A sinister and motley crew, indeed; some of chief’s rank, clad in rare feather cloaks, but for the most part boasting no garment save the de rigueur breech-clout. Among them rowed no less than eight or ten Mohammedan amok fanatics, who had sworn on the beard of the Prophet to take a Frank dog’s life or else to die—in either event surely destined for paradise and the houris’ arms. And one of these fanatics was the turtle-egg seller, with special hopes in mind which for the present cannot be divulged.
Under the leadership of Dengan Jouga and a lean, painted pawang, or medicine-man, the war fleet crawled downstream. Spears, axes, stone and iron maces with ornate hafts bristled in all the long war-canoes, high-prowed and gaudy with flaring colors. Blow-guns, too, were there, carrying venomed darts, and krises by the score—wavy-edged blades, heavy and long, that, driven by a sinewed arm, would slice through a man’s neck as if it had been ghee, or melted butter; would open a man’s body broad to the light of day; or, slashing downward, split him from crown to collar bone.
The morning shafts of sun glinted, too, on gun-barrels—old flintlock muzzle-loaders, with a few antique East India Company’s rifles that in some obscure channels of trade had worked their way up the east coast of the Malay Peninsula to Batu Kawan. Some bowmen had long arrows wrapped in oil-soaked cotton pledgets. Such fire-balls, shot into the sun-dried canvas of the clipper, might go far towards leaving her bones ableach on Ulu Salama.
Nor was this all. More formidable still was a small, brass cannon, securely lashed in the bows of a seagoing proa, its lateen sail all patched with brown and blue; a proa manned by fifty chosen warriors, and carrying the medicine man and Dengan Jouga herself. True, the Malays had only a scant dozen charges for their ordnance, but if they could catch the hull of the Silver Fleece between wind and water, as she careened on the bar, they might so riddle her that the up-coming tide would pour her full of brine.
Down the fever-smelling river, steaming with heat and purple haze under the mounting sun, the war-fleet drove, between lush banks now crowded with sandal and angsana-trees all clustered with their lolling, yellow blooms, now mere thickets where apes and screaming parrots rioted amid snarled labyrinths of lianas, now sinking into swamps choked with bamboo and lalang grass.
In some occasional pool, pink lotus-blossoms contrasted with fragrant charm against the vivid, unhealthy green of marsh and forest. And, louder than the crooning war-songs that unevenly drifted on the shimmering air, the loomlike whir of myriad trumpeter-beetles blurred the waiting day whose open eye shrank not from what must be.
Here, there, a fisherman’s hut extended its crazy platform out over the sullen waters. From such platforms, yellow-brown folk with braided top-knots shouted words of good augury to the on-toiling warriors. Naked, pot-bellied children stood and stared in awe. Flea-tormented curs barked dolefully. And from such fisher-boats, as lay anchored in the stream, rose shouts of joy. For, in the mysterious way of the Orient, the news of the great, black deed done by the devil-captain, Briggs Sahib, had already run all down the Timbago.
Thus the war-fleet labored downward to the sea, coming [towards the hour that a landsman would call eight o’clock,] to salt water. Withered Dengan Jouga, crouching snake-eyed in the proa, caught sight of the long, turquoise line that marked the freedom of the open.
She pointed a skinny arm, flung a word at Akan Mawar, the medicine man, and clutched more tightly the thin-bladed knife which—so all had sworn to her—she, and only she, should plunge into the heart of the black-bearded devil. Silently she waited, as the seascape broadened. The sunlight, sparkling on that watery plain, dazzled her eyes like the shimmer of powdered glass, but still she peered, eager to catch a glimpse of the Silver Fleece. Her betel-reddened lips moved again. She whispered:
“My daughter I shall have. His blood, his blood I shall have, even though he flee from me diatas angin, beyond the back of the wind! King Surana, who reigns in the watery depths, will give him to me. Even though he flee through the Silken Sea, at the end of the world, I shall have his blood! Tuan Allah poonia krajah! It is the work of the Almighty.”
“Tuan Allah poonia krajah!” echoed old Akan Mawar; and other voices raised the supplication. Back drifted the words from boat to boat; the whole river murmured with confused echoes: “Tuan Allah poonia krajah!”
