The Adventure Megapack

by Wildside Press

  The hours slipped by, and morning was close at hand, when suddenly the deer sprang to its feet. For a moment it paused, staring with quivering nostrils along the path to where it entered the dark jungle. Then it dashed madly away across the field, and vanished into the jungle on the opposite side.

  Presently a shadow drifted out from the jungle under the blazing moon. It was the Mindoon maneater. For a second he hesitated, staring and sniffing in the direction of the house. Then the great, striped sides began to ripple in the moonlight as the great brute slouched cautiously along the path to the foot of the ladder. There he stopped for several minutes, sniffing up at the house and gathering himself. Then he sprang lightly to the platform; slipped through the door; seized Sharoo, and before the boy could do more than scream, had borne him crashing through the thatch wall.

  Moung Nay was on his feet in an instant. There before him gaped the hole in the wall, and there across the field was trotting the tiger with Sharoo’s limp body swung across his back. Moung Nay did not stop to think. With a shout he sprang through the hole down to the ground, and rushed after old Mindoon clutching his big dah. The man-eater was already halfway to the jungle and did not deign to do more than quicken his pace. His long series of escapes had made him contemptuous of any mere man.

  Moung Nay raced after him. Once the tiger reached the jungle, pursuit would be useless, as the crafty old desperado well knew. Moung Nay strained every nerve, and his sturdy legs brought him up even with the haunches of the brute, but he did not dare even then, though in a paroxysm of anxiety to save Sharoo, to risk a stroke which would do no more than enrage the tiger and might kill the boy.

  Moung Nay was gaining steadily, but the blackness of the shade of the mangoes was all but reached. Five yards more and the tiger would have vanished with his prey. The straining Karen realized it was now or never. Every last bit of reserve strength went into a crucial spurt, and, fixing his eyes on the swelling arch of Mindoon s neck, he threw himself forward as a varsity sprinter throws himself at the tape that means victory or defeat, and struck with all his might at the roots of the jaunty white ruff. He felt the tip of the dah bite into the tiger’s flesh, tripped, and fell prostrate in the mud and darkness under the first of the mangoes.

  Mindoon snarled, half turned, and struck viciously at the body on the ground, ripping Moung Nay’s left arm open from shoulder to wrist. Then, without relaxing his grip on Sharoo, was swallowed up in the jungle.

  Moung Nay staggered to his feet. The fall and the blow had shaken him. For a full minute he stood with the blood dripping from his arm, staring at the blackness which had engulfed Sharoo. Slowly the realization of what he had done broke in on his mind.

  He, with only a dah, had dared to chase old Mindoon, the devil of the jungles, and was still alive. A panic seized him; the boy was forgotten, and Moung Nay skulked back to the hut with terrified backward glances. He scrambled up the rickety ladder, but the darkness of the doorway appalled him, and he cowed down in a corner of the platform, clutching the dah nervously, and staring at the edge of the jungle.

  As the minutes slipped by without incident, his terror passed, and a full comprehension of Sharoo’s fate dawned upon him. Few men have ever seen a Karen weep, but as Moung Nay squatted there and thought of the part the little fellow had played in his life, the hunts they had had together, the tears trickled down his cheeks. The ache of his wound finally forced him to bind it up as well as he could with some strips torn from his lunghi, but he sat on.

  Time passed. The sun rushed up over the Pegu hills and poured its heat down on the drenched earth, but still Moung Nay crouched there, gripping his dah and weeping silently.

  The sun was some hours into the sky before he finally got up, convulsively clutching the monster knife. He paused for a minute, looking along the trail of tracks to where they disappeared, apparently, in the direction of an enormous padouk-tree. Then he slipped down the ladder and stole as quietly as be could along the trail. He was grimly determined to save what he could of the boy’s body, even at the risk of his own life. At least he now knew that old Mindoon was not a devil, or, if he were, he was not invulnerable to a dah stroke. But it was no small thing to follow any wounded tiger into the jungle and take away its prey. Moung Nay longed ardently for a rifle in place of his dah, or, at least, the full use of both his arms. Still he pressed on slowly, very slowly, ever ready to meet the anticipated coughing roar and charge, while before him in his mind’s eye was the image of the torn and half-devoured boy urging him on.

