Chapter IV: A Strange Cry at Night

All night the boat moved up the yellow stream, the oarsmen working with the dogged industry of men who were laboring because they had to do it, and not from choice.

Jai Singh kept them up to their task with an occasional gruff word, and now and then he swung the long staff of his spear over their heads as a hint that he would not permit any “soldiering.”

It was early morning when he said quietly to Nick Carter:

“If the sahib would like, we will stop here. It is time for food and drink, for the coming day.”

“You mean breakfast, eh?” put in Patsy eagerly. “Good idea! You’re all right, Jai.”

Jai Singh glanced at Patsy as if half inclined to call him to account for his familiarity. But he didn’t. He had taken a great liking to Nick Carter’s good-humored second assistant. Therefore, he was inclined to permit him liberties he would not brook from anybody else.

The men rowed the boat inshore, and Jai Singh jumped out and held it while the four white men disembarked.

They helped him pull the boat far up on the bank, and Nick Carter secured it by a strong rope to the trunk of a deodar, which is another name for the Himalayan cedar.

“There’s a cataract not far ahead, I should say, from the way the water rushes down,” observed Nick Carter to Jai Singh.

“The sahib is right. The big falls are not far above. We must carry the boat around. But our men will do it. There will be no trouble for the sahibs. We will build a fire now.”

“Look here, Jai,” broke in Patsy. “How far are we to go before we get action on Leslie Arnold. Aren’t we nearly up to the place he is in?”

“The young sahib, Arnold, is in the Land of the Golden Scarab,” replied Jai Singh. “It is near, or far, as it may happen. I cannot tell. The people of that land are men who move often.”

“That may be so,” interposed Nick Carter. “But they have a city of their own, with a temple and many people. That much I know.”

“Right,” acknowledged Jai Singh. “If the young Sahib Arnold is there, we can go to him. If he is with some people of the Golden Scarab, somewhere else, we may have to travel long. We shall see.”

“Not much encouragement in that, Carter,” grumbled Jefferson Arnold, as Jai Singh moved away to superintend the building of a fire. “Still, I suppose we cannot do better than to let him lead us on.”

“It is all we can do at present,” was the detective’s reply. “It is safe to trust Jai Singh, but we must let him do it in his own way.”

“I wish his way wasn’t so slow,” interjected Chick. “Anyhow, he is going to give us a breakfast, so we should be thankful for that. He makes good coffee,” he added, sniffing appreciatively.

In a short time Jai Singh set forth a breakfast, from the stores they carried, that might hardly have been expected in such a wilderness.

Not only was there coffee, made with the skill that only the native-born East Indian ever attains, but it was softened with condensed milk kept in small air-tight cans, and sweetened with very good sugar.

There were fruits, all kinds of canned sweetmeats, and some of the dried fish of which so much is used in tropical climates, with curried rice and other viands distinctly Indian.

The four oarsmen had built their fire at a considerable distance, and down the wind, so that its smoke should not annoy the white people.

The laborers, who were of the coolie caste, knew their place, and never presumed to even look at Jai Singh unless he addressed them.

Even then they usually kept their faces averted, as if the light of his countenance were too dazzling to be met by their unworthy eyes.

After the meal, Nick Carter and Jefferson Arnold sat smoking, as they rested in the shade of the spreading trees around them, amusing themselves by looking at the distant oarsmen.

“They are big, strong fellows,” remarked Nick Carter. “But they are full of superstition. You can see, by the way they huddle together, that they are afraid of what might come out of the woods. I do not mean wild animals, or even snakes--although there are plenty of them in the forests of this country. What these fellows fear is something of preternatural shape. If they weren’t so thoroughly in awe of Jai Singh, I am inclined to think they would get away and leave us.”

“That is true, sahib,” broke in Jai Singh, in a deep growl. “But the men are not to be blamed. Many strange things happen by night. Even I, who am afraid of no man, have known the chill fingers of fear on my shoulder ere now in such places as this. If all tales be true, the country back here is full of strange things, of which it is not wise to speak.”

“Oh, cut it out, Jai!” interrupted Patsy, with a shiver, half real and half in mockery. “What kind of guff are you giving us?”

“There are tales of men going into these forests and being swallowed up. No man has seen them again, not even their bones.”

“Wow!” howled Patsy.

“Others have gone in, or been driven in, alone and unarmed, by powers they could not stand against. After many days they have come out with their skin a silver gray, all cracked and dried. They have had neither eyes to see, nor tongue to speak, nor fingers to make signs with, so that none could tell what had befallen them.”

