tired party now, and they pushed on faster, with Sadok walking almost
normally. Mile after mile was passed, and then a glimpse of the stars
showed occasionally through the tree tops. They were tired to the
limit, but Dwight, under his strange stimulant, pushed on as fresh as
if just out of his sleeping bag. Dawn came at length, to sift its dim
light through the jungle. It found them still on the march, with Sadok
walking unaided, occasionally muttering an incoherent word of Malay.
Then came the murmur of a brook and they burst out of the jungle, to
splash across it into the open glades, with the mountains towering all
around them, their tops hidden by the rising mists of early daylight.
The party heaved a huge sigh of relief as they stepped out into the
deep wet saw grass. They were about a mile above Cassowary Camp, and
it was their own stream that they had crossed. The country looked like
home, indeed, to them, for half a day’s march farther lay their base
camp, the canoe, and freedom.
XII
THE ESCAPE TO ARU
Suddenly Sadok began to run. The boys attempted to restrain him, but
the curator held them off.
“Let him alone, boys. His mentality’s coming back--it’s a good sign.
Wait.”
They watched the Dyak, who was now running in a crouching position, his
long sumpitan trailing over the grass in his left hand. As he neared a
clump of trees out in the swales he dropped from sight in the grass,
his progress only marked by the waving of the blades. They searched the
tree carefully, but only what appeared to be a large black mass, well
hidden in the dense foliage, offered any possible mark.
Then the sumpitan rose slowly out of the field, and presently a large
black bird tumbled down through the trees. The Dyak was on his feet in
an instant, dashed through the thicket, and seized his trophy. Then he
came back, holding it up triumphantly.
“Me catch’m new spec’men, _Orang-kaya_!” he announced, exuberantly.
Gone was the dull, expressionless look in his eyes, replaced now by the
sparkling zest of the primitive hunter.
“Boys, he’s got a long-tailed bird of paradise, by Jove!” cried the
curator, excitedly. “Rarer than the superba! Great work, Sadok!”
They all ran to him and examined the prize. It was of glossy black,
with bronze and purple glories of peacock-coal hues, making the
feathers iridescent with changeable colors. A superb tail of feathers
two feet long, and the side plumage brushed back, as it were, to form
tufts of plumage along both sides of the back, completed the bird’s
extraordinary ornaments.
“Almost makes you forget the pygmies, eh, Sadok?” grinned the curator,
suggestively.
The Dyak’s face looked blank. Then his memory began slowly, painfully
to work, and he put up his hand slowly and felt the bandage on his
shoulder. Gradually his expression changed to comprehension, anger,
disgust.
“Ugh!” he shuddered. “Me kill’m two--t’ree! Then me know nothing. Me
come hit--arrow?” he asked.
“Yep. We found you. Carried you through the jungle for miles. Me cure’m
upas [poison]. All well now!”
A kind of wonder grew in the Dyak’s eyes. It was the first time in his
experience that any man had survived a poisoned arrow.
“_Orang-kaya!_ him know everyt’ing!” he cried. “Him God--big-fellah!”
He stooped down and embraced the curator’s knees adoringly.
“Here! Cut it!” said the curator, embarrassed, as he disengaged
himself, and there were tears in his eyes. “God Him _great_ big-fellah,
Sadok! Him live in sky. Him hold the world in his hand, so, Sadok,”
holding out his cupped hand. “Him make you-fellah save my life, plenty
much; make me-fellah save your life! Me tell you ’bout Him, some
day, Sadok,” he said, affectionately, laying his hand on the Dyak’s
shoulder. “Gad! and I don’t know any greater pleasure than _that_ will
be, either!” he exclaimed, under his breath. “A man’s God is what I
will show him! Come on, fellows!” he broke off, hastily. “We got to
shove along; it would be death to be caught in these open swales.”
The party marched on down toward the old site of Cassowary Camp,
and were soon at the familiar grounds where so many adventures had
befallen them and so many happy days spent in collecting. The mountain
loomed up invitingly behind it, and the curator led the way up the
slopes.
Dwight felt himself stumbling unaccountably. His eyesight appeared
to be wavering, and the bushes that he grasped at to aid in climbing
seemed to elude his grasp.
“Mr. Baldwin, quick! I’m fainting!” he gasped, weakly, and he pitched
forward on his face, his arms still reaching uphill.
They all stopped.
“The reaction has come,” said the curator. “He’ll be better soon. I
think we can risk an hour’s stop and get some rest and something to
eat.”
His eye roved the mountain side, and finally rested on a rocky ledge
with bowlders and thickets of thorny bushes on its brink.
“Carry him up there,” he ordered. “We’ll dig in there and lay low for a
bit.”
