Chapter XXIII: Fight with Dacoits

Neither a boat in which to descend the river, nor a bullock-cart in which to reach its banks, were to be hired until the harvest was ready, so there was nothing for it but patience.

Neither Kirke nor Ralph felt themselves quite strong enough to be inclined for excessive haste. Kirke's illness, and Denham's sufferings in the jungle, made a little further rest still desirable before running the risk of more danger and new fatigues. They therefore remained quietly in the village contentedly enough, learning to know each other and like each other better every day.

They had long conversations, discussions of every subject which occurred to them. Each had undergone a training so different from the other that they never saw any matter in exactly the same light, and their opposite experiences were mutually valuable. Kirke's deep and dark knowledge of life was a warning to Denham; his own boyish lightness and gaiety were encouraging to his friend.

Meantime the rice ripened, was cut, and put up in stooks, ready for the threshing floor, in true scriptural fashion; for the manner of husking it by hand, as before described, was too slow and costly to be practised upon large quantities; neither was the paddy grained at all for mercantile purposes, as machinery was so much more convenient for the purpose.

Much rice, indeed, is brought to England in the form of paddy; and cleaned there by steam mills, of which there are many in Liverpool and elsewhere.

In the valley where Ralph and Kirke found themselves, it was a prosperous year. The people had been able to buy a sufficiency of excellent young plants, the weather had been favourable to their growth, the yield was good--the strangers had brought them luck.

But was it good or bad luck that the report of their riches should have gone forth over the land, and created envy in the hearts of some among their neighbours--idler, poorer, less fortunate than they?

But so it was. Down from the wild hillside came a party of four or five men from a neighbouring outlying village, armed with guns and pistols. They crept along, hidden by boulder and rock; crawling through gulley, and channels of dried-up streamlets, to reconnoitre; to judge of the wealth in the village, and the exact moment when it could be seized upon to the greatest advantage.

Dacoity, as it is called, is the great curse of the hill and jungle parts of Burma. The Burman hates hard work--it is so much easier to help himself to his neighbour's rice than to grow it for himself. If his crop fails, why should another man have more than he wants? Down he comes in the night, sets the village on fire, kills the men, carries off the maidens, and appropriates the property.

The English law is severe upon the dacoit, but, at the time when Ralph Denham was wandering about in these wild regions, British Burma consisted only of a long strip of seaboard, backed by a mountain-range which divided it from Siam, and of the rice-growing lands in Pegu, formed by the widespread delta of the Irriwaddy River.

It was very easy for ill-doers to escape over the borders of the British possessions either to the east or north, and English law could not reach them. Law and order elsewhere was conspicuous by its absence, therefore the dacoit flourished.

The English authorities set a price upon these robbers' heads, so it was short shrift for them if caught. To avoid this unpleasantness, they killed their enemies whenever they found that this procedure suited their convenience; and, in order to deter pursuit, they endeavoured to strike terror into the hearts of those who might seek to apprehend them, by a peculiar refinement of cruelty in the manner of killing them. Thus they were not nice people to meet with--far from it.

The two young men were sitting together, in the cool of the evening, upon the raised platform which ran round their hut, and formed a verandah, roofed with thekkee,--a kind of dried grass,--but open on every side to the air. There had been a magnificent sunset, whose gorgeousness had yet hardly faded from the western sky. They had been talking, but the soothing influence of the hour was upon them and they were silent now.

Soft curls of smoke wafted away from Kirke's cheroot; and Ralph sat on a mat, leaning against the bamboo support of the verandah, gazing dreamily over the landscape before him.

Ralph's vision was very keen, and he now became aware of three or four men, dimly perceptible among the gathering shadows, creeping along the river-bank, stooping low to be thus better concealed by the reeds which grew upon it.

Their movements were suspicious, and he quietly called Kirke's attention to them. Kirke could not see them, and thought that Ralph had imagined their presence.

