THE HEAD-HUNTERS
Nature so far, had been kind to Waldo Emerson Smith-Jones. No high
winds or heavy seas had assailed him, and he had been upon the water
for three days now. The wind had held steadily out of the south,
varying but a few points during this time but even so Waldo Emerson
was commencing to doubt and to worry. His supply of water was running
dangerously low, his food supply would last but a few days longer; and
as yet he had sighted no sail, nor seen any land. Furthermore, he had
not the remotest conception of how he might retrace his way to the
island he had just quitted. He could only sail before the wind. Should
the wind veer around into the north he might, by chance, be blown back
to the island. Otherwise he never could reach it. And he was beginning
to wonder if he had not been a trifle to precipitate in his abandonment
of land.
In common with most other landsmen, Waldo Emerson had little conception
of the vastness of the broad reaches of unbroken water wildernesses
that roll in desolate immensity over three quarters of the globe.
His recollection of maps pictured the calm and level blue dotted,
especially in the south seas, with many islands. Their names, often,
were quite reassuring. He recollected, among others, such as the
Society Islands, the Friendly Islands, Christmas Island. He hoped
that he would land upon one of these. There were so many islands upon
the maps, and they seemed so close together that he was not a little
mystified that he had failed to sight several hundred long before this.
And ships! It appeared incredible that he should have seen not a
single sail. He distinctly recalled the atlas he had examined prior to
embarking upon his health cruise. The Pacific had been lined in all
directions with the routes of long established steamer lanes, and in
between, Waldo had felt, the ocean must be dotted with the innumerable
tramps that come and go between the countless ports that fringe the
major sea.
And yet for three days nothing had broken the dull monotony of the vast
circle of which he was always the center and the sole occupant. In
three days, thought Waldo, he must have covered an immense distance.
And three more days dragged their weary lengths. The wind had died to
the faintest of breezes. The canoe was just making headway and that
was all. The water was gone. The food nearly so. Waldo was suffering
from lack of the former. The pitiless sun beating down upon him
increased his agony. He stretched his panther skin across the stern and
hid beneath it from the torrid rays. And there he lay until darkness
brought relief.
During the night the wind sprang up again, but this time from the
west. It rose and with it rose the sea. The man, clinging to his crude
steering blade, struggled to keep the light craft straight before the
wind which was now howling fearfully while great waves, hungry and wide
jawed, raced after him like a pack of ravenous wolves.
Thandar knew that the unequal struggle against the mighty forces of the
elements could not endure for long. It seemed that each fierce gust
of brutal wind must tear his frail boat to shreds, and yet it was the
very lightness of the thing that saved it, for it rode upon the crests
of waves, blown forward at terrific velocity like a feather before the
hurricane.
In Thandar's heart was no terror--only regret that he might never again
see his mother, his father, or his Nadara. Yet the night wore on and
still he fled before the storm. The sky was overcast--the darkness
was impenetrable. He imagined all about him still the same wide,
tenantless circle of water, only now storm torn and perpendicular and
black, instead of peacefully horizontal, and soothingly blue-green. And
then, even as he was thinking this there rose before him a thunderous
booming loud above the frenzied bedlam of the storm, his boat was
lifted high in air to dive headforemost into what might be a bottomless
abyss for all Thandar knew. But it was not bottomless. The canoe struck
something and stopped suddenly, pitching Thandar out into a boiling
maelstrom. A great wave picked him up, carrying him with race-horse
velocity within its crest. He felt himself hurled pitilessly upon
smooth, hard sand. The water tried to drag him back, but he fought with
toes and fingers, clutching at the surface of the stuff upon which he
had been dropped. Then the wave abandoned him and raced swiftly back
into the sea.
Thandar was exhausted, but he knew that he must crawl up out of the
way of the surf, or be dragged back by the next roller. What he had
searched for in vain through six long days he had run down in the
midst of a Stygian night. He had found land! Or, to be more explicit,
land had got in front of him and he had run into it. He had commenced
to wonder if some terrible convulsion of nature had not swallowed up
all the land in the world, leaving only a waste of desolate water. He
forgot his hunger and his thirst in the happiness of the knowledge that
once more he was upon land. He wondered a little what land it might be.
He hoped that dawn would reveal the chimneys and steeples of a nearby
city. And then, exhausted, he fell into a deep sleep.
It was the sun shining down into his upturned face that awoke him. He
was lying upon his back beside a clump of bushes a little way above the
beach. He was about to rise and survey the new world into which fate
and a hurricane had hurled him when he heard a familiar sound upon the
opposite side of his bush. It was the movement of an animal creeping
through long grass.
