Where the Pavement Ends Part 6

A few minutes later the cap'n was giving his last instructions, while we of the sh.o.r.e party dropped to our places in the big whaleboat.

"You're not to follow us in whatever happens--mind that. If you sight more'n three canoes at a time, knock out the shackles and run for open sea. I'm leaving you Obadiah--he's a goodish shot--and four of the best boys."

The young mate nodded. He hated not coming with us, but Bartlet knew.

This was Papua, where wise men take no chance and fools seldom live long enough to take a second.

We took none ourselves as we rowed slowly sh.o.r.eward and sheered off out of spear throw, watching the wall of jungle. There is no beach inside Barange, only the mangrove roots that writhe down to the water's edge like tangled pythons through the oozy bank of salt marsh. It was very still and very clear in the afternoon sunlight, though the heat pouring out over us seemed the exhalation of a great steam bath, choked with stewing vegetation. Now and then our crew of clean-limbed Tonga boys rested on their oars, with timid, limpid gaze turned askance. We heard their quick breathing and the drip from the oar blades--nothing else. At such times we floated in a mirage where each leaf and frond and webbed liana with its mirrored image had an unnatural brilliance and precision, like a labored canvas or a view seen through a stereoscope.

And there stole upon us again the oppressive solicitation of the land, subtle and perilous. Behind the beauty and wonder of it, beyond those bright sh.o.r.es and the first low foot-hills of the range--what? n.o.body knows, that is the charm and the lure. Peoples, religions, empires untouched since the birth of time--fabulous wealth, mountains of gold, cliffs of ruby, "cataracts of adamant," any marvel that fantasy still dares to dream in a prosaic century. They may be; no man has ever drawn the map to deny them. They must be: why else should the sphinx smile?...

"I suppose a hundred woolly-heads are spying on us now," whispered Jeckol suddenly. "Why don't they do something?" He fiddled nervously with his rifle and sniffed. "What a place! This air is deadly--rotten with fever. Faugh! It's animal. It's like--it's like a tiger's throat!"

I blinked at the little chap and with the same glance was aware of Peters standing up in the bow. The trader was just lighting a short-fused stick of dynamite from his cigar. Before I could cry murder he had lobbed it in and shot the bush.

It struck with the smash of all calamity in that utter quiet. The trees sprang toward us and the roar rolled back from angry rocks. Like a multi-colored dust of the explosion burst a myriad of screaming birds, lories, parakeets, kingfishers, flashing motes of green and blue and scarlet in the sunshine. But they dwindled and pa.s.sed. The echoes died.

The smoke drifted away and the green wall closed up without a scar; the silence engulfed us once more, floating there, futile invaders who a.s.saulted its immense riddle with a squib....

"They don't seem to care much," giggled Jeckol.

But Bartlet raised a finger.

Far away in the wood something stirred. It drew nearer, with long pauses, pressing on and at last charging recklessly through the undergrowth. We had the spot covered from half a dozen rifles as there broke out at the verge a creature that leaped and clung among the creepers.

"Mahrster!" it cried, imploring. "Mahrster!"

A man--though more like a naked, starving ape with his k.n.o.bby joints and the bones in a rack under his black skin--and shaken now by the ecstasy of terror! Not at us. He faced the guns without wincing. His beady eyes kept coasting behind him the way he had come as if he looked to see a dreadful hand reach from the thicket and pluck him back. The jungle, the land, was what he feared--

"Mahrster," he gasped, "you take'm me that fella boat along you! One fella ship-boy me--good fella too much!"

"What name?" challenged Peters. "What fella ship?"

From the chattered reply we caught a startling word.

"By Joe--he's one of their boys! Give way, cap'n."...

We edged in until Peters could yank the quaking bundle aboard and pulled again to safety from the mangrove shadow while the fugitive stammered his story in broken _beche de mer_.

