One Maid's Mischief Part 57

"'Tisn't Hilton!" he said to himself. "One of the servants, perhaps, keeping up his Mohammedan rules on the question of wine upon the wrong side."

"Hallo! you sir!" he cried aloud. "'Tisn't safe to lie there; do you hear?" and going down on one knee, he turned the figure completely over.

"Here wake up or the crocs will have you! Is anything the matter?"

"Help me up," came in reply, spoken in good English.

Chumbley was too earnest a man to resist that appeal; and bending lower, he tried to pa.s.s one hand beneath the prostrate figure, the man feebly laying his hands upon the lieutenant the while.

Then, in an instant, the feeble clasp became one of iron; and before Chumbley could more than realise that he was being held, a second figure bounded from behind a bush on to his back, dexterously throwing a sort of bag over his head and drawing it tight about his neck.

The young officer was taken by surprise; but he was not so easy a prey as Hilton. As a rule, Chumbley resembled the elephant in his slow, ponderous movement. Now, there was something almost leonine in his activity, the latent almost herculean strength he possessed being brought into play.

Uttering a smothered roar, he tried to shake off his a.s.sailants as they clung to his back and neck, pinioning his arms, and holding on so closely, that in the dark the figures of the three men seemed like one huge monstrous creature writhing savagely upon the gra.s.s.

Four more dark figures had suddenly appeared upon the scene, looking weird and strange in the starlight; and while the distant sound of voices, with an occasional burst of laughter, came to where the struggle was going on, all here was so quiet--save for the oppressed breathing-- that no attention was drawn towards them from the visitor-dotted lawn.

The fresh-comers leaped at Chumbley like dogs at their hunted quarry; but so fierce was the resistance that one of them was dashed to the earth, the others shaken off, and the young man followed up the display of his tremendous strength by making a blindfold effort to ran.

The probabilities are that, as he had instinctively taken the direction leading to the house, he would have got so far that his a.s.sailants would not have cared to follow, had not one of them thrust out a foot as Chumbley was pa.s.sing, and tripped him up, when he fell with a heavy thud to the ground.

Before he could make a fresh effort to rise, half a dozen Malays were upon him; and while some sat and knelt upon, others bound him hand and foot.

Then they paused to listen whether the struggle had been overheard; but finding it had excited no attention either at the house or the Residency island, they leisurely rolled their prisoner over and over down the gra.s.sy slope into a waiting boat close up to the bank. A few vessels of water were dipped, and quickly poured over the gra.s.s where the struggle had taken place, and then once more the star-spangled surface of the river was broken up as a shadowy boat softly glided out to the middle of the river, and then seemed to die away.

But the incidents of the night were not yet at an end, Fate seemed to lend her aid to bring them to one peculiar bent.

For, hot and weary of the insipid attentions of her new conquest, and f.a.gged out with her task of entertaining so many guests, Helen Perowne began to think of how she should escape, wishing the while that everyone would go, and far from satisfied with her last encounter with Hilton.

She looked round the lit-up s.p.a.ce for someone on whom to inflict herself, but Hilton was not there; she could see neither Chumbley nor the Resident, only several of the younger men, merchants and civil officers--no one at all worth talking to save the chaplain, who had been watching her wistfully all the evening, and who now stood with one hand resting upon a chair, looking as if he would have given his life for one kind word from her lips.

"Poor Arthur!" she said, in a half amused, half troubled way, "I wish he would not be so weak?"

She gave another impatient look round, but there was no victim worthy of her arrows; and with an imperious glance at Arthur Rosebury, she let her eyes once more pa.s.s over the various groups of guests, for the most part carrying on an animated conversation, and turned to enter the house.

Just as she reached one of the open French windows, a Malay servant approached, and saluted her respectfully.

"The master says will the mistress come down the garden a minute to speak to him?"

"How tiresome!" she exclaimed petulantly. "Where is my father?"

"By the river, mistress, where it is cool to smoke," replied the man, softly. "He says he will not keep you, but you must come at once."

This was all in broken English, but sufficiently plain to be understood.

"He might have come to me," said Helen, impatiently. "I am so hot and tired. There, go on. No, not that way. Let us go by the side path."

The man bowed and went on, with Helen following, when the chaplain seized the opportunity to join her.

"It is getting cold and damp, Miss Perowne," he said, softly. "Will you let me put this over your shoulders?"

"What!" she said; "have you been carrying that ever since I gave it to you hours ago?"

