After letting the chief of the village know that the news just received
rendered it necessary that they should proceed at once to the next
town--but carefully refraining from going into particulars lest Baderoon
should by any means be led to suspect their intentions--the party
started off about daybreak under the guidance of the Malay youth Babu.
Anxious as he was that no evil should befall his friend, Nigel could not
help wondering that a man of such a calm spirit, and such unquestionable
courage, should be so anxious to escape from this pirate.
"I can't understand it at all," he said to Moses, as they walked through
the forest together a little in rear of the party.
"No more kin I, Massa Nadgel," answered the negro, with one of those
shakes of the head and glares of solemn perplexity with which he was
wont to regard matters that were too deep for him.
"Surely Van der Kemp is well able to take care of himself against any
single foe."
"Das true, Massa Nadgel,--'gainst any half-dozen foes as well."
"Fear, therefore, cannot be the cause."
The negro received this with a quiet chuckle.
"No," said he. "Massa nebber knowed fear, but ob dis you may be bery
sure, massa's _allers_ got good reasons for what he does. One t'ing's
sartin, I neber saw him do nuffin' for fear, nor revenge, nor anger, no,
nor yet for fun; allers for lub--and," added Moses, after a moment's
thought, "sometimes for money, when we goes on a tradin' 'spidition--but
he don't make much account ob dat."
"Well, perhaps the mystery may be cleared up in time," said Nigel, as
they closed up with the rest of the party, who had halted for a short
rest and some refreshment.
This last consisted largely of fruit, which was abundant everywhere, and
a little rice with water from sparkling springs to wash it down.
In the afternoon they reached the town--a large one, with a sort of
market-place in the centre, which at the time of their arrival was
crowded with people. Strangers, especially Europeans, were not often
seen in that region, so that Van der Kemp and his friends at once
attracted a considerable number of followers. Among these was one man
who followed them about very unobtrusively, usually hanging well in rear
of the knot of followers whose curiosity was stronger than their sense
of propriety. This man wore a broad sun-hat and had a bandage round his
head pulled well over one eye, as if he had recently met with an
accident or been wounded. He was unarmed, with the exception of the
kriss, or long knife, which every man in that region carries.
This was no other than Baderoon himself, who had outwitted his enemies,
had somehow discovered at least part of their plans, and had hurried on
in advance of them to the town, where, disguising himself as described,
he awaited their arrival.
Babu conducted his friends to the presence of his kinsman the chief man
of the town, and, having told his story, received a promise that the
pirate should be taken up when he arrived and put in prison. Meanwhile
he appointed to the party a house in which to spend the night.
Baderoon boldly accompanied the crowd that followed them, saw the house,
glanced between the heads of curious natives who watched the travellers
while eating their supper, and noted the exact spot on the floor of the
building where Van der Kemp threw down his mat and blanket, thus taking
possession of his intended couch! He did not, however, see that the
hermit afterwards shifted his position a little, and that Babu, desiring
to be near his friend, lay down on the vacated spot.
In the darkest hour of the night, when even the owls and bats had sought
repose, the pirate captain stole out of the brake in which he had
concealed himself, and, kriss in hand, glided under the house in which
his enemy lay.
Native houses, as we have elsewhere explained, are usually built on
posts, so that there is an open space under the floors, which is
available as a store or lumber-room. It is also unfortunately available
for evil purposes. The bamboo flooring is not laid so closely but that
sounds inside may be heard distinctly by any one listening below.
Voices were heard by the pirate as he approached, which arrested his
steps. They were those of Van der Kemp and Nigel engaged in
conversation. Baderoon knew that as long as his enemy was awake and
conversing he might probably be sitting up and not in a position
suitable to his fell purpose. He crouched therefore among some lumber
like a tiger abiding its time.
"Why are you so anxious not to meet this man?" asked Nigel, who was
resolved, if possible without giving offence, to be at the bottom of the
mystery.
For some moments the hermit was silent, then in a constrained voice he
said slowly--"Because revenge burns fiercely in my breast. I have
striven to crush it, but cannot. I fear to meet him lest I kill him."
"Has he, then, done you such foul wrong?"
