"My Lord, I may go no farther," said the Cambodian.
The young white man turned in astonishment upon his native guide.
Behind them lay the partially cleared trail along which they had come.
It was overgrown with tall grass that concealed the tree-stumps that
had been left behind the axes of the road-builders. Before them lay a
ravine, at the near edge of which the trail ended. Beyond the ravine
was the primitive jungle untouched by man.
"Why, we haven't even started yet!" exclaimed the white man. "You
cannot turn back now. What do you suppose I hired you for?"
"I promised to take my lord to the jungle," replied the Cambodian.
"There it is. I did not promise to enter it."
Gordon King lighted a cigarette. "Let's talk this thing over, my
friend," he said. "It is yet early morning. We can get into the jungle
as far as I care to go and out again before sundown."
The Cambodian shook his head. "I will wait for you here, my lord," he
said; "but I may not enter the jungle, and if you are wise you will
not."
"Why?" demanded King.
"There are wild elephants, my lord, and tigers," replied the
Cambodian, "and panthers which hunt by day as well as by night."
"Why do you suppose we brought two rifles?" demanded the white. "At
Kompong-Thom they told me you were a good shot and a brave man. You
knew that we should have no need for rifles up to this point. No, sir,
you have lost your nerve at the last minute, and I do not believe that
it is because of tigers or wild elephants."
"There are other things deep in the jungle, my lord, that no man may
look upon and live."
"What, for example?" demanded King.
"The ghosts of my ancestors," answered the Cambodian, "the Khmers who
dwelt here in great cities ages ago. Within the dark shadows of the
jungle the ruins of their cities still stand, and down the dark aisles
of the forest pass the ancient kings and warriors and little sad-faced
queens on ghostly elephants. Fleeing always from the horrible fate that
overtook them in life, they pass for ever down the corridors of the
jungle, and with them are the millions of the ghostly dead that once
were their subjects. We might escape My Lord the Tiger and the wild
elephants, but no man may look upon the ghosts of the dead Khmers and
live."
"We shall be out before dark," insisted King.
"They are abroad both by day and by night," said the Cambodian. "It is
the curse of Siva, the Destroyer."
King shrugged his shoulders, stamped out his cigarette and picked up
his rifle. "Wait for me here, then," he said. "I shall be out before
dark."
"You will never come out," said the Cambodian.
Beyond the ravine, savage, mysterious, rose the jungle, its depth
screened from view by the spectral trunks of fromagers and a tangle of
bamboo. At first the man could find no opening in that solid wall of
vegetation. In its sheath, at his side, hung a heavy knife, but already
the young day was so oppressively hot that the man did not relish the
idea of exhausting himself at the very outset of his adventure if he
could find some easier way. That it would be still hotter he knew,
for Cambodia lies but twelve degrees above the equator in the same
latitude as Nicaragua, the Sudan, and other places infamous for their
heat.
Along the edge of the ravine he searched, until at last he was rewarded
by what appeared to be not by any means a trail but a far less
formidable growth of bamboo through which he saw that he might easily
force his way. Glancing back, he saw his Cambodian guide squatted
upon his heels in mournful meditation. For an instant the young man
hesitated, as though he was of a mind to try again to persuade the
Cambodian to accompany him; but, as though immediately conscious of the
futility of any such appeal, he turned again and pushed his way into
the jungle.
He had advanced but a short distance when the heavy undergrowth gave
way to a much more open forest. The spreading branches of the lofty
trees cast upon the ground a perpetual shade, which had discouraged a
heavy growth of underbrush.
How different looked the jungle from any picture that his imagination
had conjured! How mysterious, but above all, how gloomy and how
sinister! A fitting haunt, indeed, for the ghosts of weeping queens and
murdered kings. Beneath his breath King cursed his Cambodian guide. He
felt no fear, but he did feel an unutterable loneliness.
Only for a moment did he permit the gloom of the jungle to oppress him.
He glanced at his watch, opened his pocket compass, and set a course as
nearly due north as the winding avenues of the jungle permitted. He may
have realised that he was something of a fool to have entered upon such
an adventure alone; but it was doubtful that he would have admitted
it even to himself, for, indeed, what danger was there? He had, he
thought, sufficient water for the day; he was well armed and carried a
compass and a heavy knife for trail-cutting. Perhaps he was a little
short on food, but one cannot carry too heavy a load through the midday
heat of a Cambodian jungle.
