In the Clutches of Abu-Samar
When Vera Battiscombe came to her senses, she found herself lying on
a sort of hammock made from the entire skin of some animal and
fastened at either end to a wooden frame by means of leathern thongs.
A blanket had been thrown over her, and as soon as she was conscious
of the touch of its rough surface against her neck, she pushed it off
in disgust.
She felt hot and sticky, her limbs ached, and there was an acute pain
behind her eyes, so that she was forced to close them continually,
opening them only at intervals to gaze in bewilderment upon her new
surroundings.
Presently she raised herself on her arms and endeavoured, from a
mingling of memories, thoughts and fears, to discover something that
might account for her presence in so primitive a dwelling.
The room was approximately ten feet square and, except for a heap of
miscellaneous articles ranged along the far wall and partially covered
with a length of sacking, there was scarcely anything in the nature of
furniture. There was a square of coloured matting on the floor, a
roughly carved stool, some odd sacks, which might have contained
grain, and a large earthenware water-jar.
At the foot of her bed, a strip of matting concealed what she surmised
to be the only door; there were no windows and the light filtered in
through great chinks in the walls and gaps in the thatching above.
The watch at her wrist registered a quarter to one, but she discovered
upon a closer examination that it had stopped.
The atmosphere was one of intense heat and from somewhere close at
hand came the incessant buzzing of flies.
She sank back again, one hand pressed to her forehead, and tried to
think.
The throbbing was easier now. Gradually, as she groped for a
starting-point, the picture of Joyce’s room in Armourer’s bungalow
built itself up before her. How had she come to leave it? At some time
or other in her life--it seemed countless ages distant--she had
quarrelled with Michael about something. However her thoughts rambled,
they always came back to that. She had cried, she remembered now, and
gone back to her room. A Chinaman had brought her food--that would be
Chong-Si. She had found a pencil and written, and presently she had
gone out. She remembered that it was dark and that there were stars.
She remembered being frightened under the trees when she found that
she had lost her way, and a queer house with an open door. Something
had made her enter. Queer, disjointed fragments kept coming back to
her. She had been looking for something--something which persisted in
eluding her.
“The Crimson Butterfly!” she exclaimed aloud--and then laughed at her
own folly in voicing what must have been an absurd hallucination--a
dream-phantom.
She thought again.
Perhaps this, too, was a dream? In a little while these unfamiliar
surroundings would vanish, and the walls of the sick-room--in which
she must actually be--would take their place. She remembered quite
well that she had been ill--very ill. Joyce had been there, sleeping
in another bed, and the professor, with his scrubby beard and serious
owl-like expression, had hovered over her. She seemed to recollect
that Jim had been there too; she had heard his voice on the verandah.
A lizard, creeping suddenly into a lozenge of sunshine on the wall at
her side, screamed shrilly and she sat bolt upright.
She rubbed her eyes, fingered the leathern thongs curiously, reached
over and pulled at the nearest sack--and a shower of rice pattered to
the floor.
Her clenched fists pressed against her temples. It was real then--all
real! Merciful heaven! What did it all mean?
She looked at her clothes. They were stained, crumpled and torn, and,
except for her shoes, she was in outdoor attire. Becoming curiously
scrupulous as to details, she stared round in search of those shoes.
She looked at the stool. There was something lying on it that she had
not noticed before. She leaned forward. It appeared to be a hat--a red
hat with a black tassel. She wanted to go over to it and examine it,
but her initial attempts to gain her feet sent her staggering stupidly
back on to the couch.
She laughed weakly and suddenly dissolved into tears, her face buried
in her hands.
Presently she choked down her sobs, summoned all the strength at her
command and made a further effort. This time she stumbled on to her
hands, pushed herself up again and finally fell in a heap to the
floor, setting the entire building rocking.
She crawled the remainder of the distance and was within an ace of
touching the hat when horror seized her and she shrank from it as from
some ghastly apparition.
It was a red _fez_!
Abu-Samar! Where had she heard that name before? Her lips formed the
syllables glibly, as if the name were one which she had voiced
repeatedly. Abu-Samar! A tall man, in a blue suit and that same hat,
standing by a white bridge! A coloured man! It was all coming back to
her now, overwhelming her in great waves.
She had gone to his house; but not this house. There were
orange-coloured curtains and a cedar-wood box brimming over with
precious ornaments that glinted and sparkled in the light. He had
given her a Crimson Butterfly--a ruby thing with emerald eyes, on a
chain of gold filigree. He had clasped it round her neck--and she had
run away, leading her pony after her. There was a blank here which she
strove to fill. She had lost that ornament somehow, found it, then
lost it again. That was why she had wandered out that night into the
trees. She went into the hut because she thought it was there.
