The Mutineers Part 20

All this time Roger had watched and listened with a kindly smile.

"Well, men," he now said, "we've had a chance to rest and get our wind.

It's time we set to work. What do you say, hadn't we better haul the boat out?"

Although we tacitly had accepted Roger as commander of our expedition, he spoke always with a certain deference to the greater age and experience of Blodgett and Davie Paine, which won them so completely that they would have followed him anywhere.

They both looked at the sky and at the darkly rolling sea on which there now rested a low incoming mist; but Davie left the burden of reply to old Blodgett, who spoke nervously in his thin, windy voice.

"Ay, sir, that we had. There's not much wind, nor is there, I think, likely to be much; but if we was to haul up into some bushes like those yonder, there won't be a thousand savages scouring the coast, come daylight, a-hunting for the men that came in the boat."

That was sound common sense.

We got out and, standing three on a side, hauled the boat by great effort clean out of water. Then we bent ropes to each end of three thwarts, and thrust an oar through the bights of each pair of ropes. Thus, with one of us at each end of an oar, holding it in the crooks of his elbows, we made out to lift the boat and drag it along till we got it safely hidden in the bushes with the oars tucked away under it. We then smoothed out our tracks and restored the branches as well as we could, and held a counsel in which every man had an equal voice.

That it would be folly to remain on the beach until daylight, we were all agreed. Immediately beyond the muddy sh.o.r.e there was, so far as we could tell, only a salt marsh overgrown with rank gra.s.s and scattered clumps of vegetation, which might conceal us after a fas.h.i.+on if we were willing to lie all day long in mud that probably swarmed with reptile life, but which would afford us no real security and would give us no opportunity to forage for fresh water and food.

Blodgett, wide-eyed and restless, urged that we set out inland and travel as far as possible before daybreak. "You can't tell about a country like this," he said. "Might be we'd stumble on a temple with a lot of heathen idols full of gold and precious stones to make our everlasting fortunes, or a n.i.g.g.e.r or two with a bag of rubies tied round his neck with a string."

"Yeah!" the cook grunted, irritated by Blodgett's free use of the word "n.i.g.g.e.r," "and Ah's tellin' you he'll have a Malay kris what'll slit yo'

vitals and chop off yo' head; and nex' time when you gwine come to say howdy, you'll find yo' ol' skull a-setting in de temple, chockfull of dem rubies and grinnin' like he was glad to see you back again. Ah ain't gwine on no such promulgation, no sah! What Ah wants is a good, cool drink and a piece of pie. Ya.s.s, sah,"

"Now that's like I feel," said Neddie Benson. "I never thought when the lady was tellin' me about trouble in store, that there warn't goin' to be enough victuals to go round--"

"Ah, you make me tired," Blodgett snapped out. "Food, food, food! And here's a chance to find a nice little temple an' better our fortunes. Of course it ain't like India, but if these here slant-eyed pirates have stole any gold at all, it'll be in the temples."

"What I'd like"--it was Davie Paine's heavy, slow voice--"is just a drink of water and some s.h.i.+p's bread."

"Well," said Roger, "we'll find neither bread nor rubies lying on the beach, and since we're agreed that it's best to get out of sight, let's set off."

He was about to plunge blindly into the marsh, when Blodgett, who had been ranging restlessly while we talked, cried, "Here's a road! As I'm alive here's a road!"

We trooped over to where he stood, and saw, sure enough, an opening in the brush and gra.s.s where the ground was beaten hard as if by the pa.s.sing of many feet.

"Well, let's be on our way," said Blodgett, starting forward.

"No, sah, dat ain't no way foh to go!" the cook exclaimed. He stood there, head thrown forward, chin out-thrust, the cleaver, which he had carried all the time since we left the s.h.i.+p, hanging at his side.

"Why not?" asked Roger.

"'Cause, sah, whar dey's a road dey's humans and humans heahbouts on dese yeh islands is liable to be drefful free with strangers. Ya.s.s, sah, if we go a-walkin' along dat yeh road, fust thing we know we's gwine walk into a whole mob of dem yeh heathens. Den whar'll we be?" In answer to his question, the negro thrust out his left hand and, grasping an imaginary opponent by the throat, raised the cleaver, and swept it through the air with a slicing motion. Looking keenly at us to be sure that we grasped the significance of his pantomime he remarked, "Ah want mah ol' head to stay put."

"There ain't going to be no village till we come to trees," said Davie Paine slowly. "If there is, we can see it anyhow, and if there isn't, this road'll take us across the marsh. Once we're on the other side, we can leave the road and take to the hills."

"There's an idea," Roger cried. "How about it, Bennie?"

I nodded.

Blodgett eagerly went first and the cook, apparently fearing that he was on his way to be served as a particularly choice tidbit at somebody else's banquet, came last. The rest of us just jostled along together. But Davie Paine, I noticed, held his head higher than I ever had seen it before; for Roger's appreciation of his sound common sense had pleased him beyond measure and had done wonders to restore his self-confidence.