  The trail was plain; blood was everywhere. The stems of the elephant-grass on either side of the path Mindoon had broken for himself was smeared with it. Pools of it were thickening on the ground. Moung Nay advanced still more cautiously. In vain, for in spite of his care a log on which he was standing crumbled beneath him, and he pitched through the elephant-grass down into a hollow beneath the tree. The ground was smeared with half-clotted blood. With a shriek of terror Moung Nay slid, in spite of all his efforts, across it, and brought up with a bump against the crouching body of Mindoon. Half-clotted blood from the deep dah gash in the neck showed where the jugular vein had been severed.

  At Moung Nay’s cry a small figure huddled up against the tree-trunk stirred and sat up, trying in a dazed way, at the same time, to feel of a badly bitten arm and a great bump where his forehead had evidently struck a beam as the man-eater had borne him through the wall.

  * * * *

  It was a long four miles before the two Karens finally reached the first inhabited house on the outskirts of Donebu and sank down on its steps. Any white man would have fainted from the strain of the night’s events, and even Moung Nay could only give a very fragmentary account of what had happened when Deputy Commissioner White, who had been swearing all the morning at the dilatoriness of natives in general and Moung Nay in particular, came rattling furiously up to the house in his dog-cart in response to the message brought him by a Kachin about dead devils and bloody men.

  He ended by sending the Karens to the hospital in the dog-cart, and going on foot himself to investigate and, if possible, save the skin. He was too late. The news had spread like the waters of the lower Sitang when there is a cloudburst in the hills. Every man, woman, or child who could toddle or totter, or could inveigle any one else into carrying them, were already gathered there in an ecstatic mob about the carcass, venting on it the years of accumulated terror and spite with every conceivable weapon, from the dahs of the withered old bamboo-cutters to the fly brush wielded by the doctors syce, and the oiled-silk sunshade in the hands of the haughty Thugyi’s wife; and in torrents of abuse poured forth in all of the nineteen languages of Donebu.

  Confident in the prestige of his white skin, however, he plunged into the mob in an effort to drive them off; but after his topi had been crushed down about his neck by the frenzied hand of his own big totec, who ordinarily cringed at his slightest look, and he had seen a group of yellow-robed poongyees, whose cardinal articles of faith are freedom from all emotion, abhorrence of all women, and doing no harm to anything, wildly embrace women of the town and fight their way into the center of the riot and wildly belabor the body with their staffs, he withdrew to a safe distance and watched the surging mass of people as it hacked, trampled, and ground the remains of the tiger into mashed and distorted remnants.

  Utter weariness alone finally forced a lull and brought enough of the police-men in the mob to their senses to enable White, with their help, to drive the reluctant mob off and bear the remains back to Donebu, followed by a still jabberingly jubilant procession.

  All this happened years ago. Now Moung Nay is chief man of the largest town in the Tavoy district. On special occasions, particularly when Sharoo comes from his position in Rangoon on the commissioner’s staff to spend his vacation with Moung Nay, he will unlock his iron-bound teak-box and take out of their wrapping a dah and an immense tiger’s tooth, the only unbroken thing left in old Mindoon’s body by the mob. Then the two men gaze at t
hem for some minutes, while Sharoo’s hand steals up to two great dents in his biceps, and Moung Nay fingers silently the scars on his left arm, and both of them think of the race with old Mindoon and death that Moung Nay ran that night out in the Tavoy jungle, and the victory that meant life itself for Sharoo, and for Moung Nay the best rifle money could buy in London and the only perpetual gun permit in all Burma.

  THE SPIRIT OF FRANCE, by S. B. H. Hurst

  “Mergui is a dirty and most immoral town.”

  Father Murphy, the stout, kindly missionary paused dramatically. “But hitherto we have been spared this—a white girl dancing for Mohammedans and Chinamen! You must do something, Bailey!”

