"With the instruments, that is. I'd dropped the bandmaster on the way.
Look here," he went on sharply, "the beginning is funny enough, but I'm
telling you no lies. We'll suppose there was a ship, a British
man-of-war--name not necessary just now."
"I think I understand," I nodded.
"Oh no, you don't," said he. "I'm not a deserter--at least not
exactly--or I shouldn't be telling this to you. Well, we'll suppose
this ship bound from Labuan to Hong-Kong with orders to keep along the
north side of Borneo, to start with, and do a bit of exploring by the
way. This would be in 'forty-nine, when the British Government had just
taken over Labuan. _Very_ good. Next we'll suppose the captain puts in
at Kudat, in Marudu Bay, to pay a polite call on the Rajah there or some
understrapper of the Sultan's, and takes his ship's band ashore by way
of compliment, and that the band gets too drunk to play 'Annie Laurie.'"
He chuckled again. "I never saw such a band as we were, down by the
water's edge; and O'Hara, the bandmaster, took on and played the fool to
such a tune, while we waited for the boat to take us aboard, that for
the very love I bore him I had to knock him down and sit on him in a
quiet corner.
"While I sat keeping guard on him I must have dropped asleep myself; for
the next I remember was waking up to find the beach deserted and the
boat gone. This put me in a sweat, of course; but after groping some
while about the foreshore (which was as dark as the inside of your hat),
I tripped over a rope and so found a native boat. O'Hara wouldn't wake,
so I just lifted him on board like a sack, tossed in his cornet and my
bombardon, tumbled in on top of them, and started to row for dear life
towards the ship's light in the offing.
"But the Rajah, or rather his servants, had filled us up with a kind of
sticky drink that only begins to work when you think it about time to
leave off. I must have pulled miles towards that ship, and every time I
cast an eye over my shoulder her light was shining just as far away as
ever. At last I remember feeling sure I was bewitched, and with that I
must have tumbled off the thwart in a sound sleep.
"When I awoke I had both arms round the bombardon; there wasn't a sight
of land, or of the ship, anywhere; and, if you please, the sun was near
sinking! This time I managed to wake up O'Hara. We had splitting
headaches, the pair of us; but we snatched up our instruments and
started to blow on them like mad. Not a soul heard, though we blew till
the sweat poured down us, and kept up the concert pretty well all
through the night. You may think it funny, and I suppose we did amount
to something like a joke--we two bandsmen booming away at the Popular
Airs of Old England and the Huntsmen's Chorus under those everlasting
stars. You wouldn't say so, if you had been the audience when O'Hara
broke down and began to confess his sins.
"Luckily the sea kept smooth, and next morning I took the oars in
earnest. We had no compass, and I was famished; but I stuck to it,
steering by the sun and pulling in the direction where I supposed land
to lie. O'Hara kept a look-out. We saw nothing, however, and down came
the night again.
"Though the hunger had been gnawing and griping me for hours, yet--
dog-tired as I was--I curled myself at the bottom of the boat and slept,
and dreamed I was on board ship again and in my hammock. A sort of
booming in my ears awoke me. Looking up I saw daylight around--clear
morning light and blue sky--and right overhead, as it were, a great
cliff standing against the blue. And there in the face of day O'Hara
sat on the thwart, tugging like mad, now cricking his neck almost to
stare up at the cliff, and now grinning down at me in silly triumph.
"With that I caught at the meaning of the sound in my ears.
'You infernal fool!' I shouted, staggering up and making to snatch the
paddle from him. 'Get her nose round to it and back her!' For it was
the noise of breaking water.
"But I was too late. Our boat, I must tell you, was a sort of Dutch
pram, about twelve feet long and narrowing at the bows, which stood well
out of water; handy enough for beaching, but not to be taken through
breakers, by reason of its sitting low in the stern. O'Hara, as I
yelled at him, pulled his starboard paddle and brought her (for these
prams spin round easily) almost broadside on to a tall comber. As we
slid up the side of it and hung there, I had a glimpse of a steep clean
fissure straight through the wall of rock ahead; and in that instant
O'Hara sprawled his arms and toppled overboard. The boat and I went by
him with a rush. I saw a hand and wrist lifted above the foam, but when
I looked back for them they were gone--gone as I shot over the bar and
through the cleft into smooth water. I shouted and pulled back to the
edge of the breakers; but he was gone, and I never saw him again.
"I suppose it was ten minutes before I took heart to look about me.
I was floating on a lake of the bluest water I ever set eyes on, and as
calm as a pond except by the entrance where the spent waves, after
tumbling over the bar, spread themselves in long ripples, widening and
widening until the edge of them melted and they were gone. The banks of
the lake rose sheer from its edge, or so steeply that I saw no way of
climbing them--walls you might call them, a good hundred feet high, and
widening gradually towards the top, but in a circle as regular as ever
you could draw with a pair of compasses. Any fool could see what had
happened--that here was the crater of a dead volcano, one side of which
had been broken into by the sea; but the beauty of it, sir, coming on
top of my weakness, fairly made me cry. For the walls at the top were
fringed with palms and jungle trees, and hung with creepers like
curtains that trailed over the face of the cliff and down among the
ferns by the shore. I leaned over the boat and stared into the water.