Thandar, the cave man, came noiselessly to his hands and knees, peering
cautiously through the intervening network of branches. What he saw
sent his hand groping for his wooden sword with its fire-hardened
point. There, not five paces from him, was a man going cautiously upon
all fours. It was the most horrible appearing man that Thandar had ever
seen--even Thurg appeared lovely by comparison. The creature's ears
were split and heavy ornaments had dragged them down until the lobes
rested upon its shoulders. The face was terribly marked with cicatrices
and tattooing. The teeth were black and pointed. A head-dress of long
feathers waved and nodded above the hideous face. There was much
tattooing upon the arms and legs and abdomen; the breasts were circled
with it. In a belt about the waist lay a sword in its scabbard. In the
man's hand was a long spear.
The warrior was creeping stealthily upon something at Thandar's left.
The latter looked in the direction the other's savage gaze was bent.
Through the bushes he could barely discern a figure moving toward them
along the edge of the beach. The warrior had passed him now and Thandar
stood erect the better to obtain a view of the fellow's quarry.
Now he saw it plainly--a man strangely garbed in many colors. A
yellow jacket, soiled and torn, covered the upper part of his body.
Strange designs, very elaborate, were embroidered upon the garment
which reached barely to the fellow's waist. Beneath was a red sash in
which were stuck a long pistol and a wicked-looking knife. Baggy blue
trousers reached to the bare ankles and feet. A strip of crimson cloth
wound around the head completed the strange garmenture. The features of
the man were Mongolian.
Thandar could see the warrior pause as it became evident that the other
was approaching directly toward his place of concealment, but at the
last moment the unconscious quarry turned sharply to his right down
upon the beach. He had discovered the wreck of Thandar's canoe and was
going to investigate it.
The move placed Thandar almost between the two. Suddenly the native
rose to his feet--his victim's back was toward him. Grasping his
spear in his left hand he drew his wicked-looking sword and emerged
cautiously from the bushes. At the same moment the man upon the beach
wheeled quickly as though suddenly warned of his danger. The native,
discovered, leaped forward with raised sword. The man snatched his
pistol from his belt, levelled it at the on-rushing warrior and pulled
the trigger. There was a futile click--that was all. The weapon had
missed fire.
Instantly a third element was projected into the fray. Thandar, seeing
a more direct link with civilization in the strangely apparelled Mongol
than in the naked savage, leaped to the assistance of the former. With
drawn sword he rushed out upon the savage. The wild man turned at
Thandar's cry, which he had given to divert the fellow's attention from
his now almost helpless victim.
Thandar knew nothing of the finer points of sword play. He was ignorant
of the wickedness of a Malay parang--the keen, curved sword of the
head-hunter, so he rushed in upon the savage as he would have upon one
of Thurg's near-men.
The very impetuosity of his attack awed the native. For a moment he
stood his ground, and then, with a cry of terror turned to flee; but he
had failed to turn soon enough. Thandar was upon him. The sharp point
entered his back beneath the left shoulder blade, and behind it were
the weight and sinews of the cave man. With a shriek the savage lunged
forward, clutching at the cruel point that now protruded from his
breast. When he touched the earth he was dead.
Thandar drew his sword from the body of the head-hunter, and turned
toward the man he had rescued. The latter was approaching, talking
excitedly. It was evident that he was thanking Thandar, but no word of
his strange tongue could the American understand. Thandar shook his
head to indicate that he was unfamiliar with the other's language, and
then the latter dropped into pidgin English, which, while almost as
unintelligible to the cultured Bostonian, still contained the battered
remnants of some few words with which he was familiar.
Thandar depreciated his act by means of gestures, immediately following
these with signs to indicate that he was hungry and thirsty. The
stranger evidently understood him, for he motioned him to follow,
leading the way back along the beach in the direction from which he had
come.
Before starting, however, he had pointed toward the wreck of Thandar's
canoe and then toward Thandar, nodding his head questioningly as to ask
if the boat belonged to the cave man.
Around the end of a promontory they came upon a little cove beside
the beach of which Thandar saw a camp of nearly a score of men similar
in appearance to his guide. These were preparing breakfast beside the
partially completed hull of a rather large boat they seemed to have
been building.
At sight of Thandar they looked their astonishment, but after hearing
the story of their fellow they greeted the cave man warmly, furnishing
him with food and water in abundance.
