One Maid's Mischief Part 96

Hilton had been very silent for some time, but at last he spoke:

"Chum, old fellow," he said, "I've been thinking about what we are to say."

"Hilton, old fellow, I've been thinking the very same thing."

"It would be too ridiculous to say that we had been carried off by a woman."

"We should be roasted to death!" said Chumbley.

"But she ought to be punished."

"Can't go and carry sword and fire into the woman's home because she took a fancy to you."

"What are we to say, then? I dare not own to this affair!"

"I swear I won't!" said Chumbley.

"Then what is to be done?"

"The only thing seems to me to be that we had better say we were carried off by the Malays."

"Which is a fact," said Hilton.

"And we were taken to a place that we had never seen before."

"Another fact," said Hilton.

"And kept prisoners."

"Which is another fact."

"I think that's best," said Chumbley. "It would be horrible to go and take revenge upon this woman."

"But she deserves to be well punished."

"Well, we are punishing her," said Chumbley, "by coming away, and leaving her in a horrible stew, for she is safe to imagine that we shall go back with a company, and destroy her place. Besides, she will never dare to show her face at the settlement again."

"Well, let the matter rest for the present," said Hilton. "Only let us thank our stars that we have escaped."

"To be sure!" said Chumbley, with a sigh of relief. "Poor woman, I should not like her to be hurt, she behaved so well; and--Hurrah!

there's Harley! Row, you ruffians--row! There--to that landing-stage!"

Then, as the men, who were in a great state of dread as to whether they should be allowed to depart, tremblingly placed the boat alongside the bamboo landing-stage, Hilton sprang out, Chumbley following, after placing some silver coin in the men's hands, and sending them rejoicing away.

"What's that?" cried Chumbley, as he caught part of a sentence and the Resident's hand at the same moment. "Miss Perowne missing?"

"Yes; carried off, I suppose now," said the Resident, between his teeth.

"The same brain must have contrived your absence, though for what I don't know, unless it was for ransom."

Hilton and Chumbley exchanged glances. "Only one brain here could have plotted this," cried the Resident, as he mastered the fact of his friends having been made prisoners in some out-of-the-way place; "and the brain was that of the doubly-dyed, treacherous scoundrel who has all along professed to be our friend. I always suspected it: Helen Perowne is a prisoner in Rajah Murad's hands."

VOLUME THREE, CHAPTER TEN.

HAMET.

The disposition on the part of Helen Perowne and her companion seemed to be to trust the beasts of the jungle sooner than the Rajah; and after a few moments' pause to listen, they went cautiously on, with the cries of the great cat-like creature that they knew to be in their neighbourhood seeming to grow more distant, as if it had been driven off by the noise and firing at the house.

It was terrible work that flight; and had she been alone Helen would have given up in sheer despair, for every atom of growth in the jungle seemed to be enlisted in the Rajah's service, and strove to check the fugitives as they fled. Great thorns hooked and clung to their clothes; ratan canes wound across and across their way, tripping them up, so that again and again they fell heavily; while the dense undergrowth rose up constantly like a wall of verdure, as impenetrable as some monstrous hedge.

Streaming with perspiration, panting with exhaustion, and ready to give up in despair, Helen struggled on, nerved to making fresh attempts by the courage of her companion; but at last the jungle was so dense that any further effort seemed like so much madness, and they paused to rest, Helen sinking down amidst the thorns and leaves, too much exhausted to move.

The Malay girl did not speak, but stood leaning against a tree-trunk, listening for tokens of pursuit, but there was not a sound; and by degrees it dawned upon them that the Rajah's people had taken alarm at the noise, and then, seeing nothing, hearing nothing more, they had quietly returned to their rest; for the probabilities were that they would not venture to disturb the Rajah, who would sleep on in his stupor perhaps till mid-day.

After a time the girl laid her hand upon Helen's shoulder.

"We must try again," she said; and with a weary sigh the fugitive rose and staggered on, following her companion as she tore aside the canes, pushed back th.o.r.n.y growth, and utterly regardless of self, kept on making a way for Helen to follow.

There was a strong display of kindness in her manner, but it was not unmingled with contempt for the helplessness of the English girl, who had to trust entirely to her for every step of their progress.

Just at the very worst time, when they had again become entangled in the wild jungly maze, the Malay girl stopped once more to take breath; and then making an angry effort to free herself from a bramble-like growth that was tearing her sarong into shreds, she uttered a cry of joy, for she found that she had broken through quite a th.o.r.n.y hedge of growth, and was now standing in a narrow pathway, evidently the track made by elephant, buffalo, or other large creatures of the jungle.