Gordon King was a young American who had recently graduated in
medicine. Having an independent income, he had no need to practise his
profession; and well realising, as he did, that there are already too
many poor doctors in the world, he had decided to devote himself for
a number of years to the study of strange maladies. For the moment he
had permitted himself to be lured from his hobby by the intriguing
mysteries of the Khmer ruins of Angkor--ruins that had worked so
mightily upon his imagination that it had been impossible for him to
withstand the temptation of some independent exploration on his own
account. What he expected to discover he did not know; perhaps the
ruins of a city more mighty than Angkor Thom; perhaps a temple of
greater magnificence and grandeur than Angkor Vat; perhaps nothing more
than a day's adventure. Youth is like that.
The jungle that had at first appeared so silent seemed to awaken at the
footfall of the trespasser; scolding birds fluttered above him, and
there were monkeys now that seemed to have come from nowhere. They,
too, scolded as they hurtled through the lower terraces of the forest.
He found the going more difficult than he had imagined, for the floor
of the jungle was far from level. There were gulleys and ravines to be
crossed and fallen trees across the way, and always he must be careful
to move as nearly north as was physically possible, else he might
come out far from his Cambodian guide when he sought to return. His
rifle grew hotter and heavier; his canteen of water insisted with the
perversity of inanimate objects in sliding around in front and bumping
him on the belly. He reeked with sweat, and yet he knew that he could
not have come more than a few miles from the point where he had left
his guide. The tall grasses bothered him most, for he could not see
what they hid; and when a cobra slid from beneath his feet and glided
away, he realised more fully the menace of the grasses, which in places
grew so high that they brushed his face.
At the end of two hours King was perfectly well assured that he
was a fool to go on, but there was a certain proportion of bulldog
stubbornness in his make-up that would not permit him to turn back so
soon. He paused and drank from his canteen. The water was warm and had
an unpleasant taste. The best that might be said of it was that it was
wet. To his right and a little ahead sounded a sudden crash in the
jungle. Startled, he cocked his rifle and stood listening. Perhaps a
dead tree had fallen, he thought, or the noise might have been caused
by a wild elephant. It was not a ghostly noise at all, and yet it had
a strange effect upon his nerves, which, to his disgust, he suddenly
realised were on edge. Had he permitted the silly folk tale of the
Cambodian to so work upon his imagination that he translated into a
suggestion of impending danger every unexpected interruption of the
vast silence of the jungle?
Wiping the sweat from his face, he continued on his way, keeping as
nearly a northerly direction as was possible. The air was filled with
strange odours, among which was one more insistent than the others--a
pungent, disagreeable odour that he found strangely familiar and yet
could not immediately identify. Lazy air currents, moving sluggishly
through the jungle, occasionally brought this odour to his nostrils,
sometimes bearing but a vague suggestion of it and again with a
strength that was almost sickening; and then suddenly the odour
stimulated a memory cell that identified it. He saw himself standing on
the concrete floor of a large building, the sides of which were lined
with heavily barred cages in which lions and tigers paced nervously to
and fro or sprawled in melancholy meditation of their lost freedom;
and in his nostrils was the same odour that impinged upon them now.
However, it is one thing to contemplate tigers from the safe side of
iron bars, and it is quite another thing suddenly to realise their
near presence unrestrained by bars of any sort. It occurred to him now
that he had not previously considered tigers as anything more serious
than a noun; they had not represented a concrete reality. But that
mental conception had passed now, routed by the odour that clung in his
nostrils. He was not afraid; but realising for the first time, that he
was in actual danger, he advanced more warily, always on the alert.
Some marshy ground and several deep ravines had necessitated various
detours. It was already almost noon, the time upon which he was
determined he must turn back in order that he might reach the point
where he had left his guide before darkness fell upon the jungle.
Constantly for some time there had lurked within his consciousness a
question as to his ability to back-track upon his trail. He had had no
experience in woodcraft, and he had already found it far more difficult
than he had imagined it would be to maintain a true course by compass;
nor had he taken the precautions to blaze his trail in any way, as he
might have done by marking the trees with the heavy trail cutter that
he carried.
Gordon King was disgusted with himself; he had found no ruins; he was
hot, tired and hungry. He realised that he had lost all interest in
ruins of any and all descriptions, and after a brief rest he turned
back towards the south. It was then, almost immediately, that he
realised the proportions of the task that lay ahead of him. For six
hours he had been plodding deep into the jungle. If he had averaged
two miles an hour, he had covered a distance of twelve miles. He did
not know how fast he had walked, but he realised that twelve miles was
bad enough when he considered that he had started out fresh and well
fortified by a hearty breakfast and that he was returning empty, tired,
and footsore.
However, he still believed that he could make the distance easily
before dark if he could keep to the trail. He was well prepared
physically by years of athletic training, having been a field and track
man at college. He was glad now that he had gone in for long distance
running; he had won a marathon or two and was never appalled at the
thought of long distances to be covered on foot. That he could throw
the javelin and hurl the discus to almost championship distances seemed
less helpful to him in an emergency of the present nature than his
running experience. His only regret on this score was that during the
year that he had been out of college he had permitted himself to become
soft--a condition that had become increasingly noticeable with every
mile that he put behind him.