First there were interwoven bushes and vines beside the road, and then tall reeds and marsh gra.s.ses; now there was sand underfoot, now mud. But it was a better path by far than any we could have beaten out for ourselves, and we all--except the cook--were well pleased that we had taken it.

The bushes and tall gra.s.ses, which shut us in, prevented our seeing the ocean behind us or the hills ahead, and the miasmic mist that we had noticed some time since billowed around our knees. But the stars were very bright above us, and phosph.o.r.escent creatures like fire-flies fluttered here and there, and, all things considered, we made excellent progress.

As it had been Blodgett in his eternal peering and prowling who had found the path, so now it was Blodgett, bending low as he hurried at the head of our irregular line, who twice stopped suddenly and said that he had heard hoa.r.s.e, distant calls.

Each time, when the rest of us came up to him and listened, they had died away, but Blodgett now had lost his confident air. He bent lower as he walked and he peered ahead in a way that seemed to me more prowling and catlike than ever. As we advanced his uneasiness grew on him, until presently he turned and raised his hand. The five of us crowded close together behind him and listened intently.

For a while, as before, we heard nothing; then suddenly a new, strange noise came to our ears. It was an indistinct sound of trampling, and it certainly was approaching.

The cook grasped my arm. "'Fo' de good Lo'd!" he muttered, "dey's voices!"

Now I, too, and all the others heard occasional grunts and gutturals. We dared not flee back to the beach, for there or in the open marshy land we could not escape observation, and since it had taken us a good half hour to carry our boat to its hiding-place, it would be utter folly to try to launch it and put out to sea.

Not knowing which way to turn, the six of us stood huddled together like frightened sheep, in the starlight, in the centre of that great marsh, with the white mist sweeping up around the bushes, and waited for we knew not what.

As the noise of tramping and the guttural voices grew louder, Blodgett gasped, "Look! In heaven's name, look there!"

Where the path wound over a gentle rise, which was blurred to our eyes by the mist, there appeared a moving black ma.s.s above which swayed and rose and fell what seemed to our excited vision the points of a great number of spears.

With one accord we turned and plunged from the path straight into the marsh and ran with all our might and main. The cook, who hitherto had brought up the rear, now forged to the front, springing ahead with long jumps.

Occasionally, as he leaped even higher to clear a bush or a stump, I could see his kinky round head against the sky, and catch the flash of starlight on his cleaver, which he still carried. Close behind him ran Neddie Benson, who saw in the adventures of the night a more terrible fulfillment of the plump lady's prophecies than ever he had dreamed of; then came Roger and I, and at my shoulder I heard Davie's heavy breathing and Blodgett's hard gasps.

To snakes or other reptiles that may have inhabited the warm pools through which we splashed, we gave no thought. Somewhere ahead of us there was high land--had we not rowed close enough to the promontory to hear breakers?

When Davie and Blodgett fairly panted to us to stop for breath, the cook and Neddie Benson with one voice urged us on to the hills where we could find rocks or trees for a shelter from which to stand off whatever savages might pursue us.

Though we tried to make as little noise as possible, our splas.h.i.+ng and cras.h.i.+ng as we raced now in single file, now six abreast, now as irregularly as half a dozen sheep, must have been audible to keen ears a mile away. When we came at last to woods and drier ground, we settled down to a steady jog, which was much less noisy, but even then we stumbled and fell and clattered and thrashed as we labored on.

At first we had heard in the night behind us, repeated over and over again, those hoa.r.s.e, unintelligible calls and certain raucous blasts, which we imagined came from some crude native trumpet; but as we climbed, the rising mist floated about us, and hearing less of the calling and the blasts, we slowed down to a hard walk and went on up, up, up, through trees and over rocks, with the mist in our faces and obscuring the way until we could not see three feet in front of us, but had to keep together by calling cautiously now and then.

Blodgett, coming first to a ridge of rock, stopped high above us like a shadow cast by the moonlight on the mist.

"Here's the place to make a stand," he cried in his thin voice. "A nat'ral fort to lay behind. Come, lads, over we go!"

Up on the rock we scrambled, all of us ready to jump down on the other side, when Neddie Benson called on us to stop, and with a queer cry let himself fall back the way he had come. Fearing that he was injured, we paused reluctantly.

"Don't go over that rock," he cried.

"Why not?" Roger asked.

"It gives me a sick feeling inside."

"Stuff!" exclaimed Blodgett. "Behind that rock we'll be safe from all the heathen in the Chinese Sea."

"The lady she said there'd be trouble," Neddie wailed insistently, "and I ain't going over that rock. No, sir, not when I feel squeamish like I do now."

With an angry snort Blodgett hesitated on the very summit of the ledge.

"Come on, come on," he said.