Her cheery words aroused Helen to fresh exertion; and following the track, painful as it was, and full of crossing strands and canes, they got on for the next two or three hours pretty well, when they seemed to have descended into marshy ground through which the track led.

Here they found a fresh difficulty, for if the Malay girl had had any doubt before that they were in an elephant path, it was made evident now by the series of great footprints, every one of which was a pitfall of mud and water, the custom of these huge beasts being to step invariably in the tracks left by those that have pa.s.sed before, believing them to be indications of safety; and the result is that in a short time the path becomes in a wet soil one long series of muddy holes.

It was along such a way as this that Helen and her companion struggled on till the sun had risen and the rich shafts of orange and gold came pouring through the dense foliage above their heads.

With the sunrise came light and hope. The sombre forest seemed to be less depressing, and when they had struggled on for another hour, until the heat began to be steamy, a brighter light shone through the trees ahead, and they awakened to the fact that they were near the little river, whose banks they at last reached, to lie down beneath the spreading branches of a huge tree. The boughs formed a screen from everyone who might be pa.s.sing in a boat; and here the Malay girl produced some food which she had had the foresight to bring; and this they ate, watching the rapid, sparkling stream, whose path through the jungle was all sunshine and light, while that of the fugitives had been one of gloom.

As they sat there resting, they now and then directed their attention to the stream, gazing up and down as far as their eyes would reach in search of danger; but sparkling water, blossom-burdened trees, and the occasional glint of some brightly-plumaged bird darting from side to side, was all that met their sight.

They both meant to be watchful, and as soon as they were rested to once more continue their flight, but the exhaustion produced by their unwonted exertions proved to be too much for them, and as the heat increased they both fell into a deep sleep.

Helen and her companion had been slumbering heavily for several hours, ignorant of the flight of time, and in these brief restful moments thoughts of peaceful days had come back to both; while in the sunshine beyond the tree that formed their shelter birds flitted here and there, the brilliant armour-clad beetles winged their reckless flight, making a whirring hum as they dashed over the stream. The surface of the river was flecked with the rising of the bright scaled fish, and what with the varied greens and the beauty of the blossoms that made the sides of the little river quite a garden, all looked peaceful, and as if trouble could not exist upon earth. But danger was near, for two of the Rajah's boats came slowly up-stream with their occupants parting the leaves with bamboo poles, and peering beneath on either side in search of the fugitives; while, in utter ignorance of their proximity, the wearied girls slept on.

A tall, fierce-looking Malay, in a brilliantly-tinted sarong, stood in the prow of the boat nearest to the fugitives, and he was so indefatigable in his efforts to examine every foot of the way, that it seemed impossible for the girls to escape his search.

Nearer came his boat, and still those the crew sought lay insensible to danger, and with Helen's thoughts far back in the past of her pleasant days with her friends at the little settlement. The tall Malay used the light pole he held with the utmost skill, and parted bough after bough, raising this one, depressing that, until it was down in the swift, pure water.

Every now and then he gave some short, sharp order to the men who paddled the boat, so that they sent it in closer or forced it back, giving him abundant opportunity for seeing anyone upon the bank; and in this way they approached the great tree beneath whose umbrageous foliage the two girls slept.

The boat was sent close in, and the swarthy face of the Malay peered between the branches, which he moved with the pole, so that over and over again they helped to shelter those who were sought, and at last the sharp order was given to back out from among the branches; but the moment after the leader rescinded his order and seemed to be desirous of searching more, for he raised a broad-leaved bough, held on by it, and looked in once more beneath the shade, shot with brilliant rays, and with flies dancing up and down in one broad band of sunshine.

That broad band of sunshine shone right athwart the Malay girl's face, and as the searcher saw it a grim smile of satisfaction played for a moment about his lip, and then left him stern-looking and calm.

"Go on," he exclaimed, in his own tongue, as he loosed the branch whose leaves hid the sleeping girl from sight, and the boat went forward, the Malay peering back for a moment with his great opalescent eyeb.a.l.l.s rolling as he looked up and down the great tree, as if fixing it in his mind with the surroundings on either side of the stream. After this he went on in the same matter-of-fact way, pressing the branches aside and examining his bank of the river for quite an hour longer, when the leader of the other boat, which was well in advance, hailed him, and proposed that they should give up the search as of no avail.