A STRANGE CRY AT NIGHT.
All night the boat moved up the yellow stream, the oarsmen working with
the dogged industry of men who were laboring because they had to do it,
and not from choice.
Jai Singh kept them up to their task with an occasional gruff word, and
now and then he swung the long staff of his spear over their heads as a
hint that he would not permit any “soldiering.”
It was early morning when he said quietly to Nick Carter:
“If the sahib would like, we will stop here. It is time for food and
drink, for the coming day.”
“You mean breakfast, eh?” put in Patsy eagerly. “Good idea! You’re all
right, Jai.”
Jai Singh glanced at Patsy as if half inclined to call him to account
for his familiarity. But he didn’t. He had taken a great liking to Nick
Carter’s good-humored second assistant. Therefore, he was inclined to
permit him liberties he would not brook from anybody else.
The men rowed the boat inshore, and Jai Singh jumped out and held it
while the four white men disembarked.
They helped him pull the boat far up on the bank, and Nick Carter
secured it by a strong rope to the trunk of a deodar, which is another
name for the Himalayan cedar.
“There’s a cataract not far ahead, I should say, from the way the water
rushes down,” observed Nick Carter to Jai Singh.
“The sahib is right. The big falls are not far above. We must carry the
boat around. But our men will do it. There will be no trouble for the
sahibs. We will build a fire now.”
“Look here, Jai,” broke in Patsy. “How far are we to go before we get
action on Leslie Arnold. Aren’t we nearly up to the place he is in?”
“The young sahib, Arnold, is in the Land of the Golden Scarab,” replied
Jai Singh. “It is near, or far, as it may happen. I cannot tell. The
people of that land are men who move often.”
“That may be so,” interposed Nick Carter. “But they have a city of their
own, with a temple and many people. That much I know.”
“Right,” acknowledged Jai Singh. “If the young Sahib Arnold is there, we
can go to him. If he is with some people of the Golden Scarab, somewhere
else, we may have to travel long. We shall see.”
“Not much encouragement in that, Carter,” grumbled Jefferson Arnold, as
Jai Singh moved away to superintend the building of a fire. “Still, I
suppose we cannot do better than to let him lead us on.”
“It is all we can do at present,” was the detective’s reply. “It is safe
to trust Jai Singh, but we must let him do it in his own way.”
“I wish his way wasn’t so slow,” interjected Chick. “Anyhow, he is going
to give us a breakfast, so we should be thankful for that. He makes good
coffee,” he added, sniffing appreciatively.
In a short time Jai Singh set forth a breakfast, from the stores they
carried, that might hardly have been expected in such a wilderness.
Not only was there coffee, made with the skill that only the native-born
East Indian ever attains, but it was softened with condensed milk kept
in small air-tight cans, and sweetened with very good sugar.
There were fruits, all kinds of canned sweetmeats, and some of the dried
fish of which so much is used in tropical climates, with curried rice
and other viands distinctly Indian.
The four oarsmen had built their fire at a considerable distance, and
down the wind, so that its smoke should not annoy the white people.
The laborers, who were of the coolie caste, knew their place, and never
presumed to even look at Jai Singh unless he addressed them.
Even then they usually kept their faces averted, as if the light of his
countenance were too dazzling to be met by their unworthy eyes.
After the meal, Nick Carter and Jefferson Arnold sat smoking, as they
rested in the shade of the spreading trees around them, amusing
themselves by looking at the distant oarsmen.
“They are big, strong fellows,” remarked Nick Carter. “But they are full
of superstition. You can see, by the way they huddle together, that they
are afraid of what might come out of the woods. I do not mean wild
animals, or even snakes--although there are plenty of them in the
forests of this country. What these fellows fear is something of
preternatural shape. If they weren’t so thoroughly in awe of Jai Singh,
I am inclined to think they would get away and leave us.”
“That is true, sahib,” broke in Jai Singh, in a deep growl. “But the men
are not to be blamed. Many strange things happen by night. Even I, who
am afraid of no man, have known the chill fingers of fear on my shoulder
ere now in such places as this. If all tales be true, the country back
here is full of strange things, of which it is not wise to speak.”
“Oh, cut it out, Jai!” interrupted Patsy, with a shiver, half real and
half in mockery. “What kind of guff are you giving us?”
“There are tales of men going into these forests and being swallowed up.
No man has seen them again, not even their bones.”
“Wow!” howled Patsy.
“Others have gone in, or been driven in, alone and unarmed, by powers
they could not stand against. After many days they have come out with
their skin a silver gray, all cracked and dried. They have had neither
eyes to see, nor tongue to speak, nor fingers to make signs with, so
that none could tell what had befallen them.”