"Ay, he has cruelly--fiendishly--done the worst he could. He robbed me
of my only child--but I may not talk of it. The unholy desire for
vengeance burns more fiercely when I talk. `Vengeance is mine, saith
the Lord.' My constant prayer is that I may not meet him. Good-night."
As the hermit thus put an abrupt end to the conversation he lay down and
drew his blanket over him. Nigel followed his example, wondering at
what he had heard, and in a few minutes their steady regular breathing
told that they were both asleep. Then Baderoon advanced and counted the
bamboo planks from the side towards the centre of the house. When
looking between the heads of the people he had counted the same planks
above. Standing under one he looked up, listened intently for a few
seconds, and drew his kriss. The place was almost pitch-dark, yet the
blade caught a faint gleam from without, which it reflected on the
pirate's face as he thrust the long keen weapon swiftly, yet
deliberately, between the bamboos.
A shriek, that filled those who heard it with a thrill of horror, rang
out on the silent night. At the same moment a gush of warm blood poured
over the murderer's face before he could leap aside. Instant uproar and
confusion burst out in the neighbourhood, and spread like wildfire until
the whole town was aroused. When a light was procured and the people
crowded into the hut where the strangers lay, Van der Kemp was found on
his knees holding the hand of poor Babu, who was at his last gasp. A
faint smile, that yet seemed to have something of gladness in it,
flitted across his pale face as he raised himself, grasped the hermit's
hand and pressed it to his lips. Then the fearful drain of blood took
effect and he fell back--dead. One great convulsive sob burst from the
hermit as he leaped up, drew his knife, and, with a fierce glare in his
blue eyes, rushed out of the room.
Vengeance would indeed have been wreaked on Baderoon at that moment if
the hermit had caught him, but, as might have been expected, the
murderer was nowhere to be found. He was hid in the impenetrable
jungle, which it was useless to enter in the darkness of night. When
daybreak enabled the towns-people to undertake an organised search, no
trace of him could be discovered.
Flight, personal safety, formed no part of the pirate's plan. The
guilty man had reached that state of depravity which, especially among
the natives of that region, borders close on insanity. While the
inhabitants of the village were hunting far a-field for him, Baderoon
lay concealed among some lumber in rear of a hut awaiting his
opportunity. It was not very long of coming.
Towards afternoon the various searching parties began to return, and all
assembled in the market-place, where the chief man, with the hermit and
his party, were assembled discussing the situation.
"I will not now proceed until we have buried poor Babu," said Van der
Kemp. "Besides, Baderoon will be sure to return. I will meet him now."
"I do not agree viz you, mine frond," said the professor. "Zee man is
not a fool zough he is a villain. He knows vat avaits him if he comes."
"He will not come openly," returned the hermit, "but he will not now
rest till he has killed me."
Even as he spoke a loud shouting, mingled with shrieks and yells, was
heard at the other end of the main street. The sounds of uproar
appeared to approach, and soon a crowd of people was seen rushing
towards the market-place, uttering cries of fear in which the word
"amok" was heard. At the sound of that word numbers of people--
specially women and children--turned and fled from the scene, but many
of the men stood their ground, and all of them drew their krisses.
Among the latter of course were the white men and their native
companions.
We have already referred to that strange madness, to which the Malays
seem to be peculiarly liable, during the paroxysms of which those
affected by it rush in blind fury among their fellows, slaying right and
left. From the terrified appearance of some of the approaching crowd
and the maniac shouts in rear, it was evident that a man thus possessed
of the spirit of amok was venting his fury on them.
Another minute and he drew near, brandishing a kriss that dripped with
the gore of those whom he had already stabbed. Catching sight of the
white men he made straight for them. He was possessed of only one eye,
but that one seemed to concentrate and flash forth the fire of a dozen
eyes, while his dishevelled hair and blood-stained face and person gave
him an appalling aspect.
"It is Baderoon!" said Van der Kemp in a subdued but stern tone.