They brought him up, and the curator applied restoratives, while Nicky
and Sadok busied themselves in rolling bowlders and making the place
as impregnable as possible. Then Nicky got out his alcohol kit, with
a joke or two about its being the only camp fire worth a whoop, and
started cooking a soup for all, composed of dried pemmican and soup
powder.
The site commanded the swales below for miles. To the left lay the
pebbly bars of the creek, with the old trail of the Outanatas entering
the jungle like a green tunnel. With ammunition, they could hold this
place for a long time, at least until flanking parties had ascended the
mountain back of them, but their supply was now reduced to only a few
cartridges.
The curator studied the situation over uneasily.
“I do wish Dwight could move!” he said to Nicky at his right. “We
might try carrying him, but it seems suicidal to me. The pygmies are
coming, sure as death, and they’ll move much faster than we could go
with a burden. We’d be overtaken before we got halfway back to the
canoe. We’ll have to stay here and fight. After the ammunition is all
gone, every man make for that canoe at top speed. The first one there
will get sail on her and wait until forced to draw out to the lagoon.
That is about all I can plan ahead at the present. Too bad we lost
Baderoon,” he sighed. “That was the finest black boy I ever knew!
No one who ever knew that happy, rollicking native could help loving
him--and I rather depended on him getting through and bringing up the
Outanatas.”
He went over to where Dwight lay in the shade of a bush.
“How’s it coming, old man?”
“I’m weak as a cat,” said Dwight, lifelessly. “I can’t even move that
arm. Pull it in out of the sun and lay it across my chest, won’t you?”
he begged, querulously.
The curator shook his head. It would be at least another hour before
Dwight could even move his own legs. The curator fidgeted with
impatience as he cursed the upas vine and all its relatives. Hours
were precious as dear life, now. He had about decided on a scheme for
pushing along and carrying Dwight in relays, when a low whistle from
Nicky brought him to his feet.
“Here they come, sir!” announced the boy, tensely.
He peered out of their lair. A long line of the little black men swept
across the upper swales, arrows on bows, walking about fifteen feet
apart, searching warily every foot of the grass. More burst out of the
jungle along the creek every few moments, and far to the right, other
parties could be seen beating across the jungle toward the banyan-tree
mountain. Nothing could escape such a dragnet!
They watched them impotently, as the warriors slowly worked down the
swales toward their position. There were at least fifty of them in the
line that finally reached the site of Cassowary Camp. Then they began
to slowly filter up the mountain side.
“Now’s our only chance!” said the curator in a low voice. “Sadok, you
pick off any that come near this position, or any that seem likely to
discover us, and we’ll hope that the rest may go by without finding us.”
“How about their finding the canoe before we do?” suggested Nicky,
eagerly.
“I’ve thought of that. We’ve got to move as soon as they pass us, and
get Dwight along somehow. Sadok and I will carry him. We’ll have to
beat ’em to it.”
A pygmy came out of the bushes directly below him, and his little black
eyes popped with sudden discovery. Before he could utter a yell a dart
from Sadok’s sumpitan ended him. Then another appeared, working uphill
to their right, and he, too, was tumbled over in a silent heap. The
curator felt a touch on his arm. He turned his head, to see Dwight, who
had crawled over on hands and knees, and he was pointing up to their
left with a look of horror in his eyes. There stood a pygmy in plain
sight in the act of raising the warwhoop!
[Illustration: THE PISTOLS BARKED IN UNISON WITH THE HIGH-PITCHED YELL
THAT THE MAN LET OUT]
The pistols barked in unison with the high-pitched yell that the man
let out. There were swift rustlings all over the mountain side, and
a knot of warriors below charged up the hill, shouting their battle
cries. The curator dropped a shell on them. A great brown geyser
of earth and stones obliterated the group, simultaneous with its
thundering report, and the jungle below burst into flames with the
intense heat of the explosion. In another instant there was not a pygmy
in sight anywhere on the whole landscape.
“Now, then, cut and run for it!” hissed the curator. “Make for the
canoe, Nick, and get sail on her. We’ll come along with Dwight,
somehow!”
Nicky darted off into the jungle to their left, while Sadok and the
curator hoisted Dwight to his feet and started off along the rocky
side of the mountain. They saw a party of the pygmies scuttling along
in the valley below to get ahead of them. Stopping an instant to
aim, the curator drove another shell down on them. Its detonation was
followed by a sudden silence, and then out of the green depths of the
jungle across the creek burst a full, deep-throated war chant.
“Ko! Ko! Ko!
Hy-_yah!_ Hy-_yah!_ Hy-_yah!_
To-yah-hyah! To-yah-hyah!
Ko! Ko! Ko!”