“Cheerful old cuss, isn’t he?” whispered Chick to his chief.
Nick Carter nodded thoughtfully. He had heard similar, and even more
gruesome, tales himself. He knew these parts of India better than Chick.
“Don’t be too ready to laugh,” he answered. “No white man ever has
understood Indian magic--probably never will. When you have never been
brought face to face with it, you may not believe it. When you come
right to it, you can only wonder.”
“I know,” answered Chick, with a shrug. “I have heard of the Indian
fakir who stands in the middle of a wide, open space out-of-doors and
throws a rope into the air. The rope straightens out till the top of it
is lost in a cloud that gathers in the otherwise clear atmosphere at the
fakir’s bidding. Then down the rope climbs a boy, who proves that he is
flesh and blood by going around the ring of white people who have been
watching, and lets them feel his hands.”
Nick Carter shook his head slowly.
“That is one of the common tricks of the wise men of this country. It
has been told so often by different people that I see no reason to doubt
it. There are other things done by these fakirs quite as unaccountable.
In the face of them, you can hardly deny that there is more mystery in
this land than in most others in the world.”
The talk flagged now. It was becoming too hot for conversation, and
everybody composed himself for sleep in the shade of the trees.
Nick Carter and Jefferson Arnold would have liked to press on. But they
knew traveling was out of the question in the tropical heat of the day.
Soon after sundown they were on the move.
As Nick Carter had remarked, there were rapids not far from where they
had stopped for sleep, and it was necessary to carry the boat and stores
around the cataract on land, and put it into the river again at a safe
distance above.
By the time this was accomplished, the night had advanced so far that
Nick was afraid they would not make much more time before daylight.
He was strengthened in this belief by the fact that the whole party was
pretty well exhausted by the labor of getting the boat and stores
around, and was obliged to rest.
It had meant a walk of more than two miles, and everybody had been
obliged to do his full part. The labor had been much heavier than Jai
Singh had anticipated.
It was easy for all of them to fall asleep. The slumber they had had in
the daytime was not so refreshing as this, with blackness around them
and even the ordinary voices of nature stilled.
Chick had laid down by the side of the bloodhound, and was one of the
first to lose himself. It had been arranged that they were to sleep for
an hour and then go on.
The others each dropped down into any attitude that seemed comfortable,
and in a few moments all were as oblivious to the outer world as Chick
himself.
Suddenly a strange cry echoed through the blackness of the forest. It
was a shriek of agony that echoed and reëchoed until it died away into a
wailing moan. Hardly human, yet a sound that no animal could have
produced.
Captain heard it; Chick knew that by the way he stirred and whimpered.
“What was that?” whispered Nick Carter.
In the deep gloom, Chick could see the detective sitting up, ready for
action, his rifle across his knees.
“You heard it, did you?” asked Chick quietly. “It woke me.”
“Hush!”
The cry arose again, but was more faint than before.
“What kind of game are they giving us?” muttered Jefferson Arnold. “Is
it a screech owl?”
Jai Singh, without speaking, picked up his spear and waited for what was
to come.
For the third time the scream sounded through the forest--long drawn out
and ending in a sobbing wail.
“It is the devils of the forest. There are unclean spirits walking
near,” muttered Jai Singh.
“Spirits or no spirits, clean or unclean,” said Nick Carter. “I am going
to see.”
He struck a match, but, so powerful was the ghostly influence even upon
the detective’s usually steady nerves, that his hand shook, and he
dropped the match.
Perhaps he did not try much to hold it, for it seemed to him, even as
the light broke out, that it was hardly a wise thing to do until he knew
what was in the vicinity.
“I have my flash light in my pocket,” he muttered to himself. “But, on
the whole, I guess we’d better investigate in the dark.”
From the four coolies, some two or three hundred feet away, there came
no sound. Whether they had heard the cry or not Nick did not know.
Certainly, they made no sign.
Captain continued to whine in a low tone, as if frightened. Nick put
his hands on the dog’s back and found it wet with the perspiration of
fear.
“That settles it,” he thought, as he got a grip on himself. “When a dog
is frightened--especially a dog as good as Captain--it is time to look
into it.” Then, aloud, to Jai Singh: “Stay here with the dog, Jai Singh,
and mind your four men don’t run away. We are going to see what made
that racket in the woods.”
Nick Carter led the way into the black thicket. He was closely followed
by Chick, Patsy, and Jefferson Arnold. Each man carried a rifle, as well
as a revolver in his belt.
If the mysterious disturber in the forest turned out to be dangerous,
they would find out whether bullets would not put an end to the noise.
On the other hand, if it really came from spirits, it would be well to
find that out, too.