  The youthful English magistrate, who, with ten Sikh policemen and one white clerk, was administrator of the affairs of the little town and the district adjoining it on the Tenasserim strip of the coast of Burma, looked through the window of his office at the mud of low tide in the harbor. A puff of wind brought the reek of it. He sniffed, then answered testily:

  “You know as well as I do, Padre, that I can do nothing. Until the girl commits a crime I cannot have her arrested. English law does not infringe on the rights of people to live where they wish. If she wants to live among the colored population, that’s her business. Let her dance! I have received no complaints about her. If you are worried about her morals, well—that’s in your department, not mine!”

  The priest sighed.

  “Yes,” he answered. “But the girl won’t listen to me. She politely avoids discussion. Admits being a Catholic, too! Orphan. Daughter of some Frenchman who died up Indo-China way. I don’t know how she drifted down here.”

  “Well, I can’t help you, Murphy. I detest having a white woman of her occupation in the town—liable to stir up any sort of trouble. But you can find ’em all over Burma. We must bear our burdens, Padre. Good morning!”

  The priest left the magistrate’s office. The heat weighed heavily upon his huge figure. He felt, both physically and spiritually, depressed. This pretty child— for she was little more—who politely refused to worry about her soul’s welfare! Father Murphy clenched his fists.

  “If I have to use force,” he said firmly, “I’ll do it! I will break the law if need be—the law that protects vice from the assaults of decency! I will break through that ring of Mohammedan and Chinese brutes who leer at her dancing. I may have to hit a few ugly faces, for which Bailey could have me arrested; but I will—for the good of that young woman’s soul. It’s my duty, and by the living God I’ll do it! I’m Irish, and before I got so fat I could use my hands for other things than blessing people!”

  He was spared this necessity. His walk had brought him to the tiny church he himself had designed and helped to build. In its quiet he would compose himself. He took off his large solar hat and wiped his streaming forehead. Then he dropped the hat in joyful astonishment. For the girl he had thought apostate was kneeling there, praying!

  “Oh, Father, I thank Thee!” he murmured.

  The girl looked up and saw him. She was vaguely disturbed. The priest, that massive man of intuitions, felt that she had timed her visit to the church to correspond with his absence. No doubt there were other visits.

  “Daughter,” he said, “I do not understand this!”

  She smiled, mischievously.

  “My Father, there is, ah, so veree mouch that ees hard to ounderstand!”

  His voice became hard.

  “I do not understand why you have refused to talk with me. I do not understand why you have come here when you knew I was away. And … I have known other women like you. But the others did not avoid the priest. Instead, they sought absolution!”

  She shrugged her shoulders. The flash of her smile was of pearls. Her eyes were violet lakes in which dwelt mystery and delight.

  “Perhaps they needed it!” she answered.

  For a moment the priest was so angry at her pert reply that he could not answer her. She went on. But she no longer smiled, and the lids covered her provocative eyes.

  “But I, what am so small, joost come ’ere because, maybe, God ees ’ere! Onnyways, if He is anywhere in Mergui, He will be ’ere! And you know, Father, that there is times when every woman feel lonelee for God. So I do not come when you are here. Becos’ I do not want to talk about my sins. Eet would take too much time. And the time I come ’ere is the time I ’ave give to God!”

  Her eyes met his defiantly.

  Murphy mastered his anger.

  “Do you realize that God sees you when you are not in His church—when you are dancing and—and living with those horrible heathen men?”

  She raised her small head proudly.

  “I do not ‘live’ with any man!” Her eyes blazed, her little hands clenched. “For what you ’ave said, but that you are a priest, I would strike you! I live with no man! I ’ave never lived with any man! And I have never even kissed any man but my father—what is died!”

  The flash left her eyes. Her head drooped. She sank down upon the wooden bench and sobbed.

  Father Murphy was deeply distressed. He could not believe her, but …

  “My child! My poor child!” He laid a hand gently upon her shoulder. “But you must realize how your dancing for such creatures seems!”

