9
INTO SAVAGE BORNEO
Von Horn cursed the chance that had snatched the girl
from him, but he tried to content himself with the
thought that the treasure probably still rested in the
cabin of the Ithaca, where Bududreen was to have
deposited it. He wished that the Dyaks would take
themselves off so that he could board the vessel and
carry the chest ashore to bury it against the time that
fate should provide a means for transporting it to Singapore.
In the water below him floated the Ithaca's masts,
their grisly burdens still lashed to their wave swept
sides. Bududreen lay there, his contorted features set
in a horrible grimace of death which grinned up at the
man he would have cheated, as though conscious of the
fact that the white man would have betrayed him had the
opportunity come, the while he enjoyed in anticipation
the other's disappointment in the loss of both the girl
and the treasure.
The tide was rising now, and presently the Ithaca began
to float. No sooner was it apparent that she was free
than the Dyaks sprang into the water and swam to her
side. Like monkeys they scrambled aboard, swarming
below deck in search, thought von Horn, of pillage.
He prayed that they would not discover the chest.
Presently a half dozen of them leaped overboard and
swam to the mass of tangled spars and rigging which
littered the beach. Selecting what they wished they
returned to the vessel, and a few minutes later von
Horn was chagrined to see them stepping a jury mast--
he thought the treasure lay in the Ithaca's cabin.
Before dark the vessel moved slowly out of the harbor,
setting a course across the strait in the direction
that the war prahus had taken. When it was apparent
that there was no danger that the head hunters would
return, the lascar came from his hiding place, and
dancing up and down upon the shore screamed warlike
challenges and taunts at the retreating enemy.
Von Horn also came forth, much to the sailor's
surprise, and in silence the two stood watching the
disappearing ship. At length they turned and made
their way up the stream toward camp--there was no
longer aught to fear there. Von Horn wondered if the
creatures he had loosed upon Professor Maxon had done
their work before they left, or if they had all turned
to mush as had Number Thirteen.
Once at the encampment his questions were answered,
for he saw a light in the bungalow, and as he mounted
the steps there were Sing and Professor Maxon just
coming from the living room.
"Von Horn!" exclaimed the professor. "You, then, are not dead;
but where is Virginia? Tell me that she is safe."
"She has been carried away" was the startling answer.
"Your creatures, under the thing you wished to marry
her to, have taken her to Borneo with a band of Malay
and Dyak pirates. I was alone and could do nothing to
prevent them."
"God!" moaned the old man. "Why did I not kill the thing
when it stood within my power to do so. Only last night
he was here beside me, and now it is too late."
"I warned you," said von Horn, coldly.
"I was mad," retorted the professor. "Could you not
see that I was mad? Oh, why did you not stop me?
You were sane enough. You at least might have forced
me to abandon the insane obsession which has overpowered
my reason for all these terrible months. I am sane now,
but it is too late--too late."
"Both you and your daughter could only have interpreted
any such action on my part as instigated by self-
interest, for you both knew that I wanted to make
her my wife," replied the other. "My hands were tied.
I am sorry now that I did not act, but you can readily
see the position in which I was placed."
"Can nothing be done to get her back?" cried the father.
"There must be some way to save her. Do it von Horn,
and not only is my daughter yours but my wealth as well--
every thing that I possess shall be yours if you will
but save her from those frightful creatures."
"The Ithaca is gone, too," replied the doctor. "There
is only a small boat that I hid in the jungle for some
such emergency. It will carry us to Borneo, but what
can we four do against five hundred pirates and the
dozen monsters you have brought into the world?
No, Professor Maxon, I fear there is little hope,
though I am willing to give my life in an attempt
to save Virginia. You will not forget your promise
should we succeed?"
"No, doctor," replied the old man. "I swear that you
shall have Virginia as your wife, and all my property
shall be made over to you if she is rescued."
Sing Lee had been a silent listener to this strange
conversation. An odd look came into his slant eyes
as he heard von Horn exact a confirmation from
the professor, but what passed in his shrewd mind
only he could say.
It was too late to attempt to make a start that day for Borneo,
as darkness had already fallen. Professor Maxon and von Horn
walked over to the workshop and the inner campong to ascertain
what damage had been done there.