"No," said Denham, "it is not imagination; they move a short way, and then keep quite still for a full minute or more. It is that which makes me think that they are up to mischief. Fix your eye upon that clump of reeds the farthest to the left of four. Now, there, don't you see something come out from behind it?"

"Ah! I do," exclaimed Kirke. "One, two, three, four, five things. They are men's heads, as sure as a gun! Ralph, it strikes me that this means dacoity."

"I believe it does," replied Ralph. "There is a large sledge there laden with paddy. The beggars are after that to a certainty."

"Have at them!" cried Kirke. "Don't let us allow their knavish tricks to succeed."

"Halt," replied Ralph. "Those fellows have guns, and long swords or daggers. There are other things stuck into their waistbelts, which are either pistols or knives, perhaps both. Have we weapons at hand? There are five of them, we two could do little against them alone; we had better call up old Shway Poh, and some of the villagers, to help."

"Moung Shway Poh won't be of much use. He will talk resignedly of those scamps being the 'five enemies,' or the 'five duties,' or the 'five great acts of sacrifice.' That rice is not his, he will be perfectly resigned to the thieves annexing it."

"We must use a little gentle force then, to persuade him that one of the ten precepts is to preserve your neighbour's goods when you accept authority over him. Shway Poh did not get this village to eat just to keep his own rice safe, or his own skin either. But, Kirke, it is not only that lot of rice which the beggars want. They may be short of food, and mean to have that, but what they are _really_ after is the village wealth, the ornaments which the women wear, the money in the monastery, the valuables generally. The important thing is to beat them off there, before they creep into the village to find out what the people have."

"Perhaps you are right. Some of those girls wear really magnificent jewellery at their festivals; and it seems to me that they sport more and more of late. Even that little Sunshine child came out the other day in a pair of ruby earrings that might make a duchess' mouth water. So here goes. I bought these guns only last week for our journey. They are not first-rate ones, but serviceable. And here is a good bowie-knife for you, and one for me. Now for Mr. Golden Grandfather."

They found the head man of the village, who rejoiced in that lovely name, squatted with his family around a huge tray of rice and chillies, flavoured with oil and salt. He was shovelling his supper into his mouth with vast relish, and was extremely averse to exertion, having already gobbled up so much as to make movement inconvenient.

"The Englishman mistakes," he said. "Dacoits never come here. They know well that I am a Friday's child, fierce and passionate as the tusked elephant which protects my soul. They dare not incur my wrath. The village is safe as long as I am its chief."

"_You_ fierce and passionate?" cried his wife contemptuously. "So you may be, but your fierceness is like the flame of a chaff fire, it flares up easily and is out again in one minute. Did we slave and labour for our beautiful jewels simply to give them to the thief? No indeed. Show me, golden[1] youth, where the dacoits are to be seen. Will they be content with one sledge full if they are down upon us, Poh Pyin?[2] Answer me that."

She went out into the verandah, but the house was situated behind a grove of trees which hid the rice-sledge from her sight.

"We must go in the boats," said she.

"Then go armed," implored Ralph, "for the robbers are armed to the teeth."

"You are sure?" asked she.

"Quite sure," said Ralph.

She called up some of the men; and the village chief having now plucked up a little energy, a boat was prepared, and put off across the stream.

So much time was lost, however, that the robbers had already linked two sledges together, and were punting them away with all speed. Upon seeing the villagers' boat, which was impelled by six men, gaining rapidly upon them, and followed by two more, they pointed their guns at the foremost.

"Stand back!" they cried, "or we fire."

"We had better return," whispered the fat old Shway Poh.

"Coward!" hissed out Kirke, thirsting for the fray. "What! they are but five."

"They are desperate men," whined Shway Poh.

"If we lose our rice, there is nothing but dacoity before us, ourselves, next winter," said one of the men.

The boat shot ahead, and tried to run athwart the first sledge. The dacoits fired. Had five guns really been able to kill six men? There were five rowers, and Shway Poh steering. Ralph had the sixth oar, and Kirke's gun rang out in response to the attack, but only he and Denham remained steady at their posts. All the Burmans were bowled over. Strange that the dacoits' shots should have hit them all, and missed Kirke's broad figure standing erect in the bows. Did he bear a charmed life?

