Gold Out of Celebes Part 5

Then he hailed forward:

"Mr. Rolfe! Get lines. Carry them to those trees. Hurry!" and to Little he barked: "You, Little, get aft here, and for G.o.d's own sake, keep your meddling hooks off things as you come!"

Little started aft, abashed at last. The careful manner in which he avoided contact with crew or gear would have made Barry grin under any other circ.u.mstances; but now near disaster impended, simply on account of the irrepressible salesman's voracious appet.i.te for knowledge.

As he approached the p.o.o.p ladder, Little grimaced up at the skipper and shrugged his shoulders resignedly in antic.i.p.ation of the storm. Barry's face was flushed and angry, and his strong teeth shone white over his compressed nether lip. The brigantine's stern was awfully close to the edge of the bar, in spite of the swift action of Vandersee, who, in leaving the wheel and before going down to his boat, let go the big mainsail and took the after pressure off the vessel. Now the big second mate hailed from the top of the midship house.

"This boat's all open, sir. She won't float a minute!"

"Oh, blazes!" howled the skipper, flinging his cap on the deck. "Send a man to swim with the line. Any of them. They're all water rats."

"Can't make a man swim here, sir," returned the Hollander, and even now his voice was velvety soft. "Alligators are too thick."

Little paused on the bottom step of the ladder. He measured with his eye the distance to the nearest point ash.o.r.e. Fifty yards it was; and on the water's edge grew a tangled ma.s.s of slimy roots, rising to gnarled, moss-covered trunks, monstrosities rather than trees. Even at that distance suspicious logs could be seen lying half in, half out of the water; but a s.p.a.ce ten yards wide, including some of the biggest and ugliest of the trees, seemed bare of those logs.

Barry sent a hail along to the forecastle to avast heaving on the cable; for some of the watch had remained on deck, when the rest went below to pa.s.s up lines, and were now taking spasmodic, aimless jerks at the windla.s.s. The mate drove his brown-skinned men to marvellous feats with coiling lines, determined to be ready with his part when the boat was ready. He had not heard Vandersee's report on the boat.

Now on the port side, that farthest from the bar, heaps of cleverly faked-down small lines were ranged along the waterways, in preparation for any emergency of drifting boat. The big Manila hawser lay coiled on the fore hatch, all ready to bend on when a small line was safely ash.o.r.e. All these things Barry took in with quick professional perception. But now he was stumped. He was the last man on earth to send a man where he himself dare not go; and those filthy, suspicious logs had only too well corroborated the second mate's hint of alligators.

He was aroused from his contemplation of them by a shout from Rolfe, echoed by Vandersee, and followed immediately by a tremendous splash and the whiz of small line running over a teakwood rail. A soft-eyed Javanese seaman worked feverishly near the fore rigging, flinging coil after coil of line overboard until the end was at hand. Then he stooped swiftly, seized the end of a fresh coil, and stood ready to repeat.

Barry looked for Little now and missed him. He ran to the side. An excited chattering among the crew forward, and gesticulating arms, directed his gaze, and he gasped with amazed admiration. Surging through the muddy tide with a powerful trudgeon stroke, making a wake of swirling bubbles across which snaked the black coils of a heaving line, Little headed for the sh.o.r.e. Once he disappeared, as a freak of churning waters gripped several coils of line and jerked him back and under. But the innocent cause of all the trouble made no false estimate of his ability to rectify his error. He forged straight for his mark--that ma.s.s of slimy roots and mossy trunks--and soon he was seen to rise waist high from the water, stumble heavily as his feet sank deep in the sticky ooze, and, recovering, plunge headlong up the bank with his line.

A cry of helpless apprehension burst from the brigantine's company as one of those suspicious logs stirred into reptilian life. A great, warty snout jutted upwards, with a swift half-turn towards the intruder, and the yellow water was swept into a furious whirlpool as the saurian secured leverage to turn by a convulsion of his powerful tail.

The cry rose to a shout of warning, and with the shout Barry sprang below to his cabin. He returned on the run with a big-game rifle in time to hear a ripple of relief run from end to end of the ship; and his eyes opened wide with astonishment when he saw the cause.