It was clear, clear--you've no notion how clear; but no bottom could I
see. It seemed to sink right through and into the sea on the other side
of the world!
"Well, all this was mighty pretty, but it didn't tell me where to find a
meal; so I baled out the boat and paddled along the eastern edge of the
lake searching the cliffs for a path, and after an hour or so I hit on
what looked to me like a foot-track, zig-zagging up through the creepers
and across the face of the rock. I determined to try it, made the boat
fast to a clump of fern, slung O'Hara's cornet on to my side-belt and
began to climb.
"I saw no marks of footsteps; but the track was a path all right, though
a teazer. A dozen times I had to crawl on hands and knees under the
creepers--creepers with stems as thick as my two wrists--and once, about
two-thirds of the way up, I was forced to push sideways through a
crevice dripping with water, and so steep under foot that I slid twice
and caked myself with mud. I very nearly gave out here; but it was do
or die, and after ten minutes more of scratching, pushing, and
scrambling, I reached the top and sat down to mop my face and recover.
"I daresay it was another ten minutes before I fetched breath enough and
looked about me; and as I turned my head, there, close behind me, lay
another crater with another lake smiling below, all blue and peaceful as
the one I had left! I gazed from one to the other. This new crater had
no opening on the sea; its sides were steeper, though not quite so tall;
and either my eyes played me a trick or its water stood at a higher
level. I stood there, comparing the two, when suddenly against the
skyline, and not two hundred yards away, I caught sight of a man.
"He was walking towards me around the edge of the crater, and halting
every now and then to stare down at my boat. He might be a friend, or
he might be a foe; but anyway it was not for me, in my condition, to
choose which, so I waited for him to come up. And first I saw that he
carried a spear, and wore a pair of wide dirty-white trousers and a
short coat embroidered with gold; and next that he was a true Malay,
pretty well on in years, with a greyish beard falling over his chest.
He had no shirt, but a scarlet sash wrapped about his waist and holding
a _kris_ and two long pistols handsomely inlaid with gold. In spite of
his weapons he seemed a benevolent old boy.
"He pointed towards my boat and tried me with a few questions, first in
his own language, then in Spanish, of which I knew very little beyond
the sound. But I spread out my hands towards the sea, by way of
explaining our voyage, and then pointed to my mouth. If he understood
he seemed in no hurry. He tapped O'Hara's cornet gingerly with two
fingers. I unstrung it and made shift to play 'Home, Sweet Home.'
This delighted him; he nodded, rubbed his hands, and stepped a few paces
from me, then turned and began fingering his spear in a way I did not
like at all. 'It's a matter of taste, sir,' said I, or words to that
effect, dropping the cornet like a hot potato; but he pointed towards
it, and then over a ridge inland, and I gathered I must pick it up and
follow him--which I did, and pretty quick.
"From the top of this ridge we faced across a small plain bounded on the
north with a tier of hills, most of which seemed by their shape to be
volcanoes, and out of action--for the sky lay quite blue and clear above
them. The way down into this plain led through jungle; but the plain
itself had been cleared of all but small clumps dotted here and there,
which gave it, you might say, the look of an English park; and about
half-way across, in a clear stretch of lalang grass, stood a village of
white huts huddling round a larger and much taller house.
"The old man led me straight towards this, and, coming closer, I saw
that the large house had a rough glacis about it and a round wall
pierced with loopholes. A number of goats were feeding here and a few
small cattle; also the ground about the village had been cleared and
planted with fruit-trees,--mangoes, bananas, limes, and oranges,--but as
yet I saw no inhabitants. The old Malay, who had kept ahead of me all
the way, walking at a fair pace, here halted and once more signed to me
to blow on the cornet. I obeyed, of course, this time with 'The British
Grenadiers.' I declare to you it was like starting a swarm of bees.
You wouldn't believe the troops that came pouring out of those few
huts--the women in loose trousers pretty much like the men's, but with
arms bare and loose _sarongs_ flung over their right shoulders, the
children with no more clothes than a pocket-handkerchief apiece.
I can't tell you what first informed me of my guide's rank among them--
whether the salaams they offered him, or the richness of his dress--
he was the only one with gold lace and the only one who carried
pistols--or the air with which he paraded me through the crowd, waving
the people back to right and left, and clearing a way to a narrow door
in the wall around the great house. A man armed with a long
fowling-piece saluted him at the entry; and once inside he pointed from
the house to his own breast, as much as to say, 'I am the Chief, and
this is mine.' I saluted him humbly.
"A verandah ran around the four sides of the house, with a trench
between it and the fortified wall. A plank bridge led across the trench
to the verandah steps, where my master--or, to call him by his right
name, Hadji Hamid--halted again and clapped his hands. A couple of
young Malay women, dressed like those I had passed in the street, ran
out in answer, and were ordered to bring me food. While it was
preparing I rested on a low chair, blinking at the sunlight on the
fortified wall. It had been pierced, on the side of the house, for
eleven guns, but six of the embrasures were empty, and of the five
pieces standing no two were alike in size, age, or manufacture, and the
best seemed to be a nine-pounder, strapped to its carriage with rope.