On their return Sing was setting the table on the
verandah for the evening meal. The two men were talking,
and without making his presence noticeable the Chinaman
hovered about ever within ear shot.
"I cannot make it out, von Horn," Professor Maxon was
saying. "Not a board broken, and the doors both
apparently opened intentionally by someone familiar
with locks and bolts. Who could have done it?"
"You forget Number Thirteen," suggested the doctor.
"But the chest!" expostulated the other. "What in the
world would he want of that enormous and heavy chest?"
"He might have thought that it contained treasure,"
hazarded von Horn, in an innocent tone of voice.
"Bosh, my dear man," replied Professor Maxon. "He knew
nothing of treasures, or money, or the need or value of either.
I tell you the workshop was opened, and the inner campong
as well by some one who knew the value of money and wanted
that chest, but why they should have released the creatures
from the inner enclosure is beyond me."
"And I tell you Professor Maxon that it could have been
none other than Number Thirteen," insisted von Horn.
"Did I not myself see him leading his eleven monsters
as easily as a captain commands his company? The fellow
is brighter than we have imagined. He has learned much
from us both, he has reasoned, and he has shrewdly
guessed many things that he could not have known
through experience."
"But his object?" asked the professor.
"That is simple," returned von Horn. "You have held
out hopes to him that soon he should come to live under
your roof with Virginia. The creature has been madly
infatuated with her ever since the day he took her from
Number One, and you have encouraged his infatuation
until yesterday. Then you regained your sanity
and put him in his rightful place. What is the result?
Denied the easy prey he expected he immediately decided
to take it by force, and with that end in view, and taking
advantage of the series of remarkable circumstances
which played into his hands, he liberated his fellows,
and with them hastened to the beach in search of
Virginia and in hopes of being able to fly with her
upon the Ithaca. There he met the Malay pirates,
and together they formed an alliance under terms
of which Number Thirteen is to have the girl, and the pirates
the chest in return for transporting him and his crew to Borneo.
Why it is all perfectly simple and logical, Professor Maxon;
do you not see it now?"
"You may be right, doctor," answered the old man.
"But it is idle to conjecture. Tomorrow we can be up
and doing, so let us get what sleep we can tonight.
We shall need all our energies if we are to save my poor,
dear girl, from the clutches of that horrid, soulless thing."
At the very moment that he spoke the object of his
contumely was entering the dark mouth of a broad river
that flowed from out of the heart of savage Borneo.
In the prahu with him his eleven hideous companions now
bent to their paddles with slightly increased efficiency.
Before them the leader saw a fire blazing upon a tiny island
in the center of the stream. Toward this they turned
their silent way. Grimly the war prahu with its frightful
freight nosed closer to the bank.
At last Number Thirteen made out the figures of men
about the fire, and as they came still closer he was
sure that they were members of the very party he had
been pursuing across the broad waters for hours.
The prahus were drawn up upon the bank and the warriors
were preparing to eat.
Just as the young giants' prahu came within the circle
of firelight a swarthy Malay approached the fire,
dragging a white girl roughly by the arm. No more was
needed to convince Number Thirteen of the identity of
the party. With a low command to his fellows he urged
them to redoubled speed. At the same instant a Dyak
warrior caught sight of the approaching boat as it sped
into the full glare of the light.
At sight of the occupants the head hunters scattered
for their own prahus. The frightful aspect of
the enemy turned their savage hearts to water,
leaving no fight in their ordinarily warlike souls.
So quickly they moved that as the pursuing prahu
touched the bank all the nearer boats had been
launched, and the remaining pirates were scurrying
across the little island for those which lay upon the
opposite side. Among these was the Malay who guarded
the girl, but he had not been quick enough to prevent
Virginia Maxon recognizing the stalwart figure standing
in the bow of the oncoming craft.
As he dragged her away toward the prahu of Muda Saffir
she cried out to the strange white man who seemed her
self-appointed protector.
"Help! Help!" she called. "This way! Across the island!"
And then the brown hand of her jailer closed over her mouth.
Like a tigress she fought to free herself, or to detain
her captor until the rescue party should catch up with them,
but the scoundrel was muscled like a bull, and when the girl
held back he lifted her across his shoulder and broke into a run.
