Chapter V: Part 5

But Nicky looked back at the rope, longingly. He hated to leave all that good equipment behind. The rope part they could dispense with, but without the curator’s hammock and their own tent flies the jungle would be a misery during the afternoon thunderstorms.

“Hike along, boys. I’m going to make a try at that rope before they find it and haul it up!”

Unmindful of the curator’s expostulations, amid the rain of falling stones, he crouched close to the cliff face and drew out his revolver. Most of the stones were dropping far out; it would be a mere chance if he were hit. Three times he fired at the knot above the curator’s hammock, a mark perhaps forty feet off. Then an arrow struck the rock at his feet with a sharp tang, and, looking up, he saw one of the pygmies leaning far out over the cliff, aiming at him again. The rope had shaken a little at one of the shots and on this faint hope he sprang for the tent fly and tugged fiercely at it. He thought he felt a strand or two of it break and so jumped up on the tent fly, coming down with all his weight. Another arrow spun past him. He realized that it was only the peculiarity of having a vertical target that saved him, for the archer above was overshooting him because of it. With a last violent tug the rope strand parted, and Nicky sprawled headlong down the lava slope. Like a cat he spread-eagled, flattening himself out on the rubble of small stones, and finally he fetched up a considerable distance down the slope.

He was now a mark for a dozen arrows from above and they buzzed at him like hornets. Rising, he leaped on down, stabbing with his feet and sending an avalanche of rocks on before him. His strides kept getting longer and longer. A breathless feeling of getting out of control, falling down the slope faster and faster, made him think quick. He must stop himself at any hazard, risk a fall, if need be! He resolved on the latter, and, throwing himself sidewise, came down with a bump that jarred every bone in his body. He saw stars for an instant, but held his consciousness. Looking back, he could see that he was far out of range now. Rubbing himself painfully, he got up and started to step gingerly from rock to rock across the slope.

But the hill men weren’t done with him yet. A great stone fell over the cliff and came bounding down straight toward him. Nicky dodged it, as derisive yells came from up above. Two more rocks came whizzing down the slope, bounding like cannon balls. They seemed very terrific, but the boy stood his ground and watched them pass, shooting in a great arc high overhead and landing with a shock against the trees down in the jungle below. He realized that he was not so easy to hit; that all it required was watchfulness and care to win out.

The slope was so steep that he could toss a pebble clear down to the jungle below him, it seemed. Rocks, cactus, and century plants covered the hill, the former so unstable that they had to be tested before putting weight on them. As quickly as he could the boy picked his way along the slope, dodging rocks of all sizes flung down from above. Shouts of encouragement came from his own party under the cliff, who now were moving along fast, calling for him to hurry. Then a yell of warning echoed down from the curator, and Nicky looked up, bewildered. The hill men had brought a pole from the jungle and were prying off a whole ledge of stones hanging loosely poised above the cliff edge.

He leaped along like a mountain goat, stumbling and sliding, starting rocks by the dozen. The pygmies had chosen a place where the avalanche would fall right across his path, and he could hear the distant grumble of it as he jumped. Desperately his eyes looked below for a refuge, and then he dove for a huge bowlder and fell flat behind it as the roar, it seemed, of the whole slope coming down upon him sounded in his ears. Determined to die game, he rose behind his rock as the noise swept down toward him, for he was more afraid that his own rock would start and crush him than anything else, and had determined to leap out at the first sign of its going.

Then came the roar of hurtling stones passing over him in a flying cloud of dust. The thunder of it was appalling. His own rock moved with the jar, slightly, and then settled back on its foundations again as Nicky recalled the impulse to jump clear. Then came a wave of fine pebbles and dust, curling around the ends of his rock and forming a sort of pit around him. Showers of small stones cascaded over the top and fell down on him like a rain. It gave him an idea. As the landslide subsided he crouched, hidden behind the rock. Anxious calls came from under the cliff, but Nicky lay hid. Why not pretend that the avalanche had buried him? He only hoped that the curator or Dwight would not attempt to come out and rescue him.

The silence up on the cliff was broken by exulting yells, and he could hear them stringing along now above the precipice, searching for the whereabouts of the curator’s party below. If they would only keep on without him!

Another “_Coo-eee!_” came from under the cliff. “_Nicky! Are you alive, old scout?_” came the yell of Dwight’s voice.