Hadji Hamid saw what I was looking at, and chuckled to himself solemnly.
All through the meal--which began with a mess of rice and chopped fowl
and ended with bananas--he sat beside me, chewing betel, touching this
thing and that, naming it in his language and making me repeat the words
after him. He smiled at every mistake, but never lost his patience;
indeed it was clear that my quickness delighted him, and I did my best,
wondering all the while what he meant to do with me.
"Well, to be short, sir, he intended to keep me. I believe he would
have done it for the sake of the cornet; but before I had finished
eating, up stepped a sentry escorting a man with my bombardon under his
arm. I had left it, as you know, in the boat, and had heard no order
given; but the boat I never saw again, and here was my bombardon.
Hadji Hamid took it in both hands, felt it all over, patted it, and
ended by turning it over to me and calling in dumb show for a tune.
I tell you, my performance was a success. At the first blast he leaned
back suddenly in his chair; at the second he turned a kind of purple
under his yellow skin; but at the third he caught hold of his stomach
and began to roll in his seat and laugh. You never saw a man laugh like
it. He made scarcely any sound; he was too near apoplexy to speak; but
the tears ran down his face, and one minute his hand would be up waving
feebly to me to stop, the next he'd be signalling to go on again.
I wanted poor O'Hara; he used to give himself airs and swear at my
playing, but among these people he and his cornet would have had to
stand down.
"They gave me a bed that night in a corner of the verandah, and next
morning my master came himself to wake me, and took me down to the
village bathing-pool, just below the fortifications. It hurt my modesty
to find the whole mob of inhabitants gathered there and waiting, and it
didn't set me at ease, exactly, to notice that each man carried his
spear. For one nasty moment I pictured a duck-hunt, with me playing
duck. But there was no cause for alarm. At a signal from Hamid, who
stripped and led the way, in we tumbled together--men, women, and
children--the men first laying their spears on the bank beside their
clothes. Six remained on shore to keep guard, and were relieved after
five minutes by another six from the pool. There was a good deal of
splashing and horse-play, but nothing you could call immodest, though my
fair skin came in for an amount of attention I had to get used to.
"My breakfast was served to me alone, and soon after I was summoned to
attend my master in one of the state rooms of the house. I found him on
a shaded platform, seated opposite an old native as well-dressed and
venerable-looking as himself, but stouter. The pair lolled on cushions
at either end of the platform, smoking and smoothing their grey beards.
I understood that the visitor was a personage and (somehow) that he had
been sent for expressly to hear and be astonished by my performance.
"The two instruments were brought in upon cushions, and I began to play.
The visitor--who had less sense of humour than Hamid--did not laugh at
all. Instead, he took the mouthpiece of his _tchibouk_ slowly from his
lips and held it at a little distance, while his mouth and eyes opened
wider and wider. Hamid eyed him keenly, with a kind of triumph under
his lids; and the triumph grew as the old man's stare lit up with a
jealousy there was no mistaking.
"This, too, passed as I wound up with a flourish and stood at attention,
waiting for orders. The visitor put out his hand, but as I offered him
the bombardon he waved it aside impatiently and pointed to the cornet.
I passed it up to him; he patted and examined it for a while, laid it on
his knee, and the two men began talking in low voices.
"I could see that compliments were passing; but you'll guess I wasn't
prepared for what followed. Hamid stood up suddenly and whispered to
one of his six guards stationed below the platform. The man went out,
and returned in five minutes followed by a girl. Now that the island
girls were beautiful I had already discovered that morning, and this one
was no exception--a small thing about five feet, with glossy black hair
and the tiniest feet and hands. She seemed to me to walk nervously, as
if brought up for punishment; and a thought took me--and I shall be glad
of it when I come to die--that if they meant to ill-use her I might do
worse than assault that venerable pair with my bombardon and end my
adventures with credit.
"My eyes were so taken up with the girl that for a full minute I paid no
attention to my master. She had come to a halt under the platform, a
couple of paces from me, with her eyes cast down upon the floor; and he
on the platform was speaking. By and by he stopped, and glancing up I
saw that he was motioning me to leave the room. Well, they had made no
show as yet of ill-treating her; so I flung her one more look and
obeyed, feeling pretty mean. I went out into the verandah, walked the
length of it and turned--and there stood the girl right before me!
Her little feet had followed me so softly that I had heard nothing; and
now, as I stared at her, she crept close with a sort of sidelong motion,
and knelt at my feet, at the same moment drawing her _sarong_ over her
head to hide it. Then the truth came upon me--I was married!
"Aoodya was her name. What else can I tell you about her, to describe
her? She was a child, and all life came as play to her, yet she
understood love to the tips of her little madder-brown fingers.
