The Wings of the Morning Part 39

"It is not exactly _frappe_," he said, handing her the insipid beverage, "but, under other conditions, it is a wine almost worthy to toast you in."

She fancied she had never before noticed what a charming smile he had.

"'Toast' is a peculiarly suitable word," she cried. "I am simply frizzling. In these warm clothes----"

She stopped. For the first time since that prehistoric period when she was "Miss Deane" and he "Mr. Jenks" she remembered the manner of her garments.

"It is not the warm clothing you feel so much as the want of air,"

explained the sailor readily. "This tarpaulin has made the place very stuffy, but we must put up with it until sundown. By the way, what is that?"

A light tap on the tarred canvas directly over his head had caught his ear. Iris, glad of the diversion, told him she had heard the noise three or four times, but fancied it was caused by the occasional rustling of the sheet on the uprights.

Jenks had not allowed his attention to wander altogether from external events. Since the Dyaks' last escapade there was no sign of them in the valley or on either beach. Not for trivial cause would they come again within range of the Lee-Metfords.

They waited and listened silently. Another tap sounded on the tarpaulin in a different place, and they both concurred in the belief that something had darted in curved flight over the ledge and fallen on top of their protecting shield.

"Let us see what the game is," exclaimed the sailor. He crept to the back of the ledge and drew himself up until he could reach over the sheet. He returned, carrying in his hand a couple of tiny arrows.

"There are no less than seven of these things sticking in the canvas,"

he said. "They don't look very terrible. I suppose that is what my Indian friend meant by warning me against the trees on the right."

He did not tell Iris all the Mahommedan said. There was no need to alarm her causelessly. Even whilst they examined the curious little missile another flew up from the valley and lodged on the roof of their shelter.

The shaft of the arrow, made of some extremely hard wood, was about ten inches in length. Affixed to it was a pointed fish-bone, sharp, but not barbed, and not fastened in a manner suggestive of much strength. The arrow was neither feathered nor grooved for a bowstring. Altogether it seemed to be a childish weapon to be used by men equipped with lead and steel.

Jenks could not understand the appearance of this toy. Evidently the Dyaks believed in its efficacy, or they would not keep on pertinaciously dropping an arrow on the ledge.

"How do they fire it?" asked Iris. "Do they throw it?"

"I will soon tell you," he replied, reaching for a rifle.

"Do not go out yet," she entreated him. "They cannot harm us. Perhaps we may learn more by keeping quiet. They will not continue shooting these things all day."

Again a tiny arrow traveled towards them in a graceful parabola. This one fell short. Missing the tarpaulin, it almost dropped on the girl's outstretched hand. She picked it up. The fish-bone point had snapped by contact with the floor of the ledge.

She sought for and found the small tip.

"See," she said. "It seems to have been dipped in something. It is quite discolored."

Jenks frowned peculiarly. A startling explanation had suggested itself to him. Fragments of forgotten lore were taking cohesion in his mind.

"Put it down. Quick!" he cried.

Iris obeyed him, with wonder in her eyes. He spilled a teasponful of champagne into a small hollow of the rock and steeped one of the fish-bones in the liquid. Within a few seconds the champagne a.s.sumed a greenish tinge and the bone became white. Then he knew.

"Good Heavens!" he exclaimed, "these are poisoned arrows shot through a blowpipe. I have never before seen one, but I have often read about them. The bamboos the Dyaks carried were sumpitans. These fish-bones have been steeped in the juice of the upas tree. Iris, my dear girl, if one of them had so much as scratched your finger nothing on earth could save you."

She paled and drew back in sudden horror. This tiny thing had taken the semblance of a snake. A vicious cobra cast at her feet would be less alarming, for the reptile could be killed, whilst his venomous fangs would only be used in self-defence.

Another tap sounded on their thrice-welcome covering. Evidently the Dyaks would persist in their efforts to get one of those poisoned darts home.

Jenks debated silently whether it would be better to create a commotion, thus inducing the savages to believe they had succeeded in inflicting a mortal wound, or to wait until the next arrow fell, rush out, and try conclusions with Dum-dum bullets against the sumpitan blowers.