He dared not call back. The hill men were too keen, and not easily fooled. He lay quiet, listening. Presently the crackle of falling stones and more yells and cries along the cliff told that their party had been located. They were probably retreating along under the cliff as fast as possible. Nicky turned and crept down the slope on his stomach, looking back to see that the rock still hid him from sight of the cliff top above. Then he worked over behind a small bush and peered up through it. Whether there were hill men watching the slope, concealed among the rocks above, he could not tell, but there probably were. The whole north side of the volcano was smoking with the jungle fire and it crept down until the thickets on the verge of the precipice were red with burning trees. He noted with relief that it barred the passage of their pursuers that way, or at least it necessitated a detour, and he hoped that their party had gotten away.

Whether to risk exposing himself now was the question. He was alone in the heart of wildest New Guinea, and it was necessary to rejoin their party and make a speed back toward the boat, for undoubtedly the hill men knew of a defile down the precipice somewhere which would let them out into no-man’s land. Also thunderheads were sweeping up from the south, and it would not be an hour before the afternoon storm would be due.

Well, one thing was certain, he ought to let his people know that he was still alive before they got out of hearing. Nicky drew his revolver and fired two shots quick with it. A whoop came from up on the mountain. They were watching the slope still! Then two shots from Dwight’s automatic barked, muffled, from over the shoulder of the cone. It sounded as if from the jungle. They would either wait for him there or circle, the boy reasoned. Probably the latter, and he could rejoin them down below at the foot of the slope. And now was the time to run, for he could hear the hill men above calling for their companions and presently the whole tribe would be back.

Nicky rose and jumped down the slope. He got a glimpse over his shoulder of two tiny black fellows dancing and hurling rocks impotently, and then gave all his attention to getting down, for the slide was steeper than a log chute. Swiftly the jungle seemed to rise up to meet him, and with a final bound he reached the friendly shelter of the trees and darted out of sight.

Then, for the first time, his aching, bruised leg forced itself into consciousness and he began to limp. Directing shots between him and Dwight gave them his location, and then calls and shouts brought them together.

Dwight came running through the jungle, grinning with joy.

“Gee! old man, we’d given you up for lost!” he yelled, capering about and punching Nicky with delight. “Got all the plunder with you, too, haven’t you!”

“Sure!” gurgled Nicky, happily. “That’s what this war’s all about! Where’s Mr. Baldwin?”

“Back there a bit, waiting for us,” said Dwight. “We got to make time. Forced march all night.”

“Going to be a wet one, too!” retorted Nicky, limping along as a mutter of thunder came rolling up from the south. “We’d better keep the tent flies out.”

They rejoined the curator, who noticed the game leg as soon as Nicky came up. “Tough luck, kid!” he said, after congratulations had been exchanged. “I’ll have to ask you to grin and bear it as best you can, for we’ve got our work cut out for us to-night!” He drew his compass, took a bearing--and started _south_, through the jungle!

A general grunt of amazement ran through the party. “Why, Mr. Baldwin, I thought we were to hurry north, so as to get back to the canoe ahead of them!” cried Dwight, voicing the feeling of them all.

“Well, I’ll tell you,” replied the curator, heading on steadily through the thickets just below the base of the volcanic talus. “It’s a bit of psychology that I’ve been working out. In the first place the pygmies, I’m sure, think as you all thought. They judged by our actions that we were beaten and would think of nothing but hurrying back to the sea again. They will make forced marches, to-night, to head us off, I’ll bet! And then we must reckon on the human nature of our own folks, too. ‘Seeing is believing’ is one of the truest old sayings there are. In other words, we’ve simply _got_ to bring back some real specimens of that cinnabar and be able to swear where we got it. No financier that I know will back a company to open up mines on the mere say-so of a red mountain seen eight miles off. I know red mercury ore strata as far as I can see it--but I _might_ be mistaken. Suppose it should turn out to be just red clay, or red iron ore!”

“Gosh, sir! you’re right!” put in Nicky. “I sort of felt that way myself, but I suppose I did not feel it hard enough to really do a stunt like this!”

“Sure!” smiled the curator. “It’s the difference between a youth and a man, Nick. The youth gets the vague feeling, but he’s as like as not to do nothing about it; the man reasons until he is convinced by the force of logic--then he acts. Now I was studying the wall of the Great Precipice when we were on the brink doing the rope fire-escape trick, with just this idea in mind. There are gaps in this precipice all along it, where the rivers tumble down from the hill country to the low jungle on their way to the sea. I marked one, some distance beyond that first signal fire to the south. It can’t be more than five miles from there in to Cinnabar Mountain, and the gap’s about five miles from here. Can we do ten miles to-night? That’s the question.”