She was my teacher, too, and I sat at her feet day after day and learned
while she drilled the island-language into me; learned by the hour while
she untwisted her hair and rubbed it with grated cocoanut, and broke off
her toilet to point to this thing and that and tell me its name,
laughing at my mistakes or flipping bits of betel at me by way of
reward. I had no wife at home to vex my conscience at all. All day we
played about Hamid's verandah like two children, and Hamid watched us
with a sort of twinkle in his eye, seemingly well content. It was plain
he had taken a fancy to me, and I thought, as time passed, he grew
friendlier.
"I blessed the old fellow, too. Had he not given me Aoodya? I puzzled
my head over this favour, until Aoodya explained. 'You see,' she said,
'it was done to oblige the Hadji Hassan.' This was the old man who had
listened to my performance on the bombardon. He lived in a stockaded
house on the far side of the island, the chieftancy of which he and
Hamid shared between them and without dispute.
"'How should it oblige Hassan?' I asked.
"'Because Hassan could not see or hear my lord and lover without longing
to possess such a man for his very own. As who could?' And here she
blew me a kiss.
"'Thank you, jewel of my heart,' said I; 'but yet I don't see.
Was it me he wanted, or the bombardon?'
"'I fancy he thought of you together; but of course he did not ask for
the big thing--that would have been greedy. He would be content with
the little one, the what-you-call cornet; and--don't you see?'
"'No doubt it's stupid of me, my dear,' said I, 'but I'll be shot if I
do.'
"She was sitting with a lapful of pandanus leaves, blue and green,
weaving a mat of them while we talked, and had just picked out a beater
from the tools scattered round her--a flat piece of board with a
bevilled edge, and shaped away to a handle. 'Stupid!' she says to me,
just like so, and at the same time raps me over the hand smartly.
'He thought--if peradventure there came to us a little one--'
"'_With_ a what-you-call cornet?'--I clapped my hand to my mouth over a
guffaw; and, with that, She--who had started laughing too--came to a
stop, with her eyes fastened on the back of it. I saw them stiffen, and
the pretty round pupils draw in and shrink to narrow slits like a cat's,
and her arm went back slowly behind her, and her bosom leaned nearer and
nearer. I thought she was going to spring at me, and as my silly laugh
died out I turned my hand and held it palm outward, to fend her off.
On the back of it was a drop of blood where the bevelled edge of the
beater had by accident broken the skin.
"Somehow this movement of mine seemed to fetch her to bearings.
Her hand came slowly forward again, hesitated, seemed to hover for a
moment at her throat, then went swiftly down to her bosom between bodice
and flesh, and came up again tugging after it what looked to me a piece
of coarse thread. She tossed it into my lap as I still sat there
cross-legged, and with that sprang up and raced away from me, down to
the verandah. There was no chance of catching her, and I was (to tell
the truth) a bit too much taken aback to try. I picked up the string.
On it was threaded a silk purse no bigger than a shilling; and from this
I shook into my palm a small stone like an opal. I turned it over once
or twice, put it back in the purse, and stowed string, purse, and all in
my breeches' pocket.
"I strolled down the verandah to our quarters in search of Aoodya, but
the room was empty; and after that I'm afraid I smoked and sulked for
the rest of the day, until nightfall. After playing the Hadji Hamid
through his meal I went out to our favourite seat on the edge of the dry
ditch, when she came to me out of nowhere across the withered grass of
the compound.
"'Have you the charm, O beloved?' she whispered.
"'Oh, it's a charm, is it?' said I, partly sulky yet.
"'Yes, and you must never lose it--never part with it--never, above all,
give it back to me. Promise me that, beloved; and I, who have wept
much, am happy again.'
"So I promised, and she snuggled close to me, and all was as before.
No more was said between us, and by next morning she seemed to have
clean forgotten the affair. But I thought of it at times, and it
puzzled me.
"Now, as I said, my master had taken a fancy to me quite apart from the
bombardon, and a token of it was his constantly taking me out as
companion on his walks. You may think it odd that he never troubled
about my being an unbeliever--for of course he held by the Prophet, and
so did all the islanders, Aoodya included. But in fact, though his
people called themselves Mahommedans, each man treated his religion much
as he chose, and Hamid talked to me as freely as if I had been his son.
"In this way I learned a deal of the island and its customs, and of the
terms by which Hamid and Hassan between them shared its rule. But that
any others laid claim to it I had no idea, until one day as we were
walking on the coast, and not far from the crater where he had found me
first, my master asked suddenly, 'Was I happy?'
"'Quite happy,' I answered.
"'You would not leave us if you could?' he went on, and began to laugh
quiet-like, behind his beard. 'Oho! Love, love! I that am old have
been merry in my day.' We walked for another mile, maybe, without
speaking, and came to the edge of a valley. 'Look down yonder,' said
he.
"Below us, and in the mouth of the valley, which grew broad and shallow
as it neared the sea, I saw a hill topped by a round wall and compound.
