The Jungle Girl Part 32

Wargrave and Muriel opened on the pursuers with their automatic weapons and checked them. Tashi was about a hundred yards from shelter when a shot struck him. He stumbled and fell, while a howl of delight rose from his foes. As he tried to struggle up bullets kicked up the dust round him and several arrows dropped near.

"Muriel, loose off as many cartridges as you can to cover me," said Wargrave, laying his pistol beside her.

Before the girl realised his meaning he had sprung out from the rocks and was running towards Tashi. For a moment the pursuers were puzzled by his action and then fired their rifles and matchlocks and shot arrows at him. But unscathed he reached the wounded man who had been so faithful a comrade to him. Raising him on his back he staggered towards the rocks, while Muriel pumped lead at the enemy and succeeded in keeping down their fire somewhat. As Wargrave laid the ex-lama on the ground in shelter Tashi seized his hand and touched it with his lips and forehead in silent grat.i.tude. Frank hurriedly examined and bandaged the wound made by a large-calibre bullet, which had pa.s.sed through the leg below the knee, lacerating the muscles but not injuring the bone. Then he took up his post again, while Tashi dragged himself up behind a rock and opened fire on their foes.

These were for the most part Bhutanese, but there were several Chinese among them.

"Look! Look, Frank! There's the _Amban_," cried Muriel excitedly, pointing to a man who rode into sight along the pa.s.s on a white mule.

She fired at him. The bullet missed him but apparently went unpleasantly close, for Yuan Shi Hung galloped back into shelter behind a projecting b.u.t.tress of the cliffs.

The attackers numbered sixty or eighty. They were apparently staggered by the rapid fire poured into them, which killed or wounded several of them. Some tried to find shelter by huddling against the side of the pa.s.s and others flung themselves on the ground behind boulders; but the leaders urged them on.

There could be little doubt as to the issue of the fight. The bullets from the Chinamen's rifles and the Bhutanese matchlocks spattered the rocks or the face of the cliff; but the archers began to shoot almost vertically into the air from their strong bamboo bows, and several iron-tipped, four-feathered arrows dropped behind the cover, one missing Wargrave by a hand's breadth.

Fearing for Muriel he tried to shield her with his body.

"What's the use, dearest?" she said. "If you are killed I don't want to live. Indeed, we must both die now. I shall not be taken alive. Kiss me and tell me once more that you love me."

He held her to his heart in a pa.s.sionate embrace and kissed her fondly.

"They are coming now, sahib," said Tashi. "And I have only a few cartridges left."

The lovers paid no heed.

"Goodbye, my dear, dear love," whispered Muriel, "I'm happier dying with you than living without you."

Frank kissed her, solemnly now, for the last time. Then they turned to face the enemy. The swordsmen were ma.s.sing for a charge. Crouching low they held their shields before them and waved their long-bladed _dahs_ above their heads, uttering fierce yells.

Suddenly the _Amban_ and other mounted men who had been sheltering out of sight dashed into view and rode madly into the rear ranks, knocking down and trampling on anyone in their way. The men on foot looked behind and broke into a run, coming on in a disordered mob. But it was not a charge--it was more like a panic. For with wild cries of frantic terror they fled past the defenders who, fearing a trick, fired their last cartridges into them, dropping several, some of whom tried to rise and drag themselves on in dread of something terrible behind.

Then into sight came a vast herd of wild elephants, filling the gorge from cliff to cliff and moving at a slow trot. A huge bull led them, lines of other tuskers behind him, crowds of females and calves bringing up the rear. The onset of the ma.s.s of great monsters was terrifying. It was appalling, irresistible.

Muriel cried out:

"It's Badshah! Frank, it's Badshah! Look at the leader! Don't you see?"

Tashi stared at the oncoming herd. Then he quietly unfixed his pistol and put it away in the holster.

"We are saved, sahib," he said with the calm fatalism of the East. "The G.o.d of the Elephants has sent them."

And he limped out from behind the rocks. The two Europeans followed him.

Their foes had disappeared, all but the dead and wounded.

Badshah--for it was he--swerved out of his course and came to them, while the herd went on, opening out to pa.s.s him as he sank to his knees before the humans. Tashi, despite his wound, climbed on to his neck, while Wargrave mounted behind him and Muriel took her seat on the broad back, clinging to her lover. Then the tusker rose and moved swiftly after the herd.

As he rounded the bend a strange sight met the eyes of those he carried.

Their enemies were huddled together in terror near the brink of the tunnel from which the surging water rushed out. Some endeavoured to pluck up courage to throw themselves into the river, while the majority had turned to face the elephants. But they were paralysed with fright. A few tried to discharge their fire-arms or loosed their arrows with trembling hands. As the elephants, quickening their pace, rushed on in an irresistible ma.s.s some of the men, crazed with fright, ran to meet them. Others flung themselves to the ground where they were.

But over both the great monsters pa.s.sed, treading them to pulp under the ponderous feet. The animals of the mounted men, as terrified as their riders, swung about and sprang headlong into the river. Many of the men on foot did the same. The heads of animals and men appeared and disappeared, bobbing up and down, then their bodies were rolled over and over, tossed up on the waves and sucked under. One by one they disappeared.

A few of the panic-stricken mob had tried to climb the precipitous cliffs in vain. One, however, getting his hands into a narrow, slanting crack, dragged himself up a few feet.

It was the _Amban_. Frank drew his pistol; but Muriel clung to his arm and cried:

"Oh, spare the poor wretch!"

Tashi had no scruples, but his magazine was empty and he searched in vain for a cartridge.

But Yuan Shi Hung's time had come. Badshah's trunk shot out and caught the climber's ankle. The Chinaman was plucked from the face of the cliff and hurled to the ground. A frenzied shriek burst from him as the tusk was driven into his shuddering body, which in an instant was trodden to a b.l.o.o.d.y pulp. Muriel hid her face against her lover, but the agony of the wretch's dying yell rang in her ears.

Not one of their enemies was left alive. Then the elephants one by one slid and slithered down into the rushing water which was very little below the brink. The mothers supported the youngest calves with their trunks, the less immature climbing on to their backs. Tashi checked Badshah as he was about to follow the herd into the river and, lame as he was, slid down to the ground. He searched the crushed and mangled corpses of his fellow-countrymen and collected their girdles until he had enough to knot and plait into two ropes, one to go about Badshah's neck, the other around the great body. More girdles sufficed to join these together and supply cords by which the men and the woman on his back could tie themselves on to the ropes and to each other securely.

When this was done Badshah slid into the river. As elephants do he sank in the water until only the upper part of his head and the tip of his upraised trunk were above it. Without the precaution that Tashi had taken his riders would have been instantly swept away.

Only elephants could have battled successfully with that raging torrent.

The upflung spray and leaping waves hid the herd from the fugitives as they clung desperately to the ropes and to each other.

Eighteen months had gone by. In the garden of the Political Agent's bungalow in Ranga Duar Colonel Dermot, completely restored to health, and his wife stood with his a.s.sistant, Major Hunt and Macdonald. They were watching Mrs. Wargrave who, with Brian and Eileen clinging to her, was holding out her two months' old baby to a great elephant with a single tusk. The animal raised its trunk as though in salute, then, lowering it, gently touched with its sensitive tip the laughing infant whose tiny hand instinctively clutched it and held it fast.

With a smile Muriel turned her head and looked at her husband.

"Badshah has accepted him. Your son is free of the herd," said Colonel Dermot.