The morning's action had been settled the night before. Tudor was to
stay behind in his banyan refuge and gather strength while the expedition
proceeded. On the far chance that they might rescue even one solitary
survivor of Tudor's party, Joan was fixed in her determination to push
on; and neither Sheldon nor Tudor could persuade her to remain quietly at
the banyan tree while Sheldon went on and searched. With Tudor, Adamu
Adam and Arahu were to stop as guards, the latter Tahitian being selected
to remain because of a bad foot which had been brought about by stepping
on one of the thorns concealed by the bushmen. It was evidently a slow
poison, and not too strong, that the bushmen used, for the wounded Poonga-
Poonga man was still alive, and though his swollen shoulder was enormous,
the inflammation had already begun to go down. He, too, remained with
Tudor.
Binu Charley led the way, by proxy, however, for, by means of the
poisoned spear, he drove the captive bushman ahead. The run-way still
ran through the dank and rotten jungle, and they knew no villages would
be encountered till rising ground was gained. They plodded on, panting
and sweating in the humid, stagnant air. They were immersed in a sea of
wanton, prodigal vegetation. All about them the huge-rooted trees
blocked their footing, while coiled and knotted climbers, of the girth of
a man's arm, were thrown from lofty branch to lofty branch, or hung in
tangled masses like so many monstrous snakes. Lush-stalked plants,
larger-leaved than the body of a man, exuded a sweaty moisture from all
their surfaces. Here and there, banyan trees, like rocky islands,
shouldered aside the streaming riot of vegetation between their crowded
columns, showing portals and passages wherein all daylight was lost and
only midnight gloom remained. Tree-ferns and mosses and a myriad other
parasitic forms jostled with gay-coloured fungoid growths for room to
live, and the very atmosphere itself seemed to afford clinging space to
airy fairy creepers, light and delicate as gem-dust, tremulous with
microscopic blooms. Pale-golden and vermilion orchids flaunted their
unhealthy blossoms in the golden, dripping sunshine that filtered through
the matted roof. It was the mysterious, evil forest, a charnel house of
silence, wherein naught moved save strange tiny birds--the strangeness of
them making the mystery more profound, for they flitted on noiseless
wings, emitting neither song nor chirp, and they were mottled with morbid
colours, having all the seeming of orchids, flying blossoms of sickness
and decay.
He was caught by surprise, fifteen feet in the air above the path, in the
forks of a many-branched tree. All saw him as he dropped like a shadow,
naked as on his natal morn, landing springily on his bent knees, and like
a shadow leaping along the run-way. It was hard for them to realize that
it was a man, for he seemed a weird jungle spirit, a goblin of the
forest. Only Binu Charley was not perturbed. He flung his poisoned
spear over the head of the captive at the flitting form. It was a mighty
cast, well intended, but the shadow, leaping, received the spear
harmlessly between the legs, and, tripping upon it, was flung sprawling.
Before he could get away, Binu Charley was upon him, clutching him by his
snow-white hair. He was only a young man, and a dandy at that, his face
blackened with charcoal, his hair whitened with wood-ashes, with the
freshly severed tail of a wild pig thrust through his perforated nose,
and two more thrust through his ears. His only other ornament was a
necklace of human finger-bones. At sight of their other prisoner he
chattered in a high querulous falsetto, with puckered brows and troubled,
wild-animal eyes. He was disposed of along the middle of the line, one
of the Poonga-Poonga men leading him at the end of a length of bark-rope.
The trail began to rise out of the jungle, dipping at times into
festering hollows of unwholesome vegetation, but rising more and more
over swelling, unseen hill-slopes or climbing steep hog-backs and rocky
hummocks where the forest thinned and blue patches of sky appeared
overhead.
"Close up he stop," Binu Charley warned them in a whisper.
Even as he spoke, from high overhead came the deep resonant boom of a
village drum. But the beat was slow, there was no panic in the sound.
They were directly beneath the village, and they could hear the crowing
of roosters, two women's voices raised in brief dispute, and, once, the
crying of a child. The run-way now became a deeply worn path, rising so
steeply that several times the party paused for breath. The path never
widened, and in places the feet and the rains of generations had scoured
it till it was sunken twenty feet beneath the surface.
"One man with a rifle could hold it against a thousand," Sheldon
whispered to Joan. "And twenty men could hold it with spears and
arrows."
They came out on the village, situated on a small, upland plateau, grass-
covered, and with only occasional trees. There was a wild chorus of
warning cries from the women, who scurried out of the grass houses, and
like frightened quail dived over the opposite edge of the clearing,
gathering up their babies and children as they ran. At the same time
spears and arrows began to fall among the invaders. At Sheldon's
command, the Tahitians and Poonga-Poonga men got into action with their
rifles. The spears and arrows ceased, the last bushman disappeared, and
the fight was over almost as soon as it had begun. On their own side no
one had been hurt, while half a dozen bushmen had been killed. These
alone remained, the wounded having been carried off. The Tahitians and
Poonga-Poonga men had warmed up and were for pursuit, but this Sheldon
would not permit. To his pleased surprise, Joan backed him up in the
decision; for, glancing at her once during the firing, he had seen her
white face, like a glittering sword in its fighting intensity, the
nostrils dilated, the eyes bright and steady and shining.
"Poor brutes," she said. "They act only according to their natures. To
eat their kind and take heads is good morality for them."
"But they should be taught not to take white men's heads," Sheldon
argued.