There might have been half a dozen houses within the compound, all
thatched, and above them stood up a flag painted in red and yellow
stripes, and so stiff in the breeze that with half an eye you could tell
it was no bunting but a sheet of tin.
"Hullo!' said I. 'Spaniards?'
"'Puf!' Hamid grinned at the flag and spat. 'A Captain Marquinez
inhabits there, with four Manila men and their wives. He is a sensible
fellow, and does no harm, and if it pleases him to hoist that toy on a
bamboo, he is welcome.'
"'They claim the island, then?'
"'What matters it if they claim? There was a letter once came to us
from the Spanish Governor in Tolo. That man was a fool. He gave us
warning that by order of the Government at Manila he would send a
hundred men to build a fort inland and set up a garrison. Hassan and I
took counsel together. 'He is a fool,' said Hassan; 'but we must answer
him.' So we answered him thus. 'Send your men. To-day they come;
to-morrow they die--yet trouble not; _we_ will bury them.'
"'Were they sent?' I asked.
"'They were not sent. He was a fool, yet within bounds. Nevertheless
a time may come for us--not for Hassan and me, we shall die in our
beds--but for our sons. Even for this we are prepared.' He would have
said more, but checked himself. (I learned later on that the islanders
kept one of the craters fortified for emergency, to make a last stand
there; but they never allowed me to see the place.) 'We have gods of
our own,' said Hamid slily, 'who will be helpful--the more so that we do
not bother them over trifles. Also there are--other things; and the
lake Sinquan, and another which you have not seen, are full of
crocodiles.' He stamped his foot. 'My son, beneath this spot there
has been fire, and still the men of Cagayan walk warily and go not
without their spears. For you it is different; yet when you come upon
aught that puzzles you, it were well to put no questions even to
yourself.'
"'Not even about this?' I asked, and showed him the purse and stone
which Aoodya had tossed to me.
"'You are in luck's way,' said he, 'whoever gave you that.' He pulled a
small pouch from his breast, opened it, and showed me a stone exactly
like mine. 'It is a cocoanut pearl. Keep it near to your hand, and
forget not to touch it if you hear noises in the air or a man meet you
with eyes like razors.'
"I wanted to ask him more, but he started to walk back hastily, and when
I caught him up would talk of nothing but the sugar and sweet-potato
crops, and the yield of cocoanut oil to be carried to Kudat at the next
north-east monsoon. I noticed that the fruit-trees planted along the
shore were old, and that scores of them had ceased bearing. 'They will
last my day,' said he. 'Let my sons plant others if they so will.' He
always spoke in this careless way of his children, and I believe he had
many, for an islander keeps as many wives as he can afford; but they
lived about the villages, and could not be told from the other
inhabitants by any sign of rank or mark of favour he showed them.
"For a long while I believed that Aoodya must be a daughter of his.
She always denied it, but owned that she had never known her mother and
had lived in Hamid's house ever since she could remember. Anyhow, he
took the greatest care of me, and never allowed me to join the
expeditions which sailed twice a year from the island--to Palawan for
paddy, and to the north of Borneo with oil and nuts and pandanus mats.
He may have mistrusted me; but more likely he forbade it out of care for
me and the music I played; for the _prahus_ regularly came back with
three or four of their number missing--either capsized on the voyage or
blown away towards Tawi-Tawi, where the pirates accounted for them.
"Though I might not sail abroad he allowed me to join the tuburing
parties off the shore. We would work along the reefs there in rafts of
bamboo, towing with us two or three dug-outs filled with mashed
_tubur_-roots. At the right spot the dug-outs would be upset, and after
a while the fish came floating up on their sides, or belly uppermost, to
be speared by us; for the root puddles the water like milk, and
stupefies them somehow without hurting the flesh, which in an hour or so
is fit to eat.
"We had been tuburing one afternoon, and put back with our baskets
filled to a spit of the shore where we had left an old islander, Kotali
by name, alone and tending a fire for our meal. Coming near we saw him
stretched on the sand by his cooking-pots, and shouted to wake him, for
his fire was low. Kotali did not stir. I was one of the first to jump
ashore and run to him. He lay with his legs drawn up, his hands
clenched, his eyes wide open and staring at us horribly. The man was as
dead as a nail.
"I never saw people worse frightened. 'The Berbalangs!' said someone in
a dreadful sort of whisper, and we started to run back to the raft for
our lives--I with the rest, for the panic had taken hold of me, though I
could see no sign of an enemy. I supposed these Berbalangs, named with
such awe, to be pirates or marauders from Tawi-Tawi or some neighbouring
island, and the first hint that reached me of anything worse was a
wailing sound which grew as we ran, and overhauled us, until the air was
filled with roaring, so that I swung round to defend myself, yet could
see nothing. To my surprise a man who had been running beside me
dropped on the sand, pulled a sigh of relief, and began to mop his
face--and this in the very worst of the racket. 'They are gone by,' he
shouted; 'the worse the noise the farther off they are. They have taken
their fill to-day on poor old Kotali.'