It was true: we had found a survivor from the lost _Timothy S._ Kakwe, he called himself, and he had come to Barange "long time before altogether." Two months, at least, we judged. In the attack on the schooner he had escaped by swimming. Himself a Papuan, of a different tribe and region, he had taken to the tree tops after the fashion of his own people, the painted monkey folk of Princess Marianne Straits--a facility to which he owed his life, it appeared, for he had since lived on fruits and nuts among the c.o.c.katoos, undiscovered.

This much we gathered from his gabble before Peters caught him up.

"But the others--them white fella?"

"All finish," said Kakwe bluntly.

"How?" cried Peters.

"No savee, me. Too much fright--walk along salt water--get to h.e.l.l along beach, along tree. Me fright like h.e.l.l!"

His account tallied with our own theory of the ma.s.sacre, but he had seen no bodies brought ash.o.r.e, could not identify the murderers, could not say where the native village lay or how to reach it, would not guide any one into that bush on any consideration. For the rest--this was a "good fella place" to get away from quickly.

"Ah," said Jeckol, sympathizing. "And that's a true word."

So indeed it seemed, and it is odd to think how close we were to giving up then. Aye, we were that close. We drifted out toward the anchorage and looked helplessly around us. The place was so huge, so baffling.

Hopeless to search further among empty swamps and forests, to grope at large in this hushed wilderness, to coerce a jungle. The cruisers that have bombarded these same coasts on many a punitive expedition have learned how hopeless--against Papua, who keeps her secrets.

We must have been halfway back to the _Aurora Bird_ when Bartlet, sitting thoughtful in the stern, made the sign that brought us up all sharp.

"He's lying," he said quietly.

Jeckol's nerves jumped in protest.

"Eh--what? The black? He's only scared half to death. You wouldn't blame him for wanting to get out of this trap, would you? I do myself."

"He couldn't have lived overhead the whole nest o' them all this time without learning something," declared Bartlet.

"Why should he lie?"

But Peters had risen to s.n.a.t.c.h around that weazened face, blank as a mummy's--his own was alight. "By Joe, and a timely reminder. When you've got to ask why a Papuan n.i.g.g.e.r should lie you've gone pretty wide! As for scare--what d'y' suppose he must ha' seen to scare him so?"

Here he bent our monkey man over a thwart and introduced him affectionately to the Webley....

"You fella Kakwe," he said, "my survivin' jewel--I forgot your breed. I should ha' begun by bang'm black head b'long you. Now don't stop to gammon. Whatever you're holdin' back you _show_--savee? S'pose you no show'm straight, me finish 'long you close up altogether!"

And Kakwe showed. Dominated by superior wickedness, with all the black man's docility under the instant threat, he collapsed quite simply at the touch of steel, and he showed--the nook where a tiny, hidden creek flowed down among the mangroves, the winding course that led by the swamp's edge through dank and darksome channels to a trodden mud bank and Barange village itself, tucked away there like a huddle of giant hives in a back lot. This time we paused for no maneuvering. Even Jeckol grabbed a boat hook and we pushed through, eager to strike on a definite lead at last--

Though we might have saved our energy, for the wild had its surprise in waiting. The village was silent, deserted, tenantless.

We landed at the square, to call it so, a rude clearing on which the few houses faced, those sprawling, s.p.a.cious communal dwellings--palaces among huts--that sometimes amaze the explorer along the West Coast.

None opposed us. Nothing moved, not so much as a curl of smoke. An insect hummed in the sun like a bullet, and I take no shame to say I ducked. But that was all. And when the groveling Kakwe led us to a wide platform that ran breast high across the front of the largest house we stood with rifles propped and quickened pulses, staring stupidly at the thing we had come this far to find....

Only a box, lying on the middle of the platform, under the shadow of the lofty thatch--a small, bra.s.s-bound chest such as sailormen love and ships carry everywhere! "Loot!" snorted Jeckol. "Well--?"

But Cap'n Bartlet had laid hold of another trove, a coil of ringed rubber tubing, neatly disposed about the chest. "What's there?"

"A diver's air pipe," stated the cap'n.

"What about it?"

"It's been cut--top and bottom."

We crowded for a look, and I saw his tanned fist tremble ever so slightly.