The chaplain bowed, and held the light, filmy shawl, that he had felt it a joy to bear, ready to throw over her shoulders.

"No," she cried, petulantly, "I am too hot as it is. There," she cried, relenting, as she saw his fallen countenance, and for want of another victim, "you may come with me and carry the shawl till I want to put it on."

The chaplain's heart gave a bound, and, too pleased to speak, he followed Helen closely, as the man led her towards the bottom of the lawn, where, as they drew nearer, a dark figure could be dimly seen slowly pacing up and down.

"How angry dear Mary would be if she knew," thought the Reverend Arthur; "but I cannot help it. I suppose I am very weak, and it is my fate?"

"What is wrong now?" thought Helen, whose conscience was quick to take alarm. "Is he going to speak to me about Hilton? No; he would not have--he could not have been so cowardly as to speak to my father about our quarrel."

They were very near now, and Helen could see that her father had one hand up to his face, resting the elbow in his other hand.

"It cannot be about Murad. That must be over," mused Helen. Then aloud, "Is anything the matter, papa? Are you unwell?"

At that moment she realised the fact that the figure in evening dress was not her father, the chaplain noticing her start, and trying to go forward to her aid; but, as he took a step, a hand was clapped over his lips, an arm tightly embraced him, and as he dimly saw a white handkerchief tied across Helen's face, he was lifted from the ground and borne away, too much surprised to do more than struggle weakly at such a disadvantage that even a strong man would have been as helpless as a child.

Helen made an effort to shriek for aid, but a black cloud seemed suddenly to envelop her in the shape of a great cloth, wrapping her round and round. Then she felt herself lifted from her feet, and half-stifled, half-fainting with the horror of her situation, she was just conscious of being carried for a few minutes, and then of being placed in a boat; while in the midst of her horror and excitement there seemed to come up before her the faces of her three old mistresses at the calm, quiet school, then that of Grey Stuart looking reproachfully, and then all faded away into one complete void.

VOLUME TWO, CHAPTER ELEVEN.

A FLOATING CAPTIVITY.

What seemed to be an endless ride by water, during which the captives felt over and over again as if they would be suffocated by the folds of the cloths in which they were enveloped.

Several times had the two first prisoners made such desperate efforts to free themselves that the boats in which they were rocked dangerously, that in which Chumbley had been thrown shipping a little water more than once; but finding by degrees that it was only a waste of strength, and contenting themselves with the idea that though an Englishman may never know when he is beaten, they had done everything possible to vindicate their character, they lay quite still, dripping with perspiration and gasping for air.

An hour must have gone by when, in each boat, as the prisoner lay perfectly quiescent, it seemed to strike the captors almost simultaneously that if something were not done suffocation might ensue.

Under these circ.u.mstances efforts were made to give them a little of that bounteous provision of air that was waiting to revive their exhausted frames.

Chumbley was lying upon his face in the bottom of the boat, the exhaustion having produced a semi-delirious sensation, in which he fancied that he was in evening dress, of a very thick texture, dancing in a crowded ballroom, and so giddy that he was in a constant state of alarm lest he should hurl his partner, the Malay princess, headlong upon the floor.

This sensation kept coming and going with saner thoughts of having done his best, and its being useless to struggle, in the midst of one of which intervals he awoke to the fact that his hands were being held tightly behind him, and back to back. Then someone, with a deftness of habit that told of long custom, tied his thumbs together, and then his little fingers.

Next he felt a stout cord pa.s.sed round his ankles and another about his legs just above the knees, after which the thick cloth was drawn from his head, and he gasped and panted as he filled his lungs again and again with the pure night air, which cleared his brain and sent the crowded ballroom, the thick costume, and the giddiness of the waltz far back into the unreal region from which they came.

For a moment he revelled in the sight of the brilliant star-lit heavens, and then, almost before he knew it, a cloth was bound tightly round his eyes.

"A seizure by banditti," muttered Chumbley, "quite in the romantic style, and I shall be held to ransom, when, seeing that I have nothing but my pay--and that is hardly enough for my expenses--I may say, in the words of the monkey who held out his tail to the chained-up dog, 'Don't you wish you may get it!' Oh, I say, though, I'm as sore as if I'd been thrashed. Whatever game is this?"

"If you will promise to be silent," said a deep voice at his ear in the Malayan tongue, "we will not thrust a cloth into your mouth."

"I wish they'd pour a gla.s.s of Ba.s.s into it instead," thought Chumbley.

"I say, you sir," he replied, in as good Malayan as he could command, "what does this mean?"