Within the first minute that Gordon King had been upon the back-trail
toward his guide he had discovered that it was absolutely impossible
for his untrained eyes to find any sign of the trail that he supposed
he had made coming in. The way that he thought he had come, his compass
told him, let towards the south-west; but he could find no directing
spoor.
With a shake of his head, he resorted again to his compass; but due
south pointed into a dense section of jungle through which he was
positive he had not come. He wondered whether he should attempt to
skirt every obstacle, thereby making long and wide detours or continue
straight toward the south, deviating from his direct line only when
confronted by insurmountable obstacles. The latter, he felt, would be
the shortest way out of the jungle in point of distance, and he was
confident that it would bring him as close to his Cambodian guide as
any other route that he might elect to follow.
As he approached the patch of jungle that had seemed at first to
bar his way completely, he found that it was much more open than he
had suspected and that, while the trees were large and grew rather
close together, there was little or no underbrush. Glancing often
at his compass, he entered the gloomy forest. The heat, which had
grown intense, possibly aggravated the fatigue which he now realised
was rapidly attaining the proportions of a real menace. He had not
appreciated when he stepped out upon this foolish adventure how soft
his muscles had become, and as he contemplated the miles and hours of
torture that lay ahead of him, he suddenly felt very helpless and alone.
The weight of his rifle, revolver, ammunition, and water represented a
definite handicap that he knew might easily defeat his hope of escaping
from the jungle before dark. The smell of the great cats was heavy in
the air. Against this ever-present premonition of danger, however,
was the fact that he had already spent over six hours in the jungle
without having caught a glimpse of any of the dread Carnivora. He was
convinced, therefore, that he was in little danger of attack by day and
that he might have a better chance of getting out of the jungle before
dark if he discarded his weapons, which would unquestionably be useless
to him after dark.
And then again, he argued, perhaps, after all, there were no man-eaters
in the jungle, for he had heard that not all tigers were man-eaters.
For the lesser cats, the panthers and leopards, he did not entertain
so great a fear, notwithstanding the fact that he had been assured
that they were quite as dangerous as their larger cousins. The size,
the reputation and the fearful mien of My Lord the Tiger dwarfed his
estimate of the formidable nature of the others.
A large, flat stone, backed by denser foliage, suggested that he rest
for a moment while deliberating upon the wisdom of abandoning his
weapons. The canteen of water, with its depleted store of warm and
unpleasant tasting liquid, he knew he must cling to until it had been
emptied. Before he sat down upon the stone he leaned his rifle against
a tree, and unbuckling the belt which supported his revolver and also
held his ammunition, he tossed it upon the ground at his feet. What a
relief! Instantly there left him the fear that he might not be able
to get out of the jungle before dark. Relieved of what had become a
constantly increasing burden, he felt like a new man and equal to any
efforts that the return march might demand of him. He seated himself
upon the flat rock and took a very small swallow from the contents of
his canteen. He had been sparing of his water and he was glad that he
had been, for now he was convinced that it would last him through the
remainder of the day, giving him strength and refreshment when he would
most need them.
As he replaced the screw cap upon his canteen, he chanced to glance at
the rock upon which he was sitting and for the first time was struck by
the fact that it seemed incongruously out of place in the midst of this
jungle of great trees and foliage. Idly he brushed an accumulation of
leaf mould from its surface, and what he saw revealed beneath increased
his curiosity sufficiently to cause him to expose the entire surface
of the rock, disclosing in bold bas-relief the head and shoulders of a
warrior.
Here, then, was the reward for which he had struggled; but he found
that it left him a little cold. His interest in Khmer ruins seemed to
have evaporated beneath the torrid heat of the jungle. However, he
still maintained sufficient curiosity to speculate upon the presence of
this single relic of the past. His examination of the ruins of Angkor
Thom suggested that this must have been a part of some ancient edifice
and if this were true the rest must be close at hand--perhaps just
behind the screen of jungle that formed the background of this solitary
fragment.
Rising, he turned and tried to peer through the foliage, separating the
leaves and branches with his hand. A few hours before his heart would
have leaped at what he glimpsed vaguely now through the leafy screen--a
vast pile of masonry through whose crumbling arches he saw stately
columns still defying the ruthless inroads of the jungle in the lonely,
hopeless battle they had been waging through the silent centuries.