“How about getting past that village?” asked Dwight.

“That’s the nice thing about my scheme,” laughed the curator. “I figure that all their fighting men have gone north, long ago, to aid the men of our village in repelling invaders. Those signal fires are evidently used to call the clans when war parties of the Outanatas attack them. The women and children, and perhaps a few old men, will be all that we are likely to encounter, and we ought to slip by them successfully in the night.”

“Won’t they come down our rope and track us, sir?” said Nicky. “I’ve been worrying about that, although no one tried it while I was on that slope.”

“You answered that with your revolver, Nick!” chuckled the curator. “No man can drop forty feet to that talus and live. Of course they may bring up more ropes, in time, but my idea is that all that’s left of them, with perhaps a party of fighting men from this village ahead, are now hot-footing it for some pass that they know of to the north. We’ll be on Red Mountain and giving them the laugh while they are looking for us up near the lagoon--and let’s hope they fall in with a war party of the Outanatas while they are about it! Here comes the rain, men,” he broke off. “We’ll make camp and cook something and get a bit of sleep until the moon comes up.”

They chose a spot well hidden in the jungle and the tent flies were spread on poles. A monumental feed was cooked, between Nicky’s alcohol burner and a small fire well hidden in the rocks under the tents, while the rain came down in its usual torrential downpour. Then they all turned in for some much-needed sleep. By nine o’clock the rain had stopped and a faint light over the jungle promised moonlight through the thinning clouds. The party was roused out and they broke camp, Nicky and Sadok, who were stiff and sore, being rubbed down with arnica by the curator before setting out. With the tent flies wrapped around them, the three whites set out through the wet jungle, with Sadok and Baderoon, whose naked skins seemed to revel in the raindrops, leading on ahead.

In an hour they had reached the banks of a small, swift stream, the headwaters of some river that emptied into the sea fifty miles away. Alligators, water snakes, and giant frogs plopped into its eddying depths as they came up. The splash and gurgle of waterfalls came from up the slope. Pushing along carefully, on the lookout for pythons and snakes of lesser degree, they climbed up along its banks. Steeper and more rocky became the gorge through which it defiled. Then rocky ledges of black basalt hemmed them in on both sides, and out of the gap cascaded a foaming waterfall.

In the weird moonlight, with the black shadows almost solid to the touch, it seemed to Nicky and Dwight that that was the most perilous climb they had ever ventured upon. Baderoon was quaking with fear and hanging back reluctantly, for he was no hill man, but the curator and the intrepid Sadok led on upward, pioneering out the way and hauling them up the steeper ledges by a tent fly let down for a rope. Higher and higher they climbed, the jungle falling away below almost vertically, while towering above them rose the walls of the gorge for thousands of feet. It seemed good to be at last buried deep in the cleft, with visions of the awful fate that would befall them below, if any slipped, hid mercifully from sight.

The stream came down in a series of cascades, varied by steep stretches where it sluiced along through deep channels in the rock. At one place they came to a veritable waterwheel where the whole torrent raced down a slope into a shallow basin scooped out of the solid basalt, and it shot up in a roaring pinwheel of water through which not even Sadok’s sumpitan could be driven.

Above it the walls of the gorge closed in to a narrow cleft, with high, vertical sides. There was no getting past, on either side!

“Case of swim!” ejaculated the curator, as they all stopped and looked in at the deep pool filling the cleft from wall to wall like a black ribbon. “Get out your flashers, boys. There’s one grain of comfort in it, anyway--no one would ever dream that we’d come up this way!”

They undressed and did up the bundles in the tent flies.

“Glory be to Mike, there are no anacondas in New Guinea!” shivered Nicky, looking at the black pool and thinking of former Guiana jungle days.

Still, it took courage to negotiate that pool! They scanned every inch of the wall for snakes and then plunged in, close together for mutual protection, the flashlights tied atop the boys’ heads with their bandannas, and the packs strapped on their shoulders. It seemed that that pool would never end! Its narrow ribbon of still water wound on and on through the cleft, with here and there a ledge or a rock shelf over which the water tumbled in a silent spillway, and where they could get out and rest. From ahead came, louder and louder, the roar of a waterfall. The curator listened uneasily. Such a cascade would be a catastrophe, for, if there was no way around it, by no possibility could they get up farther.