Other muddy logs had come to life on the foresh.o.r.e and Little's att.i.tude would have been ludicrous but for the terrible risk he ran. He stared at the suddenly awakened monsters as the s.e.xton of a church might stare if one of his gargoyles suddenly spoke to him. But there was no fear in his bearing; simply the natural wonder of a man faced by a situation which, more than likely, he had disbelieved the possibility of until that moment.

He had kept tight hold of his line, and as Barry watched, he gathered up the slack and with a whoop jumped nimbly over the back of the nearest alligator, charging now with open jaws. As he landed on his feet, he dodged behind a root, and his clear cry rang over the water.

"The big rope, Barry, quick! I can dodge these big lizards. It's a cinch!"

The mate bent on the hawser, and men picked up great coils of it and flung them overboard. Barry stood silent, dumbfounded, and watched Little haul in his line, only pausing from time to time to pa.s.s from one side of the tree to the other, as the alligators closed in on him. The eye-end of the hawser splashed up the shoal water, was wrapped securely, but in sorry landsman's fashion, about the big roots, and in response to a howl of triumph from the sh.o.r.e, Barry sang out:

"After capstan here! Get a strain on the line, Mr. Rolfe!" And while the dripping rope crawled in through the fair-lead, cracking and tw.a.n.ging to the strain of the ship's arrested drift, he stood at the rail, rifle in hand, and muttered:

"He's a comic-opera sailor, all right; but Lordy! what a man he'll make with his feet on dry earth! Let go my anchor, hey? By G.o.dfrey, he can let go the forestay when we're going about, and I'll forgive him after this."

The ship's stern answered to the steady pull of the line and dragged away from the edge of the sand until she pointed fair into the channel again. Forward, men hove in the cable until the anchor was underfoot; aft, men tailed on to the main halliards and sent the great mainsail aloft with a will. Barry waved the second mate back to the wheel and sent Rolfe forward to finish picking up the anchor. Then he swung around at a shout from the sh.o.r.e. He had momentarily forgotten Little.

"d.a.m.nation!" he breathed, and jerked his rifle to his shoulder. Then he dropped his elbow to the rail, took snap-sights and fired.

The greatest alligator of them all, the patriarch of all saurians, had attacked Little. That agile young man saw his foe in time to avoid the rush by leaping over the straining hawser, knee-high, and the ugly jaws closed with a crash on the rope. Barry's shot rang out simultaneously with the singing snap of a Manila strand, and the heavy bullet chugged home in the vulnerable skin on the alligator's throat.

The _Barang_ gathered way, and the hawser sagged into the water as the strain was released. Whatever Little's limitations were as a seaman, he lacked nothing of common sense; he saw that the ship was independent of the line now, and Barry received another shock while trying to decide how to get his friend safely on board again.

"That's the stuff, Barry!" Little shouted, capering madly as the alligator rolled over towards the river. "Keep your blue eye on these fellows and haul away on the rope!"

With the words he was sawing away busily at the Manila with a fearsome knife he had invested in as part of a sailor's outfit.

"Stop! You're crazy!" bawled the skipper. Rolfe cursed luridly, and even Vandersee's sleek face clouded.

If Little heard, he made no sign. Without a wasted second after the line parted, he followed the running end down to the water, took a grip on it, and plunged in with a shout:

"Pull away! Watch out for my toes, Barry!"

The little brown men of the crew needed no order to pull. The sheer intrepidity of the man on the line had ensured their reverence and loyalty, and the heavy hawser came inboard with a whiz. At the end of it struggled Little, striking out frantically with his legs and free hand to keep his head above the water at the pull of those eager arms. As he took the water, from four separate points along the bank great reptiles slithered; their snouts and protuberant eyes left behind them sinister ripples as they converged on the swimmer.

Barry watched with set lips and glittering eyes. He well knew the improbability of hitting a vulnerable spot in a swimming alligator; his marksmanship was scarcely equal to the certainty of finding one of those wicked, armor-lidded eyes. It was with a hard gulp of fear in his throat that he pressed the trigger for a second shot.

The bullet took the foremost reptile on the point of the snout, checking the beast and causing a flurry among its companions. Little gained a few precious feet, and as a patch of dirty gray belly showed for an instant in the over-roll of the smitten beast, Barry fired again, and his friend gained a little more.