Now silence fell again, but for the lipping of cleft waters at many prows, the dip of oars, the little whispering swirl of eddies where paddles lifted. Bright-yellow sands, here and there gleaming pearl-white with millions of turtle-eggs, extended seaward from the river-mouth, pointing like a dagger of menace at Ulu Salama bar eight miles to sea; the bar that Alpheus Briggs so easily could have left to starboard, had he not been sleeping off the fumes of samshu in the cabin with Kuala Pahang.
Cries from the proa and the war-canoes echoed across the waters. No longer could savagery repress its rage. Already, far and dim through the set of haze that brooded over Motomolo Strait, dimming the liquid light of morning, eyes of eager hate had seen a distant speck. A tiny blot it was, against the golden welter on the eastern horizon; a blot whence rose fine-pricked masts and useless sails.
And spontaneously there rose an antiphonal pantun, or song of war. Up from the fleet it broke, under the shrill lead of the hag, now standing with clenched, skinny fists raised high. She wailed:
Adapoun pipit itou sama pipit djouga!
Others answered. A drum of bamboo, headed with snake-skin, began to throb.
Dan yang enggang itou sama enggang djouga!
As the echoes died, again rose the witch-woman’s voice, piercing, resonant:
Bourga sedap dispakey!
The others then:
Layou—dibouang!1
The song continued, intoned by the witch-woman with choral responses from the fighting men. From lament it passed to savage threats of death by torture and by nameless mutilations. Maces began to clatter on shields, krises to glint in sunlight, severed heads of enemies to wave aloft on spears.
And out over the liquid rainbow surface of the strait rolled a long echo, blent of war-cries, shouts of vengeance, the booming of snake-skin drums—defiance of the human wolf-pack now giving wild tongue.
Dr. Filhiol and Mr. Wansley stopped in their speech and raised peering eyes landward, as some faint verberation of the war-shout drifted down upon them. The doctor’s brows drew to a frown; he narrowed his keen eyes toward the line of hot, damp hills. Mr. Wansley pushed back his cap and scratched his head. Together they stood at the rail, not yet glimpsing the war-fleet which still moved in partial concealment along the wooded shore.
Into their silence, a harsh, liquor-roughened voice broke suddenly:
“Empty staring for empty brains! Nothin’ better to do than look your eyes out at the worst coast, so help me, God ever made?”
Neither answered. Mr. Wansley surveyed in silence the hulking, disordered figure now coming forward from the after companion. The doctor drew a cigar from his waistcoat pocket and lighted it. Complete silence greeted Briggs—silence through which the vague turmoil trembling across the mother-of-pearl iridescence of the strait still reached the Silver Fleece.
CHAPTER VI
COUNCIL OF WAR
A moment the two men eyed the captain. Malay voices sounded under the awning. Forward, a laugh drifted on the heat-shimmering air. Briggs cursed, and still came on.
A sorry spectacle he made, tousled, bleary-eyed, with pain-contracted forehead where the devil’s own headache was driving spikes. Right hand showed lacerations, from having struck the wheel. Heavy shoulders sagged, head drooped. Angrily he blinked, his mood to have torn up the world and spat upon the fragments in very spite.
“Well, lost your tongues, have you?” he snarled. “I’m used to being answered on my own ship. You, Mr. Wansley, would do better reading your ’Bow-ditch’ than loafing. And you, doctor, I want you to mix me a stiff powder for the damnedest headache that ever tangled my top-hamper. I’ve had a drink or two, maybe three, already this morning.
But that does no good. Fix me up something strong. Come, stir a stump, sir! I’m going to be obeyed on my own ship!”
“Yes, sir,” answered the doctor, keeping his tongue between his teeth, as the saying is. He started aft, followed by Wansley. Briggs burst out again:
“Insubordination, mutiny—that’s all I get, this voyage!” His fists swung, aching for a target. “Look what’s happened! Against my orders you, Mr. Wansley, try to take the Fleece to sea. And run her aground! By God, sir, I could have you disrated for that! I’d put you in irons for the rest of the voyage if I didn’t need you on deck. Understand me, sir?”
“Yes, sir,” answered Wansley, with exceeding meekness. Briggs was about to flare out at him again, and might very well have come to fist-work, when a hard, round little concussion, bowling seaward, struck his ear.
At sound of the shot, the captain swung on his heel, gripped the rail and stared shoreward.