"Suddenly the noise ceased altogether, and we picked up courage to
return and bury the body. We had a basket of limes on the raft, and
these were fetched and the juice squeezed over the grave; but no one
seemed inclined to answer the questions I put about these Berbalangs.
It seemed that unless they were close at hand there was ill-luck even in
mentioning them, and I walked back to the village in a good deal of
perplexity.
"I should tell you, sir, that by this time I was the father of a fine
boy; and that Aoodya doted on him. When she was not feeding him or
calling on me to admire his perfections, from the cleverness of his
smile to the beautiful shape of his toes, he lay and slept, or kicked in
a basket slung on a long bamboo fastened across the rafters, Aoodya
would give the basket a pull, and this set it bobbing up and down on the
spring of the bamboo for minutes at a time.
"Now when I reached home with my string of fish, I walked round to the
back of the house to clean them before going in. This took me past the
window of our room, and glancing inside--the window was unglazed, you
understand--I saw Aoodya standing before the cradle and talking, quick
and angry, with a man posted in the doorway opening on the verandah.
"I was not jealous. The thought never entered my head. But I dropped
my fish and whipped round to the doorway in time to catch him as he
turned to go, having heard my footstep belike.
"'Who the something-or-other are you?' I asked. 'And what's your
business in my private house?'
"The man--a yellow-faced fellow, but young in figure--muttered something
in a gibberish new to me, and made as if excusing himself. It gave me
an ugly start to see that his eyes were yellow too, with long slits for
pupils; but I saw too that he was afraid of me, and being in a towering
rage myself, I out with my _kris_.
"'Now look here,' I said; 'I don't understand what you say, but maybe
you understand this. Walk! And if I catch you here again, you'll need
someone to sew you up.'
"I watched him as he went across the compound. The guard at the gate
scarcely looked up, and if the thing hadn't been impossible, there, in
the broad daylight, I could have fancied he saw no one. I turned to
Aoodya and took her hands, for she was trembling from head to foot.
At my touch she burst out sobbing, clung to my shoulder and begged me to
protect her.
"'Why, of course I will,' said I, more cheerfully than I felt by a long
sight. 'If I'd known you were frightened like this, I'd have slit his
body to match his eyes. But who is he, at all?'
"'He--he said he was my brother!' she wailed, and clung to me again.
'I cannot--I cannot!'
"'I'll brother him!' cried I. 'But what is it he wants?'
"'I cannot--I cannot!' was all she would say; and now her sobs were so
loud that the child woke up screaming and had to be soothed. And this
seemed to do her good.
"Well, I got her to bed and asleep early that night; but before morning
I had a worse fright than ever. Somehow in my dream I had a feeling
come to me that the bed was empty, and sat up suddenly, half awake and
scared. Aoodya had risen and was standing by the cradle, with one hand
on its edge; in the other was the lamp--a clam-shell fastened in a split
handle of bamboo, and holding a pith wick and a little oil. The flame
wavered against her eyes as she held it up and peered into the baby's
face--and her eyes were like as I had seen them once before, and
devilish like the eyes I had seen in another face that afternoon.
"A man never knows what he can do till the call comes. There, betwixt
sleep and waking, I knew that happiness had come to an end for us.
Yet I slipped out of bed very softly, took the lamp from her as gentle
as you please, set it on a stool and, turning, reached out for her two
wrists and held them--for how long I can't tell you. She didn't try to
fend me away, or struggle at all, and not a word did I utter, but stood
holding her--the babe asleep beside us--and listened to her breathing
until it grew easier, and she leaned to me, weak as water.
"Then I let go, and lifting the child's head from the pillow pulled
Aoodya's charm, the cocoanut pearl, from my neck and hung it about his.
'That's for you, sonny,' said I, 'and if the Berbalangs come along you
can pass them on to your father.' I faced round on Aoodya with a smile
which no doubt was thin enough, though honestly meant to hearten her.
'It's all right, old girl. Come back to bed,' said I, and held her in
my arms until I fell asleep in the dawn.
"But of course it was not all right; and after two days spent with this
dismal secret between us, and Aoodya all the while play-acting at her
old tricks of love for me and the babe--as if, God knows, I doubted
they, and not the horror, were her real self--I could stand it no
longer, but did what I ought to have done before; sought out my master
and made a clean breast of it.
"I could see that it took the old man between wind and water. When I
had done he sat for some time pulling his beard and eyeing me once or
twice rather queerly, as I thought.
"'My friend,' said he at last, 'I suppose you will be suspecting me; yet
I give you my word--and the Hadji Hamid is no liar--that if Aoodya is a
Berbalang, or a daughter of Berbalangs, the same was unknown to me when
I married you.'
"'I'll believe that,' I answered; 'the more by token that I never
suspected you.'
"'She had no known father, which (as you know) is held a disgrace among
us; so much a disgrace that she grew up without suitors in spite of her
looks and my favour. Therefore I seized my chance of giving her a
husband, and in that I am not guiltless towards you; but of anything
worse I was ignorant, and for proof I am going to help you if I can.'