Another factor now entered into the contest, and the ex-salesman was safe. The brigantine was steadily stemming the tide, and now fairly past the bar had reached far beyond the point to which the hawser had been made fast. As she forged slowly ahead, with gathering speed as she left behind the influence of the big eddy, the rope trailed more and more astern and the ship's speed was added to that of the incoming hawser.

Little was hauled up to the quarter, and Barry himself let down the boarding ladder and went over the side to a.s.sist the half-drowned swimmer on board.

When Little had coughed several pints of muddy river water from his system, he looked up at Barry with a whimsical grin, as if prepared now to take the calling down that his recent action had delayed. But the skipper had nothing to say about the escapade with his anchors. He gripped his friend's hand with a hard squeeze and took him below for a warming shot of rum with a simply spoken:

"Thanks, Little. That's the greatest thing I ever saw. You're free of the ship forever!"

CHAPTER FIVE

Late in the afternoon the _Barang_ rounded a bend in the river and came in sight of the trading station. The yellow, muddy stream swirled at her blunt bows, and the matted verdure on the banks reduced the hot breeze to a zephyr that barely gave her headway.

Bamboo thickets alternated with patches of dark forest; cane-walled native houses peeped from beneath overhanging trees; silent, sarong-clad people suspended their leisurely activities to stare at the pa.s.sing ship, and noisy birds and chattering monkeys redoubled their din at the apparition.

A slimy reed-grown creek opened out to starboard, and evil miasma arose from the rotting tree trunks across its mouth; the entire scene was one of dreary, soul-searing repulsiveness and made a sorry jest of the strongly stockaded trading post whose defensive armament could be plainly seen peeping over a woven cane parapet.

"Heavens, what a dismal hole!" e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed Little, as the brigantine swung slowly around the bend. "Mean t' tell me white people live here, Barry? I wouldn't swap a shop-soiled typewriter for the whole box and dice!"

"Sure white people live here. Why would we be coming, else?" retorted Barry impatiently. He was scanning the buildings. Several white-clad figures pa.s.sed and repa.s.sed among the huddle of squalid huts, all apparently bound towards the river wharf to meet the ship.

"Wonder where the Mission is," the skipper went on musingly, to himself rather than to Little.

"I get your drift," Little grinned back. "Yes, I wonder where she lives, too."

Something gleamed in Barry's eyes that warned against jesting on that subject, and Little stepped aside with a shrug and watched Vandersee as that stolid worthy piloted the ship up to the crazy wharf with consummate skill.

An anchor dropped in mid-channel stopped her way, and the forward canvas was hauled down. A pull to windward on the mainsheet backed the big mainsail and drove the stern towards the dock, whereon a mob of naked brown men awaited the casting of sh.o.r.e lines. The starboard quarter grated against the piling, and the open stern windows overhung the stringpiece for a moment. Barry was deeply interested in the probable location of the Mission--far too deeply interested for a shipmaster docking his ship--and Little, too, had his mind and eyes on the scene of his imminent adventures to the exclusion of all else. Rolfe, the dour chief mate, was where a good mate should be, on the forecastle head, looking out for lines and fenders. Vandersee alone appeared capable of handling his duties and giving attention to the sh.o.r.e at the same time.

Never relaxing his vigilance for a moment in placing the brigantine advantageously in her berth, the burly Hollander nevertheless had an eye open for other things. A cloud pa.s.sed over his shiny face as the stern touched; he stepped swiftly to the rail and peered over; two natives stood by, and he sent them hurrying forward with a Low Malay expletive that made them jump in fright. Then he peered over the side again, his face cleared, and he returned to his post at the stern fair-lead, shouting to his men to carry along the sternfasts. Barry turned at the shout, as if just awakening from a dream, and the second mate told him respectfully:

"It would be as well to have the stern windows closed, sir. The natives here are not too honest, in spite of the Mission's good work."

Barry gave the necessary order through the skylight and shook himself into a more vital interest in his work. He opened his mouth to direct the mate in some detail of mooring ship, and it remained open until he half-closed it in a whistle of surprise and seized Little violently by the arm. His eyes were fixed upon a figure walking easily and unconcernedly along the wharf.