Rajah Muda Saffir had no stomach for a fight himself,
but he was loathe to lose the prize he had but just won,
and seeing that his men were panic-stricken he saw
no alternative but to rally them for a brief stand
that would give the little moment required to slip away
in his own prahu with the girl.
Calling aloud for those around him to come to his
support he halted fifty yards from his boat just as
Number Thirteen with his fierce, brainless horde swept
up from the opposite side of the island in the wake of
him who bore Virginia Maxon. The old rajah succeeded
in gathering some fifty warriors about him from the
crews of the two boats which lay near his. His own men
he hastened to their posts in his prahu that they might
be ready to pull swiftly away the moment that he and
the captive were aboard.
The Dyak warriors presented an awe inspiring
spectacle in the fitful light of the nearby camp fire.
The ferocity of their fierce faces was accentuated
by the upturned, bristling tiger cat's teeth which
protruded from every ear; while the long feathers
of the Argus pheasant waving from their war-caps,
the brilliant colors of their war-coats trimmed
with the black and white feathers of the hornbill,
and the strange devices upon their gaudy shields
but added to the savagery of their appearance
as they danced and howled, menacing and intimidating,
in the path of the charging foe.
A single backward glance was all that Virginia Maxon
found it possible to throw in the direction of the
rescue party, and in that she saw a sight that lived
forever in her memory. At the head of his hideous,
misshapen pack sprang the stalwart young giant
straight into the heart of the flashing parangs
of the howling savages. To right and left fell
the mighty bull whip cutting down men with all
the force and dispatch of a steel saber.
The Dyaks, encouraged by the presence of Muda Saffir
in their rear, held their ground; and the infuriated,
brainless things that followed the wielder of the
bull whip threw themselves upon the head hunters
with beating hands and rending fangs.
Number Ten wrested a parang from an adversary,
and acting upon his example the other creatures
were not long in arming themselves in a similar manner.
Cutting and jabbing they hewed their way through the solid
ranks of the enemy, until Muda Saffir, seeing that defeat
was inevitable turned and fled toward his prahu.
Four of his creatures lay dead as the last of the Dyaks
turned to escape from the mad white man who faced
naked steel with only a rawhide whip. In panic the head
hunters made a wild dash for the two remaining prahus,
for Muda Saffir had succeeded in getting away from the
island in safety.
Number Thirteen reached the water's edge but a moment
after the prow of the rajah's craft had cleared the
shore and was swinging up stream under the vigorous
strokes of its fifty oarsmen. For an instant he stood
poised upon the bank as though to spring after the
retreating prahu, but the knowledge that he could not
swim held him back--it was useless to throw away his
life when the need of it was so great if Virginia Maxon
was to be saved.
Turning to the other prahus he saw that one was already
launched, but that the crew of the other was engaged in
a desperate battle with the seven remaining members of
his crew for possession of the boat. Leaping among the
combatants he urged his fellows aboard the prahu which
was already half filled with Dyaks. Then he shoved the
boat out into the river, jumping aboard himself as its
prow cleared the gravelly beach.
For several minutes that long, hollowed log was a
veritable floating hell of savage, screaming men locked
in deadly battle. The sharp parangs of the head
hunters were no match for the superhuman muscles of the
creatures that battered them about; now lifting one
high above his fellows and using the body as a club to
beat down those nearby; again snapping an arm or leg as
one might break a pipe stem; or hurling a living
antagonist headlong above the heads of his fellows to
the dark waters of the river. And above them all in
the thickest of the fight, towering even above his own
giants, rose the mighty figure of the terrible white
man, whose very presence wrought havoc with the valor
of the brown warriors.
Two more of Number Thirteen's creatures had been cut
down in the prahu, but the loss among the Dyaks had
been infinitely greater, and to it was now added the
desertions of the terror stricken savages who seemed
to fear the frightful countenances of their adversaries
even as much as they did their prowess.
There remained but a handful of brown warriors in one
end of the boat when the advantage of utilizing their
knowledge of the river and of navigation occurred to
Number Thirteen. Calling to his men he commanded them
to cease killing, making prisoners of those who
remained instead. So accustomed had his pack now
become to receiving and acting upon his orders that
they changed their tactics immediately, and one by one
the remaining Dyaks were overpowered, disarmed and held.
