One Maid's Mischief Part 106

"Yes," he said. "I will tell her, Miss Stuart. Poor girl! she will need all the consolation that can be given her, and it will be welcome news to her that she is sure of yours."

"Sure of mine, Captain Hilton? Oh, yes. For many years past I have felt like the sister of Helen Perowne."

"Who is happy in possessing so dear a friend," he said, gravely. "May she ever retain your friendship--nay, I should call it sisterly love."

"She shall," said Grey, in a voice that sounded hard and firm. "I am not one to change lightly in my friendships."

"No," he said, quietly; "you cannot be."

"How quiet and unimpulsive he is," thought Grey. "How wanting in eagerness to go to Helen's help. Surely now that she needs all his sympathy and love--now that she must be in a terrible state of suffering--he could not be so base as to forsake her! He could not, he would not do that! I should hate him if he did."

There was a pause then, and they both seemed to be listening to the hum of voices in the next room; and then Grey Stuart said to herself, softly:

"Should I hate him if he did?"

The answer came directly.

"Yes, for the man I could love must be too chivalrous to wrong a woman by neglect in her time of trial."

"Yes," said Hilton, rousing himself from a state of abstraction, "we must soon be upon the river; I expected that we should have been there before now."

"I pray Heaven for your safety and success, Captain Hilton," said Grey Stuart, gravely.

"And for Chumbley's too?" he said.

"And for Lieutenant Chumbley's and Mr Harley's too," she said, in a low voice.

As she spoke the door opened, and Mrs Bolter entered, followed by the Resident; and as soon as the former was seated, Grey rose, crossed the room, and went and stood with her hands resting upon her chair, the act seeming to give her strength to bear what was becoming painful.

VOLUME THREE, CHAPTER SEVENTEEN.

A QUESTION OF ESCAPE.

Bang! _Crash_!

The report of the bra.s.s lelah and the stroke of the iron ball as it shivered the branches of the trees or buried itself in the trunk of some palm-tree growing near the bank, but without injuring the occupants of the sampan in the slightest degree.

The faces of Ismael and his companion were now of a curious muddy hue, and they shivered with dread, but they held the doctor even more in awe, and obeyed his orders to keep on paddling with such strength as was in them left, and seemed ready enough to persevere as long as the boat would float beneath them, hopeless as the case might be.

As the doctor very well knew, it was only a question of time, and had he been alone he would not have hesitated about surrendering; but with Helen in his charge, there was too much at stake. So he determined, with all the stubbornness of an Englishman, to hold out to the very last extremity.

"I'm a man of peace," he muttered, "but I've had to fight in my time, and if I am driven to it, they shall buy Helen Perowne at the cost of three or four lives at least; and if I can manage it, the chiefs shall be one."

He glanced at Helen, who lay back with her eyes closed, and her swarthy face seemed to rouse a bitter feeling of anger in the doctor's breast.

"The blackguards!" he growled. "To serve an English lady like that.

I'll make some of them pay for it, and dearly too."

"I say, Bolter," he muttered, "I'd no idea that you were such a brave fellow. I don't feel half so nervous as I expected I should, and hang me if I'll give up till I have fairly fought it out. I wonder whether I could hit master Rajah Murad at this distance? Well, let him put his head over the side of the boat, and I'll try--What, my dear," he cried, as Helen spoke feebly.

"Is our position hopeless, Doctor?" she said.

"Hopeless? Not a bit of it, my dear. I'm going to exhibit another medicine directly. You lie quite still and don't raise your head.

Trust to your medical man, my dear. Always have confidence in your medical man."

For answer she turned her great dark eyes upon him with a look of such hopeless misery that the doctor set his teeth hard.

"By Jove!" he cried, starting in spite of himself, as there was a sharp report and a bullet whistled close by him. "Hi! you scoundrels! How dare you fire upon a boat containing a Queen's officer."

He let the b.u.t.t of his gun rest in the bottom of the vessel, and turned and shook his fist threateningly at the advancing prahu; but the only answer elicited was another shot, not by any means so well aimed as the last, the sound of which seemed to ring in his ear as it whizzed by.

"The scoundrels shall smart for this!" he cried, furiously. "They've fired--bear witness of this, Ismael--they've fired upon a boat containing a British officer and an English lady, and--hang 'em! there they go again!"