  “To dance is all I know,” she sobbed. “I ’ave tried to dance for the white men, but they do not want me. They want women who will kees after dancing—who will kees and love for money. I must live! Mohamet Ali and his nasty bearded men ’ave never tried to kees me. Mohamet looks cruel, but he treats me square! And the Chinamen are afraid of him. The men for whom I dance know that if they try to kees me they will ’ave a long knife in their ribs. Mohamet is ’eathen, you say. Yes. But I would razzer dance for heem than for white men who do not want dancing as mouch as they want something else!”

  “Some other way of making a living may be found,” began the baffled priest.

  She interrupted fiercely. “To scrub floors, eh! I ’ave a right to live my own life. I love to dance!”

  “I know you are French, of course, and you said you were an orphan; but you have not told me your name,” the priest conciliated.

  She answered with proud mischievousness:

  “When I was leetle girl, my father called me ‘Leetle Spirit of France,’ because eet is the spirit of France to dance and sing—and to fight! So now I call my name, ‘Spirit of France!’ But you will say I am conceit—is it not?”

  And she laughed and bowed and went out into the glaring morning.

  Murphy sighed. A bit of human thistledown!

  * * * *

  The Mergui day dragged its festering way through the hours. Night came over the place with the stars peering dubiously through a velvet pall, with the bats and huge moths winging like evil souls visiting friends still incarnate, with phallic music throbbing feverishly. Sikh policemen stalked here and there, daintily contemptuous of the filth of it all.

  In a small, low-lit courtyard danced the Spirit of France. Avid eyes glowed at her beauty, wondering how long Mohamet Ali would continue to bestow upon her his quite unusual protection. There were no Burmese there; only Mohammedan traders, adventurers from Northern India, with their co-religionists of Mergui.

  The music throbbed and the girl whirled to it, abandoned to a sheer ecstasy of physical rhythm, borne upon the swell of the poetry of herself.

  But this night the mood of her audience was different. Its sensuous absorption of her was sporadic. Piqued, she danced the more enticingly. The shadows of the place were gathered and twisted and festooned about her, but her audience was far from paying her its customary attention. Mohamet Ali and his nearest friends paid no attention at all. In vain she danced closer to him. If he looked at her at all it was an abstracted look that did not see her. Matters of great moment seemingly engaged him. He talked in undertones to his friends. They smoked and drank their coffee, but the sensuality of their faces was sublimated to a fierce interest in the affair of their conversation.
>
  The Spirit of France danced on, puzzled, irritated, vastly curious. About what thing were they talking? Their hairy faces were grouped together. They had even laid aside their pipes.… The Spirit of France changed the rhythm of her dancing. She moved like a leaf before vagrant puffs of wind … slowly. Pausing, and bending, and moving again. In sleepy cadence she danced before Mohamet Ali and his lieutenants.…

  Fragments of words came to her straining ears. But she could not linger there. Burning with curiosity, she dared not wait for more. She whirled into allegro again, and the music caught her mood and ran with her.

  But again and again she floated like a lazy leaf before Mohamet Ali, and the fragments of their words wove themselves into a baffling tapestry—a picture blurred, and without outline, yet vividly colored with significance. Significance of what?

  They were laughing now, those bearded men from the North. Grimacing, rather, much as tigers grimace. The Spirit of France shivered. But she fought the fear in her gallant heart and killed it before it could grow to terror. And she danced on.

  But what were they planning? It did not seem to concern herself; they had hardly glanced at her for an hour. The Mohammedans of lesser parts had been beckoned into conference. The girl felt a premonition of death touch her soul heavily. Neither was it a new thing they planned. She felt intuitively that these fierce men were discussing something done before that was to be done again. Their minds were running in old, well-loved grooves.

  Mohamet Ali was looking at her! The Spirit of France danced the more merrily. He beckoned her towards him.

  “Little sparrow,” he said, “dance no more this night. Go and sleep.”

  “And I will dance for you tomorrow night?”

  The heavy lids of the man flickered. The eyes of his companions became blank—a blankness that seemed overdone.

  “Yes, you will dance for me again,” said Mohamet gravely, “because you are under my protection. Sleep now. I will send for you when I want you. Here is your money.”