They hurried on eagerly, now, anxious to learn their fate, fear of some unknown thing seizing them from under water forgotten. A final pool showed up in the glare of the flashlights. The curator heaved a huge sigh of relief, for the head of the pool was a foaming suds of eddying water into which the stream of the cascade tumbled from above, and--blessed sight!--sticking up out of it was a huge tree, jammed in there by some freshet, its upper end jutting out into the stars which shone through the opening of the cleft!

“Praise be!” ejaculated the curator, plunging in. “Come here, tree--I love you!”

They all swam over, and one by one crept up the log. A low hail from the curator, and the hissed caution, “Lights out!” told them that he had arrived safely in the ravine above. They found him already dressing. They were in a steep, rocky ravine, filled with jungle growth, and out of the bare rocks at last. Hastily the boys dressed and made up their packs again. Sadok and Baderoon had merely to shake themselves and they were ready for further adventures.

“All aboard--and no talking!” whispered the curator, as they pushed on up the ravine. For a mile it climbed steeply, and then Sadok halted and pointed silently into the jungle. A well-defined path came down to the brook here; and there were empty gourds and crude pottery jars on the bank.

“We are opposite the second village,” whispered the curator. “Step lightly, fellows, and be careful not to break a stick. We’ll bear off to the left, to high ground.”

They went on noiselessly, following the general windings of the creek in the bright moonlight. After another mile of it the curator halted.

“I’ve a hunch that Red Mountain is somewhere near us by now,” he muttered, cautiously. “Nicky, you’re the best climber. Swarm up that pandanus, as high as you can get, and take a look-see.”

Nicky went over to the tree and was soon up in its branches. Below him fell away the lesser growth of the jungle. Other tall trees still surrounded him, but as he shinnied up a high branch, at last a vista to the east opened up. For a long time he gazed, with all the exultation of the civilized white man, on an object of immense value to his race, even though surrounded and protected by a ring of savagery. Before him, shimmering in the clear moonlight, lay the irregular truncated cone of Red Mountain, the enormous vein of cinnabar parting its upper half like pink layer cake! Black seams of coal measures streaking the mountain face told of the geological period when the mountain was born. Behind it piled up the stratified peaks and table-lands of similar mountain formations. The whole story lay clear in the educated, scientific mind of the boy, and he thrilled with its significance. Here lay the true geological formation of the interior of Dutch New Guinea, with Red Mountain as a last outpost. Behind him lay the tremendous fault of the Great Precipice, with its chain of volcanoes resulting from that mighty crack in the earth’s surface. But before him lay all the mineral wealth of New Guinea--coal measures, iron ore, what not--that would make this vast island, the largest in the world--almost a continent--a land of the utmost value to the white race!

Coming back to earth from these explorer’s dreams, Nicky got out his compass and took the mountain bearing. It was not over two miles from where they were to the slopes of Red Mountain. Between them lay a low, jungle-clad ridge; beyond it a swale or hollow of some kind, and then the slopes themselves. He swarmed down the tree to report, and then they all set out eagerly, in a straight line through the dry, arid thickets.

In half an hour they reached the top of the little ridge, and the curator found a leaning dead tree and climbed out on it for a long, soul-satisfying look for himself. Returning, they pitched down into the swale, crossed it, and began to climb. Their watches said four o’clock in the morning, so it was necessary to hasten, as they would be in plain sight on that bald spot.

Up and up the steep hillside they struggled, bidding the jungle good-by, negotiating shelves and rocky escarpments that turned out to be ledges ten feet high when they came to them. Far overhead towered the flat side of the mountain, almost a precipice, and the depths dropping below warned them that it would be mountaineering of the most dangerous kind.

A few more ledges; soul-harrowing crawls up rocky faces to which they clung with feet digging into tiny crevices and fingers clawing desperately at crumbly holds, and they had reached the bottom edge of the vein!

Dwight’s pick dug into the rich, red ore, and a lump of translucent scarlet crystals, hard as adamant and surrounded with a matrix of crumbling red ore, fell out into his hand. He passed it to the curator.

“We’ve sure gone through hell for it, sir!” he exclaimed. “I guess we’ve done our bit for New Guinea, eh?”