And then it was that, as he stood gazing, half-fascinated by the
tragic magnificence that still clung to this crumbling monument to
the transient glories and the vanities of man, his eye was attracted
by a movement within the ruins; just a glimpse he got where a little
sunlight filtered through a fallen roof--a little patch of fawn with
dark brown stripes. In the instant that he saw it, it was gone. There
had been no sound, just a passing of something among the ruins. But
Gordon King felt the cold sweat upon his brow as hastily he gathered up
his belt and buckled it about his waist and seized his rifle. Blessed
weight! He thanked God that he had not gone on without it.
Forgotten were the ruins of the Khmers as he strode cautiously on
through the forest, constantly alert now, looking to the right and to
the left, and turning often a hasty glance behind him. Soft are the
pads of the carnivores. They give forth no sound. When the end came,
if it did come, he knew that there would be a sudden rush and then the
terrible fangs and talons. He experienced the uncanny sensation of
unseen eyes upon him. He was sure that the beast was stalking him. It
was maddening not to be able to see it again.
He found it necessary to consult his compass frequently in order to
keep to his course. His instrument was a small one, constructed like a
hunting-case watch. When the catch was released the cover flew open,
releasing the needle, which, when the cover was closed, was locked in
position, that its bearings might not be injured by sudden changes of
position.
King was on the point of checking his direction; but as he held the
compass open in his hand, he thought that he heard a slight noise
behind him. As he glanced back the toe of his boot struck a rock; and
trying to regain his equilibrium, he stumbled into a patch of tumbled
sandstone rocks, among which he sprawled heavily upon his face. Spurred
by thoughts of the sound that he had heard behind him, he scrambled
quickly to his feet; but though he searched the jungle as far as his
eyes could reach in every direction, he could discern no sign of any
menacing beast.
When he had fallen he had dropped his compass, and now that he was
satisfied that no danger lurked in his immediate vicinity, he set about
to recover the instrument. He found it quickly enough, but one glance
at it sent his heart into his boots--his compass was broken beyond
possibility of repair. It was several seconds before the full measure
of this calamity unfolded itself to his stunned consciousness.
For a moment Gordon King was appalled by the accident that had befallen
him, for he knew that it was a real catastrophe. Practically unversed
in woodcraft, he found himself in a jungle overhung by foliage so dense
that it was impossible to get his bearings from the sun, menaced by
the ever-present danger of the great cats and faced with what he felt
now was definite assurance that he would have to spend the night in
these surroundings with only a remote likelihood that he ever would be
able to find his way out in the event that he did not fall prey to the
carnivores or to thirst.
But only momentarily did he permit himself to be crushed by
contemplation of his predicament. He was well armed, and he knew that
he was resourceful and intelligent. Suddenly there came to him a
realisation of something that gave him renewed strength and hope.
Few men know until they are actually confronted by lethal danger
whether at heart they are courageous or cowardly. Never before had
Gordon King been called upon to make such an appraisal of himself.
Alone in this mysterious forest, uninfluenced by the possibilities of
the acclaim or reproaches of another, there was borne in upon his
consciousness a definite realisation of self-sufficiency. He fully
realised the dangers that confronted him; he did not relish them, but
he felt no sensation of fear.
A new feeling of confidence pervaded him as he set out again in the
direction that he had been going before he had fallen and broken his
compass. He was still alert and watchful, but he did not glance behind
him as much as he had previously. He felt that he was making good
headway, and he was sure that he was keeping a true course toward the
south. Perhaps, after all, he would get out before dark, he thought.
The condition that irritated him most was his increasing thirst,
against which he was compelled to pit every ounce of his will power
that he might conserve the small amount of water that remained in his
canteen.
The route he was following was much more open than that along which he
had entered the jungle, so that he was buoyantly hopeful that he would
come out of his predicament and the jungle before night had enveloped
the gloomy haunt of the great cats; yet he realised that at best he
would win by but a small margin.
He was very tired now, a fact that was borne in upon him by the
frequency with which he stumbled, and when he fell he found that each
time it was only with increased effort that he rose again to his feet.
He was rather angry with himself for this seeming weakness. He knew
that there was only one thing that he could do to overcome it, and that
thing he could not afford to do, for the fleeting minutes of precious
daylight would not pause in their flight while he rested.
As the miles fell slowly and painfully behind him and the minutes raced
as though attempting to escape him and leave him to the mercy of the
darkness and the tigers, the hope that had been newborn in him for a
while commenced to desert him; yet he stumbled wearily on, wondering if
the jungle had no end and hoping against hope that beyond the next wall
of verdure he would break through into the clearing that would mean
life and food and water for him.
"It can't be far now," he thought, "and there must be an hour of full
daylight ahead." He was almost exhausted; a little rest would renew
his strength, he knew, and there, just ahead of him, was a large, flat
rock. He would rest for a moment upon it and renew his strength.
As he seated himself upon this hard resting-place, something upon its
surface caught his horrified gaze. It was the head and shoulders of a
warrior, cut in bold bas-relief.