And this shot and another came whizzing by, but the rapid motion of the sampan, the want of practice on the part of the Malays, and their bad management of their clumsy gun, kept them from doing any mischief to the fugitives.

"At last!" cried the doctor, as the dense ma.s.s of vegetation that screened the mouth of the little river came in sight. "Now then, my lads, keep up. You shall be rewarded handsomely for this. Make a good dash for it, and we shall soon be clear."

Doctor Bolter's words were big, and his face was cheerful, but his hopes were small, and his heart felt very sad, for he knew well enough that unless as soon as they cleared the canes and bushes before them, and got out into the open river, they found help or concealment, which was extremely doubtful, they would be at a terrible disadvantage. For out in the wide river the prahu would have plenty of room to manoeuvre; it could be driven at full speed, turned easily, and would either run them down or come alongside and grapple them without the slightest difficulty.

"But I'll fight for it to the last," muttered the doctor, as he caught a fresh glance from Helen's sorrowful eyes. "Poor little woman! what a fidget she would be in if she only knew! Never mind, she would pat me on the back for what I am doing; and whatever she might say against it on my account, she'd want me to fight."

He looked back at the prahu, which was still advancing, and raised his gun to fire, but only lowered it again.

"No," he muttered; "a waste of shot. I couldn't hit the steersman."

He stood thinking for a moment, and then, laying down his gun, he took up a spare paddle and began working with all his might, striving to urge the boat forward.

The help came when it was most needed, for the floating reeds and bushes were no light obstacles to so small a boat, and they began to lose ground now as they struggled through. But after a fierce interval of effort, and just as the doctor was growing giddy with excitement, and half blind with exertion, the last ma.s.s of bushes was pa.s.sed, and they floated clear into the swift stream of the main river.

"Now for it, my lads!" cried the doctor, manfully, the perspiration streaming down his red-brown face, as he made the water flash from his paddle; "we shall do it now."

But before they had gone fifty yards down the stream, at a far higher rate than before, they heard the rustle and crashing of the big prahu forcing its way through the bushes, and in another minute it, too, would have been clear.

Fortune does, however, sometimes favour the brave; for just then there was a sharp crack, and one of the prahu's sweeps broke short off, the man who pulled it fell back heavily against his neighbour, who in turn was thrown out, and like skittles, half a dozen of the rowers were in confusion.

This happened at a critical moment, just as the men were rowing their hardest, and the result of the check on one side was that the head of the prahu was pulled sharply round, and the stem crashed in amongst the bushes to the left of the steersman, ran right into the soft, muddy bank, and the vessel lay across the stream.

Doctor Bolter could not tell what was wrong; but he could hear the noise of shouting and the confusion that followed, enough to explain to him that there was something very much amiss, and in the satisfaction that it gave him he mentally exclaimed:

"I don't wish harm to any man upon the face of this little earth, but if that prahu and all on board are going to the bottom, it will be a blessing indeed."

This respite gave the Malay boatmen heart, and bending once more to their task, they strove hard to send the sampan onward so as to get round a curve of the stream where the trees of the jungle grew high upon the bank and spread far out over the river. This bend once pa.s.sed, they would be out of sight when the prahu cleared the bushes.

It was a long way ahead, and the shouting and confusion seemed so terribly close at hand that the doctor fully expected another shot; but he paddled bravely on, and at last this part of their task was achieved, giving them a fresh sensation of relief as they saw the wide, open stretch of river before them, with its verdant, tree-shaded banks.

But they looked in vain for help: the stream was clear of boats, and the doctor knew that concealment was now their only chance. The Malay-- Ismael--knew it too, for, raising his paddle from the water, he pointed to a dense spot that seemed admirably adapted for a hiding-place; the doctor nodded a.s.sent, and with a sweep of the paddle the course of the boat was altered, her head being set across the stream. Then, as the doctor looked back to see that they were not followed, a warning cry from the boatmen made him lower his head, just as the sampan glided in beneath the overhanging boughs, and they floated on in a pleasant arcade of leafy boughs, the grateful shadows shutting them entirely from the sight of pa.s.sers-by upon the river, whose glittering surface they surveyed through a thick screen of leaves.