Nigel, who stood next to him, glanced at the hermit. His face was
deadly pale; his eyes gleamed with a strange almost unearthly light, and
his lips were firmly compressed. With a sudden nervous motion, unlike
his usually calm demeanour, he drew his long knife, and to Nigel's
surprise cast it away from him. At that moment a woman who came in the
madman's way was stabbed by him to the heart and rent the air with her
dying shriek as she fell. No one could have saved her, the act was so
quickly done. Van der Kemp would have leaped to her rescue, but it was
too late; besides, there was no need to do so now, for the maniac,
recognising his enemy, rushed at him with a shout that sounded like a
triumphant yell. Seeing this, and that his friend stood unarmed, as
well as unmoved, regarding Baderoon with a fixed gaze, Nigel stepped a
pace in advance to protect him, but Van der Kemp seized his arm and
thrust him violently aside. Next moment the pirate was upon him with
uplifted knife, but the hermit caught his wrist, and with a heave worthy
of Samson hurled him to the ground, where he lay for a moment quite
stunned.
Before he could recover, the natives, who had up to this moment held
back, sprang upon the fallen man with revengeful yells, and a dozen
knives were about to be buried in his breast when the hermit sprang
forward to protect his enemy from their fury. But the man whose wife
had been the last victim came up at the moment and led an irresistible
rush which bore back the hermit as well as his comrades, who had crowded
round him, and in another minute the maniac was almost hacked to pieces.
"I did not kill him--thank God!" muttered Van der Kemp as he left the
market-place, where the relatives of those who had been murdered were
wailing over their dead.
After this event even the professor was anxious to leave the place, so
that early next morning the party resumed their journey, intending to
make a short stay at the next village. Failing to reach it that night,
however, they were compelled to encamp in the woods. Fortunately they
came upon a hill which, although not very high, was sufficiently so,
with the aid of watch-fires, to protect them from tigers. From the
summit, which rose just above the tree-tops, they had a magnificent view
of the forest. Many of the trees were crowned with flowers among which
the setting sun shone for a brief space with glorious effulgence.
Van der Kemp and Nigel stood together apart from the others,
contemplating the wonderful scene.
"What must be the dwelling-place of the Creator Himself when his
footstool is so grand?" said the hermit in a low voice.
"That is beyond mortal ken," said Nigel.
"True--true. Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, nor mind conceived it.
Yet, methinks, the glory of the terrestrial was meant to raise our souls
to the contemplation of the celestial."
"And yet how signally it has failed in the case of Baderoon," returned
Nigel, with a furtive glance at the hermit, whose countenance had quite
recovered its look of quiet simple dignity. "Would it be presumptuous
if I were to ask why it is that this pirate had such bitter enmity
against you?"
"It is no secret," answered the hermit, in a sad tone. "The truth is, I
had discovered some of his nefarious plans, and more than once have been
the means of preventing his intended deeds of violence--as in the case
of the Dyaks whom we have so lately visited. Besides, the man had done
me irreparable injury, and it is one of the curious facts of human
experience that sometimes those who injure us hate us because they have
done so."
"May I venture to ask for a fuller account of the injury he did you?"
said Nigel with some hesitancy.
For some moments the hermit did not answer. He was evidently struggling
with some suppressed feeling. Turning a look full upon his young
friend, he at length spoke in a low sad voice--"I have never mentioned
my grief to mortal man since that day when it pleased God to draw a
cloud of thickest darkness over my life. But, Nigel, there is that in
you which encourages confidence. I confess that more than once I have
been tempted to tell you of my grief--for human hearts crave intelligent
sympathy. My faithful servant and friend Moses is, no doubt, intensely
sympathetic, but--but--well, I cannot understand, still less can I
explain, why I shrink from making a confidant of him. Certainly it is
not because of his colour, for I hold that the _souls_ of men are
colourless!"
"I need not trouble you with the story of my early life," continued the
hermit. "I lost my dear wife a year after our marriage, and was left
with a little girl whose lovely face became more and more like that of
her mother every day she lived. My soul was wrapped up in the child.
After three years I went with her as a passenger to Batavia. On the way
we were attacked by a couple of pirate junks. Baderoon was the pirate
captain. He killed many of our men, took some of us prisoners, sank the
vessel, seized my child, and was about to separate us, putting my child
into one junk while I was retained, bound, in the other."