“Cheerful old cuss, isn’t he?” whispered Chick to his chief.

Nick Carter nodded thoughtfully. He had heard similar, and even more gruesome, tales himself. He knew these parts of India better than Chick.

“Don’t be too ready to laugh,” he answered. “No white man ever has understood Indian magic--probably never will. When you have never been brought face to face with it, you may not believe it. When you come right to it, you can only wonder.”

“I know,” answered Chick, with a shrug. “I have heard of the Indian fakir who stands in the middle of a wide, open space out-of-doors and throws a rope into the air. The rope straightens out till the top of it is lost in a cloud that gathers in the otherwise clear atmosphere at the fakir’s bidding. Then down the rope climbs a boy, who proves that he is flesh and blood by going around the ring of white people who have been watching, and lets them feel his hands.”

Nick Carter shook his head slowly.

“That is one of the common tricks of the wise men of this country. It has been told so often by different people that I see no reason to doubt it. There are other things done by these fakirs quite as unaccountable. In the face of them, you can hardly deny that there is more mystery in this land than in most others in the world.”

The talk flagged now. It was becoming too hot for conversation, and everybody composed himself for sleep in the shade of the trees.

Nick Carter and Jefferson Arnold would have liked to press on. But they knew traveling was out of the question in the tropical heat of the day.

Soon after sundown they were on the move.

As Nick Carter had remarked, there were rapids not far from where they had stopped for sleep, and it was necessary to carry the boat and stores around the cataract on land, and put it into the river again at a safe distance above.

By the time this was accomplished, the night had advanced so far that Nick was afraid they would not make much more time before daylight.

He was strengthened in this belief by the fact that the whole party was pretty well exhausted by the labor of getting the boat and stores around, and was obliged to rest.

It had meant a walk of more than two miles, and everybody had been obliged to do his full part. The labor had been much heavier than Jai Singh had anticipated.

It was easy for all of them to fall asleep. The slumber they had had in the daytime was not so refreshing as this, with blackness around them and even the ordinary voices of nature stilled.

Chick had laid down by the side of the bloodhound, and was one of the first to lose himself. It had been arranged that they were to sleep for an hour and then go on.

The others each dropped down into any attitude that seemed comfortable, and in a few moments all were as oblivious to the outer world as Chick himself.

Suddenly a strange cry echoed through the blackness of the forest. It was a shriek of agony that echoed and reëchoed until it died away into a wailing moan. Hardly human, yet a sound that no animal could have produced.

Captain heard it; Chick knew that by the way he stirred and whimpered.

“What was that?” whispered Nick Carter.

In the deep gloom, Chick could see the detective sitting up, ready for action, his rifle across his knees.

“You heard it, did you?” asked Chick quietly. “It woke me.”

“Hush!”

The cry arose again, but was more faint than before.

“What kind of game are they giving us?” muttered Jefferson Arnold. “Is it a screech owl?”

Jai Singh, without speaking, picked up his spear and waited for what was to come.

For the third time the scream sounded through the forest--long drawn out and ending in a sobbing wail.

“It is the devils of the forest. There are unclean spirits walking near,” muttered Jai Singh.

“Spirits or no spirits, clean or unclean,” said Nick Carter. “I am going to see.”

He struck a match, but, so powerful was the ghostly influence even upon the detective’s usually steady nerves, that his hand shook, and he dropped the match.

Perhaps he did not try much to hold it, for it seemed to him, even as the light broke out, that it was hardly a wise thing to do until he knew what was in the vicinity.

“I have my flash light in my pocket,” he muttered to himself. “But, on the whole, I guess we’d better investigate in the dark.”

From the four coolies, some two or three hundred feet away, there came no sound. Whether they had heard the cry or not Nick did not know. Certainly, they made no sign.

Captain continued to whine in a low tone, as if frightened. Nick put his hands on the dog’s back and found it wet with the perspiration of fear.

“That settles it,” he thought, as he got a grip on himself. “When a dog is frightened--especially a dog as good as Captain--it is time to look into it.” Then, aloud, to Jai Singh: “Stay here with the dog, Jai Singh, and mind your four men don’t run away. We are going to see what made that racket in the woods.”

Nick Carter led the way into the black thicket. He was closely followed by Chick, Patsy, and Jefferson Arnold. Each man carried a rifle, as well as a revolver in his belt.

If the mysterious disturber in the forest turned out to be dangerous, they would find out whether bullets would not put an end to the noise.

On the other hand, if it really came from spirits, it would be well to find that out, too.