He frowned to himself, still tugging at his beard. 'Her mother was of
good family, on this side of the island. Therefore she cannot be pure
Berbalang, and most likely the Berbalangs have no more than a fetch upon
her'--he used a word new to me, but 'fetch' I took to be the meaning of
it. 'If so, we must go to them and persuade them to take it off.
They owe me something; for though, as we value peace and quiet, Hassan
and I leave them alone in their own dirty village and ask no tax nor
homage, we could make things uncomfortable if we chose. Yes, yes,' said
he, 'I think it can be done; but it will be dangerous. You are wearing
your cocoanut pearl, of course?'
"I told him that I had given it up to the baby.
"He nodded. 'Yes, that was well done; but you must borrow it for the
day. Run and fetch it at once; we have a long walk before us.'
"So I ran back, and without telling Aoodya, who was washing her linen
behind the house, slipped the pearl off the child's neck and returned to
Hamid. I found him, with two spears in his hand, waiting for me.
He gave me one, and forth we set.
"The Berbalangs' village stands on a sort of table-land in the hills
which rise all the way to Mount Tebulian, near the centre of the island.
After the first two miles I found myself in strange country, and Hamid
kept silence and signed to me to do the same. In this way we sweated up
the slopes until, a little after noon, we reached a pass, and saw the
roofs of the village over the edge of a broad step, as it were, half a
mile above us. Here we sat down, and Hamid, drawing a couple of limes
from his pocket, explained that I must on no account taste any food the
Berbalangs set before us unless I first sprinkled it with lime juice.
It might look like curried fish, but would, as likely as not, be human
flesh disguised, the taste of which would destroy my soul and convert me
into a Berbalang; a touch of the lime juice would turn such food back to
its proper shape and show me what I was being asked to eat.
"We now moved forward again, very cautiously, and soon came to the
village. The houses, perhaps a dozen in all, were scandalously dirty,
otherwise pretty much like those in Hamid's own village. But not a
living creature could be seen. Hamid, I could tell, was puzzled, and
even a bit frightened. He put a good face on it, all the same, and
began to walk from house to house, keeping his spear handy as he peered
in at the doors. Still not a soul could we find, barring an old goat
tethered and a few roaming fowls. The stink of the place sickened us,
and I wanted to run, though we came across no actual horrors. In one
room we found a pan of rice lately boiled and still smoking, and
sprinkled it with lime juice. It remained good rice. Out into the
street we went, and Hamid, growing bolder, raised a loud halloo.
The noise of it sent the fowls scudding, and the hills around took it up
and echoed it.
"He looked at me. 'They must be out on the hunt,' said he.
"'Good Lord!' I gasped. 'And the child at home--without the pearl!'
I turned and plunged for it down the slope like a madman.
"What to do I had no idea; but I hadn't a doubt that the Berbalangs were
after Aoodya or the child, or both, and I headed for home with the wind
singing by my ears. At the foot of the pass I looked back. Hamid was
following, skipping from one lava stone to another at a pace that did
credit to his old legs. He waved a hand and called--as I thought, to
encourage me; and away down I pounded.
"I must have reached the edge of the plain in twenty minutes (the climb
had taken us more than two hours), and, once there, I squeezed my elbows
into my sides and settled into stride. Luckily the season was dry, and
a fire, three weeks before, had swept over the tall lalang grass,
leaving a thin layer of ash, which made running easy. For all that, I
was pretty near dead beat when I reached the compound and ran past the
sentry. The man cried out at sight of me as I went by; but I thought he
was just pattering out his challenge, being taken unawares; and knowing
he would not let off his musket if he recognised me, I paid no
attention.
"I had prepared myself (as I thought) for anything--to find Aoodya dead
beside the child, or to find them both unharmed and flourishing as I had
left them. But what happened was that I burst in and stared around an
empty room. _That_ knocked the wind out of my sails. I called twice,
leaned my head against the door-post and panted; called again, and,
getting no answer, walked stupidly back across the compound to the gate.
"The sentry there was pointing. I believe he was telling me, too, that
Aoodya, with the child in her arms, had passed out some while before.
But as he waved a hand towards the plain I saw a figure running there,
and recognised Hamid. The old man was heading, not towards us, but for
the seashore, and, plain as daylight, he was heading there with a
purpose. I remembered now his cry to me from the head of the pass.
So I pressed elbows to side again and lit out after him.
"He was making for a thick patch of jungle between us and the sea, and
though I had run at least a mile out of the way I soon began to
overhaul him. But long before I reached the clump he had found an
opening in it and dived out of sight, and I overtook him only when the
growth thinned suddenly by the edge of a crater, plunging down to a lake
so exactly like Sinquan that I had to look about me and take my bearings
before making sure that this was another, and one I had never yet seen.
"I caught him by the arm, and we peered down the slope together.
At the foot of it, and by the edge of the lake, there ran a strip of
white beach; and there, and almost directly below us, were gathered the
Berbalangs.