Somebody had told her it would be there.
She had wandered from the hut again into the open and shrunk back into
the shelter of a big tree. She had been very tired, had sunk to the
ground exhausted. After that she remembered little, save a sensation
of being whirled into the air by some mysterious force--and rocked
into a deep sleep. This slumber had continued apparently for
centuries, interrupted at intervals by wild nightmares, dreams of
falling from great heights, strange noises and the rushing of waters.
A sense of unutterable loneliness gripped her, and, creeping over on
all fours, she drew back the matting from the opening. The scene that
met her eyes startled her.
The hut in which she was revealed itself as a tree-dwelling, a crazy
crow’s-nest nestling among the branches, with a flimsy ladder leading
down to the ground, twenty or more feet below. Beneath her was the
long thatched roof of another building, to her right a few more
trees--and then, stretching to the horizon, a wilderness of moss-clad
boulders, over the whole expanse of which no living thing was visible.
The mystery was deepening. The landscape was entirely strange to her.
How had she crossed that cheerless desert--and why? What was the
significance of her presence in this lonely, ramshackle dwelling on an
oasis in the midst of utter desolation.
She thrust her head and shoulders forward cautiously, trying to see
what was at the foot of the ladder--and drew herself quickly out of
sight again.
She had seen a colossal native, immobile as an ebony statue, with a
_parang_ sheathed at his side and a spear-shaft nestling in the crook
of his arm!
She was a prisoner; Abu-Samar’s prisoner; for there on the stool was
irrefutable evidence.
She clasped her hands over her knees and rocked to and fro in the
agony of her terror.
And presently, as she crouched there, starting at every sound that
came from the earth below, the house itself or the tree-tops above
her, the jig-saw pieces that had defied her when she sought them crept
into the picture of their own accord and silently filled themselves
in.
As he had prophesied at their first meeting, she had walked from her
own people--and come to him, apparently of her own accord, but in
reality in obedience to an insistent command that he had somehow
succeeded in transmitting through space. He had plagued her, tormented
her, haunted her sleeping and her waking hours until all the barriers
of her resistance had been broken down.
Contrite now and immeasurably sorry for herself, she saw the Gehenna
that her own follies had wrought, stretched out her arms to the cruel
flames, recognising them, acknowledging their right to envelop her.
She had been faithless--faithless to Jim, faithless in a more limited
degree to Dick Moberly, who had paid bitterly for his infatuation. Her
thirst for conquest, her recklessness, her mad desire to employ her
beauty to ensnare every decent man who came in her way, had brought
her to this.
She beat her forehead with her clenched fists in her misery. If there
were indeed a kind fate of any sort watching over her, she promised it
that, in the unlikely event of being snatched from the horror that
threatened her, she would act squarely with Jim for as long as she
lived.
And then she fell the victim to another mood.
After all, a voice within her argued, there must have been countless
women more culpable than she who had never been called upon to face
the consequence of their misdeeds like this. The instincts that had
impelled her to embark upon the course she had followed were inherited
ones, her looks had been given her at birth, the climate that gave men
fever had been her inspiration. This Samar, this primeval savage
masquerading in civilised attire, had planted himself deliberately in
her path, shaking her limited world from its very foundations.
The thought of him made her shudder. She remembered the loathsome
touch of his fingers when he gave her the crimson pendant. And she was
in his power!
She gazed round her helplessly.
She must do something, feign sickness, madness, anything! She ran her
fingers madly through her hair, dishevelling it until she imagined it
encircled her head like an unkempt mop.
She must disfigure herself, make herself so distasteful to him that he
would recoil from her.
She wondered if anywhere among that pile under the sacking there were
a mirror.
She was about to make for it when the sound of voices below brought
her to a standstill. Her heart beating a devil’s tattoo, she listened.
Abu-Samar! The softer tones were surely his and the queer guttural
utterances those of the sentry outside. Somebody was coming up the
ladder.
For seconds she remained there, rooted to the spot. Suddenly, with a
great effort, she threw off the _incubus_ that held her there, and
creeping back to her couch, drew the blanket over her.
Frightened--horribly, genuinely frightened--she watched through
half-closed lids as the strip of matting swung inwards, revealing a
triangle of bright light across which extended an arm in a blue serge
sleeve.
Abu-Samar, bending almost double, came into the room and the matting
dropped back into place.