With difficulty Number Thirteen communicated with them,
for among them there was but a single warrior who had
ever had intercourse with an Englishman, but at last by
means of signs and the few words that were common to
them both he made the native understand that he would
spare the lives of himself and his companions if they
would help him in pursuit of Muda Saffir and the girl.
The Dyaks felt but little loyalty for the rascally
Malay they served, since in common with all their kind
they and theirs had suffered for generations at the
hands of the cruel, crafty and unscrupulous race that
had usurped the administration of their land. So it
was not difficult to secure from them the promise of
assistance in return for their lives.
Number Thirteen noticed that when they addressed him
it was always as Bulan, and upon questioning them he
discovered that they had given him this title of honor
partly in view of his wonderful fighting ability and
partly because the sight of his white face emerging
from out of the darkness of the river into the
firelight of their blazing camp fire had carried to
their impressionable minds a suggestion of the tropic
moon which they admired and reverenced. Both the name
and the idea appealed to Number Thirteen and from that
time he adopted Bulan as his rightful cognomen.
The loss of time resulting from the fight in the prahu
and the ensuing peace parley permitted Muda Saffir
to put considerable distance between himself and
his pursuers. The Malay's boat was now alone, for
of the eight prahus that remained of the original fleet
it was the only one which had taken this branch of the river,
the others having scurried into a smaller southerly arm
after the fight upon the island, that they might the
more easily escape their hideous foemen.
Only Barunda, the headman, knew which channel Rajah
Muda Saffir intended following, and Muda wondered why
it was that the two boats that were to have borne
Barunda's men did not catch up with his. While he had
left Barunda and his warriors engaged in battle with
the strangers he did not for an instant imagine that
they would suffer any severe loss, and that one of
their boats should be captured was beyond belief.
But this was precisely what had happened, and the
second boat, seeing the direction taken by the enemy,
had turned down stream the more surely to escape them.
So it was that while Rajah Muda Saffir moved leisurely
up the river toward his distant stronghold waiting for
the other boats of his fleet to overtake him, Barunda,
the headman, guided the white enemy swiftly after him.
Barunda had discovered that it was the girl alone this
white man wanted. Evidently he either knew nothing of
the treasure chest lying in the bottom of Muda Saffir's
boat, or, knowing, was indifferent. In either event
Barunda thought that he saw a chance to possess himself
of the rich contents of the heavy box, and so served his
new master with much greater enthusiasm than he had the old.
Beneath the paddles of the natives and the five
remaining members of his pack Bulan sped up the dark
river after the single prahu with its priceless
freight. Already six of the creatures of Professor
Maxon's experiments had given up their lives in the
service of his daughter, and the remaining six were
pushing forward through the inky blackness of the
jungle night into the untracked heart of savage Borneo
to rescue her from her abductors though they sacrificed
their own lives in the endeavor.
Far ahead of them in the bottom of the great prahu
crouched the girl they sought. Her thoughts were of
the man she felt intuitively to possess the strength,
endurance and ability to overcome every obstacle and
reach her at last. Would he come in time? Ah, that
was the question. The mystery of the stranger appealed
to her. A thousand times she had attempted to solve
the question of his first appearance on the island at
the very moment that his mighty muscles were needed to
rescue her from the horrible creature of her father's creation.
Then there was his unaccountable disappearance for weeks;
there was von Horn's strange reticence
and seeming ignorance as to the circumstances
which brought the young man to the island,
or his equally unaccountable disappearance
after having rescued her from Number One.
And now, when she suddenly found herself
in need of protection, here was the same
young man turning up in a most miraculous fashion,
and at the head of the terrible creatures of the inner campong.
The riddle was too deep for her--she could not solve it;
and then her thoughts were interrupted by the thin,
brown hand of Rajah Muda Saffir as it encircled her
waist and drew her toward him. Upon the evil lips were
hot words of passion. The girl wrenched herself from
the man's embrace, and, with a little scream of terror,
sprang to her feet, and as Muda Saffir arose to grasp
her again she struck him full in the face with one small,
clenched fist.
Directly behind the Malay lay the heavy chest
of Professor Maxon. As the man stepped backward
to recover his equilibrium both feet struck the obstacle.
For an instant he tottered with wildly waving arms
in an endeavor to regain his lost balance, then,
with a curse upon his lips, he lunged across the box
and over the side of the prahu into the dark waters
of the river.