“What the hell is that?” demanded he, unable to conceal a sudden fear that had stabbed through the thrice-dyed blackness of his venom.
“I rather think, sir,” answered Filhiol, blowing a ribbon of smoke on the still morning air, “it’s trouble brewing. By Jove, sir—see that, will you?”
His hand directed the captain’s reddened eyes far across the strait toward the coastal hills, palm-crowded. Vaguely the captain saw a long, dim line. At its forward end, just a speck against the greenery, a triangle of other color was creeping on. Briggs knew it for the high sail of a proa.
“H-m!” he grunted. Under the bushy blackness of his brows he stared with blood-injected eyes. His muscles tautened. Suddenly he commanded:
“Mr. Wansley, my glass, sir!”
The doctor pursed anxious lips as Wansley departed toward the companion.
“Trouble, sir?” asked he.
“I’ll tell you when there’s trouble! How can I hear anythin’, with your damned jaw-tackle always busy?”
The doctor shut up, clamwise, and leaned elbows on the rail, and so they stood there, each peering, each listening, each thinking his own thoughts.
Mr. Wansley’s return, brass telescope in hand, broke both lines of reflection. Briggs snatched the glass, yearning to knock Wansley flat, as he might have done a cabin-boy. Wansley peered at him with bitter malevolence.
“You hell-devil!” muttered he. “You’ve murdered two of us already, an’ like as not you’ll murder all of us before you’re done. If the sharks had you this minute—”
“By the Judas priest!” ejaculated Briggs, glass at eye. He swung it left and right. “Now you lubberly sons of swabs have got me on a lee-shore with all anchors draggin’!”
“What is it, sir?” demanded Filhiol, calmly.
“What is it?” roared the captain, neck and face scarlet. “After you help run the Silver Fleece on Ulu Salama bar, where that damned war-party can close in on her, you ask me what it is! Holy Jeremiah!”
“See here, Captain Briggs.” The doctor’s voice cut incisively. “If that’s a war-party, we’ve got no time to waste in abuse. Please let me use that glass and see for myself.”
“Use nothing!” shouted Briggs. “What? Call me a liar, do you? I tell you it is a war-party with five—eight—twelve—well, about sixteen boats and a proa, I make it; and you stand there and call me a liar!”
“I call you nothing, sir,” retorted the physician, his face impassive. In spite of anger, Filhiol comprehended that he and Briggs represented the best brain-power on the clipper. Under the urge of peril these two must temporarily sink all differences and stand together. “You say there’s a war-party coming out. I place myself at your orders.”
“Same here, sir,” put in Mr. Wansley. “What’s to be done, sir?” Urgent peril had stifled the fires of hate.
“Call Mr. Prass and Mr. Crevay,” answered the captain, sobered. “You, doctor, mix me up that powder, quick. Here, I’ll go with you. You’ve got to stop this damned headache of mine! Look lively, Mr. Wansley! Get Bevans, too, and Gascar!”
In five minutes the war-council was under way on the after-deck. Already the doctor’s drug had begun to loosen the bands of pain constricting the captain’s brow. Something of Briggs’s normal fighting energy was returning. The situation was already coming under his strong hand.
Careful inspection through the glass confirmed the opinion that a formidable war-fleet was headed toward Ulu Salama bar. The far, vague sound of chanting and of drums clinched matters.
“We’ve got to meet ’em with all we’ve got,” said Briggs, squinting through the tube. “There’s a few hundred o’ the devils. Our game is to keep ’em from closing in. If they board us—well, they aren’t goin’ to, that’s all.”
“I don’t like the look o’ things forrard, sir,” put in Crevay, now bo’sun of the clipper, filling the position that Prass had vacated in becoming second mate. “Them Malays, sir—”
“That’s the hell of it, I know,” said Briggs. He spoke rationally, sobered into human decency. “If we had a straight white crew, we could laugh at the whole o’ Batu Kawan. But our own natives are liable to run amok.”
“We’d better iron the worst of ’em, sir, an’ clap hatches on ’em,” suggested Crevay. “There’s seventeen white men of us, an’ twenty natives. If we had more whites, I’d say shoot the whole damn lot o’ Malays an’ chuck ’em over to the sharks while there’s time!” His face was deep-lined, cruel almost as the captain’s.