For three days Thandar worked with these men upon their craft, picking
up their story slowly with a slow acquirement of a bowing acquaintance
with the bastard tongue they used when speaking with him. He soon
became aware of the fact that fate had thrown him among a band of
pirates. There were Chinese, Japanese and Malays among them--the
off-scourings of the south seas; men who had become discredited even
among the villainous pirates of their own lands, and had been forced
to join their lots in this remoter and less lucrative field, under an
unhung ruffian, Tsao Ming, the Chinaman whose life Thandar had saved.
He also learned that the storm that had cast them upon this shore
nearly a month before had demolished their prahu, and what with the
building of another and numerous skirmishes with the savages they had
had a busy time of it.
Only yesterday while a party of them had been hunting a mile or
two inland they had been attacked by savages who had killed two and
captured one of their number.
They told Thandar that these savages were the most ferocious of
head-hunters, but like the majority of their kind preferred ambushing
an unwary victim to meeting him in fair fight in the open. Thandar did
not doubt but that the latter mode of warfare would have been entirely
to the liking of his piratical friends, for never in his life had he
dreamed, even, of so ferocious and warlike a band as was comprised in
this villainous and bloodthirsty aggregation. But the constant nervous
tension under which they had worked, never knowing at what instant an
arrow or a lance would leap from the shades of the jungle to pierce
them in the back, had reduced them to a state of fear that only a
speedy departure from the island could conquer.
Their boat was almost completed, two more days would see them safely
launched upon the ocean, and Tsao Ming had promised Thandar that he
would carry him to a civilized port from which he could take a steamer
on his return to America.
Late in the afternoon of the third day since his arrival among the
pirates the men were suddenly startled by the appearance of an
exhausted and blood smeared apparition amongst them. From the nearby
jungle the man had staggered to fall when half-way across the
clearing, spent.
It was Boloon--he who had been captured by the head-hunters the day
before Thandar had been cast upon the shore. Revived with food and
water the fellow told a most extraordinary tale. From the meager scraps
that were afterward translated into pidgin English for Thandar the
Bostonian learned that Boloon had been dragged far inland to a village
of considerable size.
Here he had been placed in a room of one of the long houses to await
the pleasure of the chief. It was hinted that he was to be tortured
before his head was removed to grace the rafters of the chief's palace.
The remarkable portion of his tale related to a strange temple to which
he had been dragged and thrown at the feet of a white goddess. Tsao
Ming and the other pirates were much mystified by this part of the
story, for Boloon insisted that the goddess was white with a mass of
black hair, and that her body was covered by the pelt of a magnificent
black panther.
Though Tsao Ming pointed out that there were no panthers upon this
island Boloon could not be shaken. He had seen with his own eyes, and
he knew. Furthermore, he argued, there were no white goddesses upon the
island, and yet the woman he had seen was white.
When this strange tale was retold to Thandar he could not but recall
that Nadara had worn a black panther skin, but of course it could
not be Nadara--that was impossible. But yet he asked for a further
description of the goddess--the color of her eyes and hair--the
proportions of her body--her height.
To all these questions Boloon gave replies that but caused Thandar's
excitement to wax stronger. And then came the final statement that set
him in a frenzy of hope and apprehension.
"Upon her left hand was a great diamond," said Boloon.
Thandar turned toward Tsao Ming.
"I go inland to the temple," he said, "to see who this white goddess
may be. If you wait two days for me and I return you shall have as much
gold as you ask in payment. If you do not wait repair my canoe and hide
it in the bushes where the man hid who would have killed you but for
Thandar."
"I shall wait three days," replied Tsao Ming. "Nor will I take a single
_fun_ in pay. You saved the life of Tsao Ming--that is not soon to be
forgotten. I would send men with you, but they would not go. They are
afraid of the head-hunters. Too, will I repair your canoe against your
coming after the third day; but," and he shrugged, "you will not come
upon the third day, nor upon the fourth, nor ever, Thandar. It is
better that you forget the foolish story of the frightened Boloon and
come away from this accursed land with Tsao Ming."
But Thandar would not relinquish his intention, and so he parted with
the pirates after receiving from Boloon explicit directions for his
journey toward the mysterious temple and the white goddess who might be
Nadara; and yet who could not be.
Straight into the tangled jungle he plunged, carrying the spear and the
parang of the head-hunter he had killed, and in the string about his
loins one of the long pistols of a dead pirate. This latter Tsao Ming
had forced upon him with a supply of ammunition.