The curator stopped, exulting. These were _men_!--not the little,
dwarfed aborigines of the hills, but big, tall, deep-chested men--the
Outanatas!
He scarce dared to hope. An arrow whispered through the jungle over
his shoulder, but he heeded it not, his eyes fixed on that open green
tunnel that opened out on the creek bank. The marching song continued,
and he got glimpses of spears and white-scrolled shields moving along
through the greens of the forest below. Then a tall chief stood in the
mouth of the tunnel, his face hideously streaked with white marks, and,
hanging like an apron from his girdle, was the curator’s flaming red
bandanna. It was the war chief of the Outanatas--and behind him came
Baderoon, pointing and urging them on vigorously!
The curator cupped his hands.
“Baderoon! Baderoon! Here we are!” he yelled. Then he and Sadok laid
Dwight down under a rock ledge and sought ambushes. Yells and war cries
sounded from the mountain side all about them as the long line of
Outanata warriors splashed across the creek, brandishing their weapons.
Parties of pygmies formed for the assault in the swales. The occasional
cough of Sadok’s sumpitan at different places on the mountain showed
that he was outlying and picking off men here and there.
Then a knot of the pygmies gathered below the curator, evidently bent
on taking the Outanatas in the rear. He aimed carefully into the midst
of them and fired his third shell. Its stunning report was the signal
for a general attack, for the Outanatas dashed out into the grass
country, a cloud of arrows preceding them, while javelins soared and
poised in the air, to sink out of sight in the long grass.
Baderoon came running up the hill through the jungle.
“Me get’m! Me fetch’m, _Orang-kaya_! Come! No good for white man be
here.” He was fully armed, and exuberant with delight and high spirits.
The curator called in Sadok, and they raised Dwight to his feet and
set off at full speed, with the Dyak covering their retreat. The boy
was fast getting his strength back now, and they went along rapidly.
As they left the plateau the curator looked back. The whole country
behind him was full of tall and short black men, fighting like demons,
catching arrows on ready shields, jabbing at each other with long
spears, and occasionally the white flash of a bamboo knife would tell
where one of a pair had come off victorious.
That was his last glimpse of Papuan and pygmy, for the way led down
abruptly into their valley, and soon they were crossing the strip of
deep jungle and had arrived on the coral bank. A shout for Nicky,
answered by a low whistle, brought them to the stream bank, where the
old white sail of the small proa showed up through the thickets. Nicky
had already gotten the crate aboard and was all ready to shove off.
They tumbled in, and Baderoon took the helm, while Sadok drew in the
sheet rope. The creek banks slid swiftly by, and presently they were
out in the lagoon and headed down it toward the capes of the open sea.
“Good-by, New Guinea!” shouted the curator, waving his hand at the
column of smoke that rose far back in the hills. “Some day the white
race will need you--but it’s a long, long way off yet, boys!” he
laughed, dropping his voice. “And now let’s have those cinnabar
specimens,” he added, as the proa swept along like a swallow under the
fresh breeze. “Mum’s the word about them, everybody,” he warned. “It’s
the one big secret of the expedition.”
“I suppose we’ll see you next as president of the New Guinea Mining
Company, Limited, Mr. Baldwin?” laughed Nicky, who was busily whittling
at a short bamboo stick he had brought aboard.
“That opens up a big subject, boys,” answered the curator, seriously.
“If either of you want a big position in such a company, just say the
word and it’s yours. You’ll be rich and prosperous beyond your dreams.”
“And you, Mr. Baldwin?” inquired Dwight, curiously.
“Such temptations are not for me,” replied the curator. “When I’ve
reported this thing to certain financiers, I’m through. My whole
life has been that of a scientist, a seeker after knowledge. When I
have found a new thing my interest in it ceases. As a wanderer and an
explorer I am happy; as a wealthy mine owner I’d be miserable. All my
education has been in the service of science; it’s the only life for
me.”
“Me, too!” grunted Nicky, splitting his bamboo wand and sticking a
small sliver in it to hold it open. “And, there’s one specimen from New
Guinea that I _didn’t_ get, and that’s a sea snake. You can have your
mine for all of me!”
“By George! that’s the way I feel, too!” exclaimed Dwight. “The
engineers and the moneyed men can have Red Mountain, for all I care.
I’d far rather collect a new butterfly in some out-of-the-way hole
than own a million dollars. All I want is to be with you on your next
expedition, Mr. Baldwin.”
The curator looked into their eyes understandingly.
“It’s the way we naturalists all feel,” he said, appreciatively.