Silence followed. Gascar nodded approval, Bevans went a trifle pale, and Wansley shook his head. Prass turned his quid and spat over the rail; the doctor glanced forward, squinting with eyes of calculation. Under the brightening sun, each face revealed the varying thoughts that lay in each man’s heart. Filhiol was first to speak.
“Those Malays are valuable to us,” said he. “They make excellent hostages, if properly restrained in the hold. But we can’t have them at large.”
“We can, and must, all of ’em!” snapped Briggs. His eye had cleared and once more swept up the situation with that virile intelligence which long had made him a leader of men. His nostrils widened, breathing the air of battle. His chest, expanding, seemed a barrier against weakness, indecision. The shadow of death had blotted out the madness of his orgy. He stood there at the rail, erect, square-jawed, a man once more. A man that even those who most bitterly hated him now had to respect and to obey.
“We need ’em all,” he repeated, with the resonance of hard decision. “We’re short-handed as it is. We need every man-jack of them, but not to fight. They won’t fight for us. We daren’t put so much as a clasp-knife in their murderin’ hands. But they can work for us, and, by the Judas priest, they shall! Our pistols can hold ’em to it. Work, sweat, damn ’em—sweat the yellow devils, as they never sweat before!”
“How so, captain?” asked the doctor.
“It’ll be an hour before that fleet lays alongside. There’s a good chance we can kedge off this damned bar. Twenty natives at the poop capstan, with you, Mr. Bevans—and I guess I’ll let the doctor lend a hand, too—standing over ’em with cold lead—that’s the game.” Briggs laughed discordantly. “How’s your nerve, Mr. Bevans? All right, sir?”
Sea-etiquette was returning. Confidence brightened.
“Nerve, sir? All right!”
“Ever shoot a man dead in his tracks?”
“I have, sir.”
“Good! Then you’ll do!” Briggs slapped Bevans on the shoulder. “I’ll put you and the doctor in charge of the natives. First one that raises a hand off a capstan-bar, drill him through the head. Understand?”
“Yes, sir,” said Bevans. The doctor nodded.
“That’s settled! To work! We won’t want the natives at large, though, till we get the kedge over. We’ll keep ’em in the ’midships deck-house for a while yet. Doctor, you stand at the break and shoot the first son of a hound that sticks his nose out. Mr. Wansley, muster all the white men aft for instructions. Mr. Prass, take what men you need and get up all the arms and ammuniti
on. First thing, get out that stand of rifles in my cabin. Here’s two keys. One is my private locker-key, and the other the key to the arms-locker. In my locker you’ll find a kris. In the other, three revolvers. Bring those.” The captain’s words came crisp, sharp, decisive. “Bring up the six navy cutlasses from the rack in the cabin. Mr. Gascar will help you. Mr. Gascar, how many axes have you got in your carpenter’s chest?”
“Four, sir, and an adz.”
“Bring ’em all. Tell the cook to boil every drop of water he’s got room for on the galley range. Get the marline spikes from the bo’sun’s locker and lay ’em handy. Cast loose the signal-gun lashed down there on the main deck. We’ll haul that up and mount it at the taffrail. God! If they want war, they’ll get it, the black scuts!”
“We’re short of round-shot for the gun, sir,” said “Chips.” “I misdoubt there’s a dozen rounds.”
“No matter. Solid shot isn’t much good for this work. Get all the bolts, nuts and screws from your shop—all the old iron junk you can ram down her throat. How’s powder?”
“Plenty, sir.”
“Good! We’ve got powder enough, men enough and guts enough. To your work. Mr. Crevay!”
“Yes, sir?” A lank, bony man, Crevay, with fiery locks and a slashed cheek where a dirk had once ripped deep. An ex-navy man he, and of fighting blood.
“I’m goin’ to have you serve the gun when ready. You and any men you pick,” the captain told him, while the others departed each on his own errand, tensely, yet without haste or fear. “Meanwhile, I’ll put you in charge of kedgin’ us off. Cast loose and rig the kedge-anchor, lower it away from that davy there to the long-boat, and sink it about a hundred fathom off the starb’d quarter. With twenty Malays at the capstan-bars, we ought to start the Fleece. If not, we’ll shift cargo from forrard. Look alive, sir!”
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