THE FIGHT ON THE BEACH
Carver gave a low-voiced command to halt, and enjoined his men to see to
their weapons. As he ran his eyes over his company and saw their dogged
jaws and alert, watchful faces, devoid of any trace of nervousness and
excitability, his face lit with a quiet satisfaction. These men would
fight--they were veterans who knew how to fight, and they had a motive;
Paddy was a universal favorite.
A Dyak plunged through the bush toward Jahi and jabbered excitedly. Jahi
cried:
"China boy, him go proa, three-four sampan."
"Lead the way," Carver cried. Peter Gross translated.
"Double time," the captain shouted, as Jahi and his tribesmen plunged
through the bush at a pace too swift for even Peter Gross.
In less than three minutes they reached the edge of the jungle, back
about fifty yards from the coral beach. Four hundred yards from shore a
proa was being loaded from several large sampans. Some distance out to
sea, near the horizon, was another proa.
A sharp command from Carver kept his men from rushing out on the beach
in their ardor. In a moment or two every rifle in the company was
covering the sampans. But there were sharp eyes and ears on board the
proa as well as on shore, and a cry of alarm was given from the deck.
The Chinese in the sampans leaped upward. At the same moment Carver gave
the command to fire.
Fully twenty Chinamen on the two sampans floating on the leeward side of
the proa made the leap to her deck, and of these eleven fell back, so
deadly was the fire. Only two of them dropped into the boats, the others
falling into the sea. Equipped with the latest type of magazine rifle,
Carver's irregulars continued pumping lead into the proa. Several
Chinamen thrust rifles over the rail and attempted a reply, but when one
dropped back with a bullet through his forehead and another with a
creased skull, they desisted and took refuge behind the ship's
steel-jacketed rail. Perceiving that the proa was armored against
rifle-fire, Carver ordered all but six of his command to cease firing,
the six making things sufficiently hot to keep the pirates from
replying.
The sampans were sinking. Built of skins placed around a bamboo frame,
they had been badly cut by the first discharge. As one of them lowered
to the gunwale, those on shore could see a wounded Chinaman, scarce able
to crawl, beg his companions to throw him a rope. A coil of hemp shot
over the deck of the vessel. The pirate reached for it, but at that
moment the sampan went down and left him swirling in the water. A
dorsal fin cut the surface close by, there was a little flurry, and the
pirate disappeared.
Peter Gross made his way through the bush toward Carver. The latter was
watching the proa with an anxious frown.
"They've got a steel jacket on her," he declared in answer to the
resident's question. "So long as they don't show themselves we can't
touch them. We couldn't go out to them in sampans if we had them; they'd
sink us."
"Concentrate your fire on the water-line," Peter Gross suggested. "The
armor doesn't probably reach very low, and some of these proas are
poorly built."
"A good idea!" Carver bellowed the order.
The fire was concentrated at the stern, where the ship rode highest.
That those on board became instantly aware of the maneuver was evident
from the fact that a pirate, hideously attired with a belt of human
hands, leaned over the bow to slash at the hempen cable with his kris.
He gave two cuts when he straightened spasmodically and tumbled headlong
into the sea. He did not appear above the surface again.
"_Een_," John Vander Esse, a member of the crew, murmured happily,
refilling his magazine. "Now for _nummer twee_." (Number two.)
But the kris had been whetted to a keen edge. A gust of wind filled the
proa's cumbersome triangular sail and drove her forward. The weakened
cable snapped. The ship lunged and half rolled into the trough of the
waves; then the steersmen, sheltered in their box, gained control and
swung it about.
"Gif heem all you got," Anderson, a big Scandinavian and particularly
fond of Rouse, yelled. The concentrated fire of the twenty-five rifles,
emptied, refilled, and emptied as fast as human hands could perform
these operations, centered on the stern of the ship. Even sturdy teak
could not resist that battering. The proa had not gone a hundred yards
before it was seen that the stern was settling. Suddenly it came about
and headed for the shore.
There was a shrill yell from Jahi's Dyaks. Carver shouted a hoarse order
to Jahi, who dashed away with his hillmen to the point where the ship
was about to ground. The rifle-fire kept on undiminished while Carver
led his men in short dashes along the edge of the bush to the same spot.
The proa was nearing the beach when a white flag was hoisted on her
deck. Carver instantly gave the order to cease firing, but kept his men
hidden. The proa lunged on. A hundred feet from the shore it struck on a
shelf of coral. The sound of tearing planking was distinctly audible
above the roar of the waves. The water about the ship seemed to be
fairly alive with fins.
"We will accept their surrender," Peter Gross said to Carver. "I shall
tell them to send a boat ashore." He stepped forward.
"Don't expose yourself, Mr. Gross," Carver cried anxiously. Peter Gross
stepped into the shelter of a cocoanut-palm and shouted the Malay for
"Ahoy."
A Chinaman appeared at the bow. His dress and trappings showed that he
was a _juragan_.
"Lower a boat and come ashore. But leave your guns behind," Peter Gross
ordered.
The _juragan_ cried that there was no boat aboard. Peter Gross conferred
with Jahi who had hastened toward them to find out what the conference
meant. When the resident told him that there was to be no more killing,
his disappointment was evident.
"They have killed my people without mercy," he objected. "They will cut
my brother's throat to-morrow and hang his skull in their lodges."