There was another explanation of the mystery. He who fights and runs away, may always live to fight another day. The six Burmans were all prostrate at the bottom of the boat, and the shots had passed harmlessly above them. Neither had they been taken with very true aim, for all had gone wide of the mark.

A kick from Kirke aroused the man nearest to him.

"Get up, you scoundrel!" thundered the young man. "What are you funking there for? Seize them before they can reload!"

He threw himself out of the boat, which had now crossed the stream, and tore the pole from the hands of one dacoit. Ralph followed, and seized another by the throat, but the fellow's body was thickly besmeared with cocoanut oil, rendering him so slippery that he actually slid through his hands, and Denham's foot slipped, throwing him down.

Up he sprang in an instant, and tried to grasp the fellow's garments; but, with a wriggle and a twist, he was out of the coiled cloth in one moment, leaving it in Ralph's hands, while he stood for the space of a second, free of all impedimenta, then bounded into the jungle.

Ralph gave chase, but had no chance against the lithe limbs of the Burman, well used to such encounters, and almost as supple as a snake. After a short pursuit, he turned back to assist his friends, seeing the undesirability of separating their party into single units.

He found himself needed. Upon the report of firearms, the natives in the other two boats held aloof, and were now returning to the village, towing, however, the rice sledges with them; and the valorous Mr. Golden Grandfather was in the act of stepping into their own, with evident purpose of following in their wake.

Kirke had knocked down one of the dacoits, who was either killed or lay senseless on the ground. Using his long pole as a quarter-staff, and whirling it round his head in true old English style, he was making play against another, who, wholly unused to this style of thing, was defenceless in his hands.

But the fourth was in the act of coming up behind Kirke with a knife in his muscular hands,--a long curved knife of deadly power--and actually had it raised in air, ready to plunge into the young man's back, beneath the shoulderblade. Ralph caught his own dagger from his cummerbund, and dashed upon the enemy's rear, with a cry of "'Ware, Kirke!"

Kirke turned, saw his danger, and faced it. Ralph plunged his dagger at the dacoit, who raised his arm to protect his head, and received the blow in the fleshy part of it. The fifth robber crawled up through the long grass, and wounded Ralph in the leg, bringing him to the ground; but Ralph caught his first opponent by the ankle as he lay, holding him there with a grasp of iron, and brought him down over him.

Kirke's guns had been left in the boat, unfortunately; but the two English lads had given the dacoits no time to reload theirs, so that the fight was pretty equal. Now, however, Mr. Grandfather, regarding himself as tolerably safe, began to blaze away from the boat to the assistance of his guests, and the tide of battle turned.

The dacoits evidently thought this too long odds, and fled, leaving one of their number behind. Kirke turned him over with his foot, as the others disappeared, and found him quite dead,--an ugly sight, with his dark, evil, scowling face set in the ashy hue of death.

"Pah!" cried Kirke. "What carrion!"

"Poor wretch," said the gentler Denham, "I am very sorry for him."

"Dacoit will revenge this upon some of us," said Mr. Golden Grandfather. "This is a bad job for us."

"Nonsense, old fellow," said Kirke lightly. "The dacoits have had enough of us for one while, and we will be prepared for them before they come again. The rice is safe at anyrate, that is one good thing. You must get it down to the creek with all speed. It would be the best way to set off to-morrow with morning light."

"Yes, paya, you speak truth; but this bad job," reiterated Moung Shway Poh.

The party returned silently to the village, there was no exultation over their victory, all were exhausted now the excitement was over, several had been more or less knocked about, and Ralph had lost a good deal of blood from a flesh wound in his leg.

One of the women dressed it with some healing leaves, binding it up, and they all retired to rest, but the women as well as the men were inclined to look darkly upon the transactions of the evening, under the belief that though their treasures were the original inducement for the dacoits' arrival, those scoundrels would now never rest until they had avenged blood by blood.