"They were moving and pushing into place in a sort of circle around a
small bundle which at first sight I took for a heap of clothes. At that
distance they seemed harmless enough, and, barring the strangeness of
the spot, might have been an ordinary party of islanders forming up for
a dance. But when, all of a sudden, the ring came to a standstill, and
a figure stepped out of it towards the bundle in the centre, my wits
came back to me, and I flung up both arms, shouting 'Aoodya! Aoodya!'
"She must have made three paces in the time my voice took to reach her.
She was close to the child. Then she halted and stood for a moment
gazing up at me. I saw something bright drop from her. And with that
she stooped, caught up the child, and was racing up the slope towards
us.
"'Steady!' muttered Hamid, as a man broke from the circle, plucked up
the knife from the sand and rushed after her. 'Steady!' he said again.
"Aoodya had a start of twenty yards or more, and in the first
half-minute she actually managed to better it. Hamid, beside me, rubbed
a bullet quickly on the rind of one of his lime-fruits and rammed it
home. He took an eternal time about it; and below, now, the man was
gaining. Unluckily their courses brought them into line, and twice the
old man cursed softly and lowered his piece.
"Flesh and blood could not stand this. I let out a groan and sprang
down the cliff. It was madness, and at the third step all foothold
slipped from under me; but my clutch was tight on a fistful of creepers,
and their tendrils were tough as a ship's rope. So down I went, now
touching earth, now fending off from the rock with my feet, now missing
hold and sprawling into a mass of leaves and roots, among which I
clutched wildly and checked myself by the first thing handy--until, with
the crack of Hamid's musket above, the vine, or whatever it was to which
I clung for the moment, gave way as if shorn by the bullet, and I
pitched a full twenty feet with a rush of loose earth and dust.
"I fell almost at the heels of Aoodya's enemy, upon a ledge along which
he was swiftly running her down. Hamid's bullet had missed him, and
before I could make the third in the chase he was forty yards ahead.
I saw his bare shoulders parting the creepers--threading their way in
and out like a bobbin, and jogging as the pace fell slower; for now we
were all three in difficulties. Perhaps Aoodya had missed the track; at
any rate the ledge we were now following grew shallower as it curved
over the corner of the beach and ran sheer over the water of the lake.
A jungle tree leaned out here, with a clear drop of a hundred feet.
As I closed on my man, he swerved and began to clamber out along the
trunk; and over his shoulder I saw Aoodya, with the babe in the crick of
her arm, upon a bough which swayed and sank beneath her.
"I clutched at his ankle. He reached back with a hiss of his breath and
jabbed his knife down on my left hand, cutting across the two middle
fingers and pinning me through the small bones to the trunk. I tell
you, sir, I scarcely felt it. My right went down to my waist and pulled
out the _kris_ there. He was the man I had caught within the verandah
three days before; these were the same eyes shining, like a cat's, back
into mine, and what I had promised him then I gave him now. But it was
Hamid who killed him. For as my _kris_ went into the flank of him,
above the hip, Hamid's second shot cut down through his neck. His face
at the moment rested sideways against the branch, and I suppose the
bullet passed through to the bough and cost me Aoodya. For as the
Berbalang fell, the bough seemed to rip away from where his cheek had
rested, and Aoodya, with my child in her arms, swung back under my feet
and dropped like a stone into the lake.
"I can't tell you, sir, how long I lay stretched out along that trunk,
with the Berbalang's knife still pinned through my hand. I was staring
down into the water. Aoodya and my child never rose again; but the
Berbalang came to the surface at once and floated, bobbing for a while
on the ripple, his head thrown back, his brown chest shining up at me,
and the blood spreading on the water around it.
"It was Hamid who unpinned me and led me away. He had made shift to
climb down, and while binding up my wounded hand pointed towards the
beach. It was empty. The crowd of Berbalangs had disappeared.
"He found the track which Aoodya had missed, and as he led me up and out
of the crater I heard him talking--talking. I suppose he was trying to
comfort me--he was a good fellow; but at the top I turned on him, and
'Master,' I said, 'you have tried to do me much kindness, but to-day I
have bought my quittance.' With that I left him standing and walked
straight over the brow of the hill. I never looked behind me until I
reached the Spaniards' compound, and called out at the gate to be let
pass.
"Captain Marquinez was lying in a hammock in the cool of his verandah
when the gate-keeper took me to him. He was, I think, the weariest man
I ever happened on. 'So you want to leave the island?' said he when my
tale was out. 'Yes, yes, I believe you; I've learnt to believe anything
of those devils up yonder. But you must wait a fortnight, till the
relief-boat arrives from Jola'--"
Here the story-teller broke off as a rider upon a grey horse came at a
foot-pace round the slope of Burrator below us and passed on without
seeing. It was the Rajah, returning solitary from the hunt, and his
eyes were still fastened ahead of him.
"Ah, great man! England is a weary hole for the likes of you and me.
It's here they talk of the East, but we have loved it and hated it and
known it, and remember. Our eyes have seen--our eyes have seen."
He stood up, pulled himself together with a kind of shiver, and suddenly
shambled away across the slope, having said no good-bye, but leaving me
there at gaze.