It was necessary to use diplomacy to avoid mortally offending his ally,
the resident saw.
"It was not the white man's way to kill when the fight is over," he
said. "Moreover, we will hold them as hostages for our son, whom Djath
has blessed."
Jahi nodded dubiously. "My brother's word is good," he said. "There is a
creek near by. Maybe my boys find him sampan."
"Go, my brother," Peter Gross directed. "Come back as soon as possible."
Jahi vanished into the bush. A half-hour later Peter Gross made out a
small sampan, paddled by two Dyaks, approaching from the south. That the
Dyaks were none too confident was apparent from the anxious glances that
they shot at the proa, which was already beginning to show signs of
breaking up.
Peter Gross shouted again to the _juragan_, and instructed him that
every man leaving the proa must stand on the rail, in full sight of
those on shore, and show that he was weaponless before descending into
the sampan. The _juragan_ consented.
It required five trips to the doomed ship before all on board were taken
off. There were thirty-seven in all--eleven sailors and the rest
off-scourings of the Java and Celebes seas, whose only vocation was
cutting throats. They glared at their captors like tigers; it was more
than evident that practically all of them except the _juragan_ fully
expected to meet the same fate that they meted out to every one who fell
into their hands, and were prepared to sell their lives as dearly as
possible.
"A nasty crew," Carver remarked to Peter Gross as the pirates were
herded on the beach under the rifles of his company. "Every man's
expecting to be handed the same dose as he's handed some poor devil. I
wonder why they didn't sink with their ship?"
Peter Gross did not stop to explain, although he knew the reason
why--the Mohammedan's horror of having his corpse pass into the belly of
a shark.
"We've got to tie them up and make a chain-gang of them," Carver said
thoughtfully. "I wouldn't dare go through the jungle with that crew any
other way."
Peter Gross was looking at Jahi, in earnest conversation with several of
his tribesmen. He perceived that the hill chief had all he could do to
restrain his people from falling on the pirates, long their oppressors.
"I will speak to them," he announced quietly. He stepped forward.
"Servants of Ah Sing," he shouted in an authoritative tone. All eyes
were instantly focused on him.
"Servants of Ah Sing," he repeated, "the fortunes of war have this day
made you my captives. You must go with me to Bulungan. If you will not
go, you shall die here."
A simultaneous movement affected the pirates. They clustered more
closely together, fiercely defiant, and stared with the fatalistic
indifference of Oriental peoples into the barrels of the rifles aimed at
them.
"You've all heard of me," Peter Gross resumed. "You know that the voice
of Peter Gross speaks truth, that lies do not come from his mouth." He
glanced at a Chinaman on the outskirts of the crowd. "Speak, Wong Ling
Lo, you sailed with me on the _Daisy Deane_, is it not so?"
Wong Ling Lo was now the center of attention. Each of the pirates
awaited his reply with breathless expectancy. Peter Gross's calm
assurance, his candor and simplicity, were already stirring in them a
hope that in other moments they would have deemed utterly fantastic,
contrary to all nature--a hope that this white man might be different
from other men, might possess that attribute so utterly incomprehensible
to their dark minds--mercy.
"Peter Gross, him no lie," was Wong Ling Lo's unemotional admission.
"You have heard what Wong Ling Lo says," Peter Gross cried. "Now, listen
to what I say. You shall go back with me to Bulungan; alive, if you are
willing; dead, if you are not. At Bulungan each one of you shall have a
fair trial. Every man who can prove that his hand has not taken life
shall be sentenced to three years on the coffee-plantations for his
robberies, then he shall be set free and provided with a farm of his own
to till so that he may redeem himself. Every man who has taken human
life in the service of Ah Sing shall die."
He paused to see the effect of his announcement. The owlish faces turned
toward him were wholly enigmatic, but the intensity of each man's gaze
revealed to Peter Gross the measure of their interest.
"I cannot take you along the trail without binding you," he said. "Your
oaths are worthless; I must use the power I have over you. Therefore you
will now remember the promise I have made you, and submit yourselves to
be bound. _Juragan_, you are the first."
As one of Carver's force came forward with cords salvaged from the proa,
the _juragan_ met him, placed his hands behind his back, and suffered
them to be tied together. The next man hesitated, then submitted also,
casting anxious glances at his companions. The third submitted promptly.
The fourth folded his hands across his chest.
"I remain here," he announced.
"Very well," Peter Gross said impassively. He forced several Chinamen
who were near to move back. They gave ground sullenly. At Carver's
orders a firing-squad of three men stood in front of the Chinaman, whose
back was toward the bay.
"Will you go with us?" Peter Gross asked again.
The Chinaman's face was a ghostly gray, but very firm.
"Allah wills I stay here," he replied. His lips curled with a calm
contemptuousness at the white man's inability to rob him of the place in
heaven that he believed his murders had made for him. With that smile on
his lips he died.
A sudden silence came upon the crowd. Even Jahi's Dyaks, scarcely
restrained by their powerful chief before this, ceased their mutterings
and looked with new respect on the big _orang blanda_ resident. There
were no more refusals among the Chinese. On instructions from Peter
Gross four of them were left unbound to carry the body of their dead
comrade to Bulungan. "Alive or dead," he had said. So it would be all
understood.