He decided in favor of the latter course. He wished to dishearten his a.s.sailants, to cram down their throats the belief that he was invulnerable, and could visit their every effort with a deadly reprisal.

Iris, of course, protested when he explained his project. But the fighting spirit prevailed. Their love idyll must yield to the needs of the hour.

He had not long to wait. The last arrow fell, and he sprang to the extreme right of the ledge. First he looked through that invaluable screen of gra.s.s. Three Dyaks were on the ground, and a fourth in the fork of a tree. They were each armed with a blowpipe. He in the tree was just fitting an arrow into the bamboo tube. The others were watching him.

Jenks raised his rifle, fired, and the warrior in the tree pitched headlong to the ground. A second shot stretched a companion on top of him. One man jumped into the bushes and got away, but the fourth tripped over his unwieldy sumpitan and a bullet tore a large section from his skull. The sailor then amused himself with breaking the bamboos by firing at them. He came back to the white-faced girl.

"I fancy that further practice with blowpipes will be at a discount on Rainbow Island," he cried cheerfully.

But Iris was anxious and distrait.

"It is very sad," she said, "that we are obliged to secure our own safety by the ceaseless slaughter of human beings. Is there no offer we can make them, no promise of future gain, to tempt them to abandon hostilities?"

"None whatever. These Borneo Dyaks are bred from infancy to prey on their fellow-creatures. To be strangers and defenceless is to court pillage and ma.s.sacre at their hands. I think no more of shooting them than of smashing a clay pigeon. Killing a mad dog is perhaps a better simile."

"But, Robert dear, how long can we hold out?"

"What! Are you growing tired of me already?"

He hoped to divert her thoughts from this constantly recurring topic.

Twice within the hour had it been broached and dismissed, but Iris would not permit him to shirk it again. She made no reply, simply regarding him with a wistful smile.

So Jenks sat down by her side, and rehea.r.s.ed the hopes and fears which perplexed him. He determined that there should be no further concealment between them. If they failed to secure water that night, if the Dyaks maintained a strict siege of the rock throughout the whole of next day, well--they might survive--it was problematical. Best leave matters in G.o.d's hands.

With feminine persistency she clung to the subject, detecting his unwillingness to discuss a possible final stage in their sufferings.

"Robert!" she whispered fearfully, "you will never let me fall into the power of the chief, will you?"

"Not whilst I live."

"You _must_ live. Don't you understand? I would go with them to save you. But I would have died--by my own hand. Robert, my love, you must do this thing before the end. I must be the first to die."

He hung his head in a paroxysm of silent despair. Her words rung like a tocsin of the bright romance conjured up by the avowal of their love.

It seemed to him, in that instant, they had no separate existence as distinguished from the great stream of human life--the turbulent river that flowed unceasingly from an eternity of the past to an eternity of the future. For a day, a year, a decade, two frail bubbles danced on the surface and raced joyously together in the sunshine; then they were broken--did it matter how, by savage sword or lingering ailment? They vanished--absorbed again by the rushing waters--and other bubbles rose in precarious iridescence. It was a fatalist view of life, a dim and obscurantist groping after truth induced by the overpowering nature of present difficulties. The famous Tentmaker of Naishapur blindly sought the unending purpose when he wrote:--

"Up from Earth's Centre through the Seventh Gate I rose, and on the throne of Saturn sate, And many a Knot unravel'd by the Road; But not the Master-Knot of Human Fate.

"There was the Door to which I found no Key; There was the Veil through which I could not see: Some little talk awhile of Me and Thee There was--and then no more of Thee and Me."

The sailor, too, wrestled with the great problem. He may be pardoned if his heart quailed and he groaned aloud.

"Iris," he said solemnly, "whatever happens, unless I am struck dead at your feet, I promise you that we shall pa.s.s the boundary hand in hand.

Be mine the punishment if we have decided wrongly. And now," he cried, tossing his head in a defiant access of energy, "let us have done with the morgue. For my part I refuse to acknowledge I am inside until the gates clang behind me. As for you, you cannot help yourself. You must do as I tell you. I never knew of a case where the question of Woman's Rights was so promptly settled."