“Enough to live on and the chance to do something for science is
happiness to us. Sadok and I are going into the interior of Borneo
next, and I’d be delighted to have you with me. Your characters are
pretty well formed now; all this that we’ve gone through has simply
hardened them, so I know I can depend on you--and that’s the most
precious knowledge any man can have--”
“_There’s_ one! Port your helm, Baderoon!” came from Nicky. They looked
around, to see a sea snake swimming carelessly along, his head a foot
out of the water. He was afraid of nothing and stuck out his tongue
warningly as the proa sheered toward him. Then his oarlike tail flashed
into swift motion and he shot along by their gunwale, but Nicky was too
quick for him, and with a swift jab of his wand brought him aboard,
squirming and striking furiously from the cleft in which he was caught.
“Look out! He’s highly venomous!” warned Nicky, coming aft. “Watch
out--he’s getting away!”
The snake dropped to the bottom of the canoe and darted up its side.
With a swift clip of the rod Nicky broke his neck, and the “specimen”
lay squirming aimlessly in the bottom of the boat as they all watched
it narrowly.
“He’ll be ready for skinning out presently,” chirped Nicky, cheerily.
“As a snakist I’ve got you fellows backed into the cellar!”
The proa had now run down opposite the capes, and the swell of the open
sea slid her about like an airplane. That mountainous coast is always
windy and stormy, and it was making the usual squally weather now. The
proa bucked and plunged like a racehorse, her lee outrigger buried in
foam, the weather one clipping the tops of combers, while the three
whites sat out on the bamboo wings that hung out from each side on the
outrigger braces like a basket. It was a wild and exceedingly wet ride,
the proa careening down the wave slopes like a hawk and soaring almost
bodily out of water when lifted up on the white-capped combers.
The land dropped swiftly astern; towering up into heavy banks of clouds
rose the dark ranges of the Charles Louis Mountains, with the woolly
pyramids of the afternoon thunderheads gathering in the sky back over
the interior. It was their last look at Dutch New Guinea, for soon the
cloud banks lowered and ugly squall clouds, like long dark cigars,
swept across the horizon, shutting them in in the gray circle of the
sea. A chip thrown over the side and timed by the curator’s watch
showed a speed of nearly ten knots. At that rate they would reach Aru
at night--a landfall that would be dangerous in the extreme until the
stars came out and the sea went down.
Accordingly, the curator shortened sail, reefing the lateen down to
half its original bulk. The proa now labored and wallowed, keeping at
least one of them bailing vigorously. She was an able boat in the eyes
of her original owners, no doubt; but then water, more or less, was
nothing in their naked philosophy!
Then came the rain, beating the sea flat and drenching them to the
skin. Through the smother of it the proa drove on steadily, laying her
course for Aru as close as possible on the starboard tack. Later fell a
flat calm and the stars came out. She rolled incredibly in the smooth,
welling billows, but gradually these went down, until by midnight all
was quiet and they lay drifting idly on the black bosom of the Banda
Sea. Now and then the phosphorescent wake of a large shark would pass
them, but finally this interest, too, waned, and everyone fell asleep
except the curator, who had volunteered to take the watch.
He sat dreaming under the stars, the sail hanging out idly and scarcely
straightening the sheet. A gentle gurgle of phosphorescent fire eddied
from the captured Papuan paddle that they had used for a rudder. The
dim forms of his companions lay huddled in the dark, lying on the
bamboo framework over the outrigger poles.
The curator regarded them with feelings of quiet satisfaction. Their
dash into Dutch New Guinea had been a success. They had brought back an
immensely valuable natural-history collection, and mineral information
to the world that would soon add a vigorous trade settlement to those
two forlorn Dutch military posts, six hundred miles apart, on a wild
and savage coast. But above all he rejoiced in the spiritual results
of the expedition with deepest pride. Those two boys had shown courage
and resourcefulness far beyond their years; they had faced privation,
danger, and battle with a grit and determination, a cheerfulness and
lack of grouch, that had proved them men after his own heart. And
to serve the cause of science they had refused the opportunity for
fabulous wealth and all the ease and comfort that money can give.
With them and his two devoted natives the curator felt that he had a
scientific organization that would do. Yes, it would do mighty well!
He smoked on, thinking silently as the hours slipped by. Finally a
light breeze, the precursor of dawn, sprang up, and the proa slipped
quietly along, little rills of water trickling against her planks. It
grew light in the east, and after a time out of the mists in the west
developed the solid cloud banks, pierced with pale outlines of islets,
hill, and jungle, of the shore line of Aru.
“Land ho!” yelled the curator, waking them all up. “Here’s Aru, boys,
dead ahead, and we’ve beaten our proa that was to have come for us by
two days!”
THE END
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Italicized text is surrounded by underscores: _italics_.
Obvious typographical errors have been corrected.
Inconsistencies in hyphenation have been standardized.
Archaic or variant spelling has been retained.