuddered, and turned scared faces aft;
and some touched heart and forehead, warding off the curse.
Back to the rail, kris in hand, ran Scurlock.
“_Juldi_, you!” he shouted, with an oath unprintable. “Top your broom,
you black swine—skip, before I come ashore an’ split you! _Juldi
jao!_”
The Malay hesitated. Scurlock, flinging “_Sur!_” at him, which in the
_lingua franca_ denominates a swine, started for the gangway. Silently
the Malay faded into the little fringe of brown and yellow folk that
had already gathered; and so he vanished. Scurlock was already setting
foot upon the gangway that led slantwise down to the bund, when through
the quickly coagulating street-crowd an eddy, developing, made visible
by the vague light a large head covered with a topi hat wrapped in
a pugree. Powerful shoulders and huge elbows, by no means chary of
smashing right and left against the naked ribs, cleared a passage, amid
grunts and gasps of pain; and once or twice the big man’s fists swung
effectively, by way of make-weight.
Then to William Scurlock’s sight appeared a tall, heavy-set figure,
rather dandified, in raw yellow bamboo silk and with very neatly
polished boots that seemed to scorn the mud of Batu Kawan. A first
glance recorded black brows of great luxuriance, a jungle of black
beard contrasting sharply with a face reddened by wind, weather and
hard liquor, and, in the V of a half-opened shirt, a corded neck and
hairy chest molded on lines of the young Hercules. This man would be
going on for twenty-eight or so. Fists, eyes and jaw all lusted battle.
Alpheus Briggs, captain and part owner of the _Silver Fleece_, had
returned.