She nodded approval, and said, "If we find one head we'll burn the
village. Hey, you, Charley! What fella place head he stop?"
"S'pose he stop along devil-devil house," was the answer. "That big
fella house, he devil-devil."
It was the largest house in the village, ambitiously ornamented with
fancy-plaited mats and king-posts carved into obscene and monstrous forms
half-human and half-animal. Into it they went, in the obscure light
stumbling across the sleeping-logs of the village bachelors and knocking
their heads against strings of weird votive-offerings, dried and
shrivelled, that hung from the roof-beams. On either side were rude
gods, some grotesquely carved, others no more than shapeless logs swathed
in rotten and indescribably filthy matting. The air was mouldy and heavy
with decay, while strings of fish-tails and of half-cleaned dog and
crocodile skulls did not add to the wholesomeness of the place.
In the centre, crouched before a slow-smoking fire, in the littered ashes
of a thousand fires, was an old man who blinked apathetically at the
invaders. He was extremely old--so old that his withered skin hung about
him in loose folds and did not look like skin. His hands were bony
claws, his emaciated face a sheer death's-head. His task, it seemed, was
to tend the fire, and while he blinked at them he added to it a handful
of dead and mouldy wood. And hung in the smoke they found the object of
their search. Joan turned and stumbled out hastily, deathly sick,
reeling into the sunshine and clutching at the air for support.
"See if all are there," she called back faintly, and tottered aimlessly
on for a few steps, breathing the air in great draughts and trying to
forget the sight she had seen.
Upon Sheldon fell the unpleasant task of tallying the heads. They were
all there, nine of them, white men's heads, the faces of which he had
been familiar with when their owners had camped in Berande compound and
set up the poling-boats. Binu Charley, hugely interested, lent a hand,
turning the heads around for identification, noting the hatchet-strokes,
and remarking the distorted expressions. The Poonga-Poonga men gloated
as usual, and as usual the Tahitians were shocked and angry, several of
them cursing and muttering in undertones. So angry was Matapuu, that he
strode suddenly over to the fire-tender and kicked him in the ribs,
whereupon the old savage emitted an appalling squeal, pig-like in its
wild-animal fear, and fell face downward in the ashes and lay quivering
in momentary expectation of death.
Other heads, thoroughly sun-dried and smoke-cured, were found in
abundance, but, with two exceptions, they were the heads of blacks. So
this was the manner of hunting that went on in the dark and evil forest,
Sheldon thought, as he regarded them. The atmosphere of the place was
sickening, yet he could not forbear to pause before one of Binu Charley's
finds.
"Me savvee black Mary, me savvee white Mary," quoth Binu Charley. "Me no
savvee that fella Mary. What name belong him?"
Sheldon looked. Ancient and withered, blackened by many years of the
smoke of the devil-devil house, nevertheless the shrunken, mummy-like
face was unmistakably Chinese. How it had come there was the mystery. It
was a woman's head, and he had never heard of a Chinese woman in the
history of the Solomons. From the ears hung two-inch-long ear-rings, and
at Sheldon's direction the Binu man rubbed away the accretions of smoke
and dirt, and from under his fingers appeared the polished green of jade,
the sheen of pearl, and the warm red of Oriental gold. The other head,
equally ancient, was a white man's, as the heavy blond moustache, twisted
and askew on the shrivelled upper lip, gave sufficient advertisement; and
Sheldon wondered what forgotten beche-de-mer fisherman or sandalwood
trader had gone to furnish that ghastly trophy.
Telling Binu Charley to remove the ear-rings, and directing the Poonga-
Poonga men to carry out the old fire-tender, Sheldon cleared the devil-
devil house and set fire to it. Soon every house was blazing merrily,
while the ancient fire-tender sat upright in the sunshine blinking at the
destruction of his village. From the heights above, where were evidently
other villages, came the booming of drums and a wild blowing of
war-conchs; but Sheldon had dared all he cared to with his small
following. Besides, his mission was accomplished. Every member of
Tudor's expedition was accounted for; and it was a long, dark way out of
the head-hunters' country. Releasing their two prisoners, who leaped
away like startled deer, they plunged down the steep path into the
steaming jungle.
Joan, still shocked by what she had seen, walked on in front of Sheldon,
subdued and silent. At the end of half an hour she turned to him with a
wan smile and said,--
"I don't think I care to visit the head-hunters any more. It's
adventure, I know; but there is such a thing as having too much of a good
thing. Riding around the plantation will henceforth be good enough for
me, or perhaps salving another _Martha_; but the bushmen of Guadalcanal
need never worry for fear that I shall visit them again. I shall have
nightmares for months to come, I know I shall. Ugh!--the horrid beasts!"
That night found them back in camp with Tudor, who, while improved, would
still have to be carried down on a stretcher. The swelling of the Poonga-
Poonga man's shoulder was going down slowly, but Arahu still limped on
his thorn-poisoned foot.
Two days later they rejoined the boats at Carli; and at high noon of the
third day, travelling with the current and shooting the rapids, the
expedition arrived at Berande. Joan, with a sigh, unbuckled her revolver-
belt and hung it on the nail in the living-room, while Sheldon, who had
been lurking about for the sheer joy of seeing her perform that
particular home-coming act, sighed, too, with satisfaction. But the home-
coming was not all joy to him, for Joan set about nursing Tudor, and
spent much time on the veranda where he lay in the hammock under the
mosquito-netting.