He paused, and gazed over the glowing tree-tops into the golden horizon,
with a longing, wistful look. At the same time something like an
electric shock passed through Nigel's frame, for was not this narrative
strangely similar in its main features to that which his own father had
told him on the Keeling Islands about beautiful little Kathleen Holbein
and her father? He was on the point of seizing the hermit by the hand
and telling him what he knew, when the thought occurred that attacks by
pirates were common enough in those seas, that other fathers might have
lost daughters in this way, and that, perhaps, his suspicion might be
wrong. It would be a terrible thing, he thought, to raise hope in his
poor friend's breast unless he were pretty sure of the hope being well
founded. He would wait and hear more. He had just come to this
conclusion, and managed to subdue the feelings which had been aroused,
when Van der Kemp turned to him again, and continued his narrative--"I
know not how it was, unless the Lord gave me strength for a purpose as
he gave it to Samson of old, but when I recovered from the stinging blow
I had received, and saw the junk hoist her sails and heard my child
scream, I felt the strength of a lion come over me; I burst the bonds
that held me and leaped into the sea, intending to swim to her. But it
was otherwise ordained. A breeze which had sprung up freshened, and the
junk soon left me far behind. As for the other junk, I never saw it
again, for I never looked back or thought of it--only, as I left it, I
heard a mocking laugh from the one-eyed villain, who, I afterwards found
out, owned and commanded both junks."
Nigel had no doubt now, but the agitation of his feelings still kept him
silent.
"Need I say," continued the hermit, "that revenge burned fiercely in my
breast from that day forward? If I had met the man soon after that, I
should certainly have slain him. But God mercifully forbade it. Since
then He has opened my eyes to see the Crucified One who prayed for His
enemies. And up till now I have prayed most earnestly that Baderoon and
I might _not_ meet. My prayer has not been answered in the way I
wished, but a _better_ answer has been granted, for the sin of revenge
was overcome within me before we met."
Van der Kemp paused again.
"Go on," said Nigel, eagerly. "How did you escape?"
"Escape! Where was I--Oh! I remember," said the hermit, awaking as if
out of a dream; "Well, I swam after the junk until it was out of sight,
and then I swam on in silent despair until so completely exhausted that
I felt consciousness leaving me. Then I knew that the end must be near
and I felt almost glad; but when I began to sink, the natural desire to
prolong life revived, and I struggled on. Just as my strength began a
second time to fail, I struck against something. It was a dead
cocoa-nut tree. I laid hold of it and clung to it all that night. Next
morning I was picked up by some fishermen who were going to Telok Betong
by the outer passage round Sebesi Island, and were willing to land me
there. But as my business connections had been chiefly with the town of
Anjer, I begged of them to land me on the island of Krakatoa. This they
did, and it has been my home ever since. I have been there many years."
"Have you never seen or heard of your daughter since?" asked Nigel
eagerly, and with deep sympathy.
"Never--I have travelled far and near, all over the archipelago; into
the interior of the islands, great and small, but have failed to find
her. I have long since felt that she must be dead--for--for she could
not live with the monsters who stole her away."
A certain contraction of the mouth, as he said this, and a gleam of the
eyes, suggested to Nigel that revenge was not yet dead within the
hermit's breast, although it had been overcome.
"What was her name?" asked Nigel, willing to gain time to think how he
ought to act, and being afraid of the effect that the sudden
communication of the news might have on his friend.
"Winnie--darling Winnie--after her mother," said the hermit with deep
pathos in his tone.
A feeling of disappointment came over our hero. Winnie bore not the
most distant resemblance to Kathleen!
"Did you ever, during your search," asked Nigel slowly, "visit the
Cocos-Keeling Islands?"
"Never. They are too far from where the attack on us was made."
"And you never heard of a gun-boat having captured a pirate junk and--"
"Why do you ask, and why pause?" said the hermit, looking at his friend
in some surprise.
Nigel felt that he had almost gone too far.
"Well, you know--" he replied in some confusion, "you--you are right
when you expect me to sympathise with your great sorrow, which I do most
profoundly, and--and--in short, I would give anything to be able to
suggest hope to you, my friend. Men should _never_ give way to
despair."
"Thank you. It is kindly meant," returned the hermit, looking at the
youth with his sad smile. "But it is vain. Hope is dead now."
They were interrupted at this point by the announcement that supper was
ready. At the same time the sun sank, like the hermit's hope, and
disappeared beyond the dark forest.