“We sure have!” exclaimed the curator, feelingly. “You and Nicky each get a specimen like this and stow it in your packs. And now, fellows, an air line for our camp on the lagoon. We can make it in two days!”

XI

THE FLIGHT TO THE COAST

Dawn was paling in the east as they crept slowly down the ledges of Red Mountain. The going down was far worse than the climb up, and the tent flies had to be called in play again to get over vertical drops of ten feet or more where one’s eyes could not see below how to climb down. Even then the haunting fear that some old pygmy watcher from the village might have spied them on the mountain side lent haste to their descent. It was with relief that they all gathered in the depths of the jungle again.

“Now, then, fellows, there’s only one way we can do this march to the coast. We three will have to keep together while Sadok scouts on ahead. Baderoon I’m going to turn loose, and let him run for it for Cassowary Camp and then down that trail to the Outanata village, where he can get a war party started back to rescue us.

“Baderoon, you-fellah run catch’m Outanata man?” he asked.

The negro grinned. He looked fresh and fit, and his long legs could take him like a moose through the jungle.

“_Orang-kaya_ give me-fellah sign take ’long black boy?” he suggested.

“Sure! They might murder you for your mirror, in all your youth and innocence!” laughed the curator. “Here, Nicky, get out a couple of your empty alcohol tins. The chief’d love them, to put in his ears.”

Baderoon eyed them longingly as Nicky got out the cans from his rucksack. He’d have dearly loved to put them in his own ears, only the important detail of stretching the lobe enough for such ornaments had been neglected in his youth. Such does contact with civilized whites debase the poor savage! He handled the cans reverently, and finally stowed them somehow in his loin cloth.

“Tell’m the Thunderer make war on litty black men--plenty heads!” grinned the curator. “Run--plenty--too much!”

Baderoon laughed merrily and set off into the jungle without a word. By some way known only to himself he would cover those thirty miles that day, threading alone through the trackless jungle. By noon next day a war party of the Outanatas would be halfway back to them, thirsting for a foray on their ancient enemies, the pygmies--with the powerful aid of the man who called down the lightnings--or the curator was no judge of human nature!

After Baderoon had gone, they studied the mountains and valleys to the south for some time, planning a route.

“That big sugar loaf to the northeast looks familiar to me, Nick,” said the curator. “Don’t you remember it, from our banyan tree outlook?”

They got out the map, and presently located it from bearings taken on the map from their position on Red Mountain. Once on that sugar loaf, it would be easy to locate the bald knob above Cassowary Camp.

He pointed out the shoulder to Sadok. “We go there,” he explained. “You stop ’long front. You see black man, make’m call like red lory, two time, and come back.”

Sadok comprehended quickly, and with a white flash of his teeth led on, his sumpitan balanced in his hands for instant use, and so they set out. In two hours they had reached the shoulder, some six miles through the jungle, and were cautiously reconnoitering for a lookout. After some climbing, a ledge was found that rose over the summits of the trees below. They wormed up it and lay flat in the grass on its edge, spying out the country with their glasses. Over to the east rose the cone of the old volcano, with the pygmy village on it, the girls’ tree huts visible like white specks in the sunlit clearing. Beyond that was the mountain with the great banyan tree on its north shoulder, and beyond that again in the blue distance, about twelve miles off, the bald knob above Cassowary Camp.

But it was the green jungle below them that they searched most carefully. The view below was not reassuring. The haze of at least three fires rose above the trees at widely different points. Allowing forty men to each war party, there would be over a hundred of the pygmy warriors outlying between them and their home base.

“We’ll stay right here, boys, until the rain--and then, by George! we’ll try to push through them during the storm!” declared the curator, with sudden resolution. “It’ll be pitch black for at least two hours after that. How’s the ammunition, fellows?”

“I’ve only got twelve cartridges left, sir,” said Nicky, lugubriously, “and Dwight has two clips, and then he’s through.”

“Well, I’ve only got four shells, myself,” said the curator, cheerfully. “Two of them are thirty-yard close-ups. We’ll have to husband ammunition for a possible rush, and depend on Sadok. You got’m plenty dart, Sadok?” he asked.

The Dyak shook his head and opened the cover of his bamboo quiver. “Poison him all gone, too!” he announced.

“We’ve got our work cut out for us, then! We’ll camp and get something to eat, and then wait until the clouds come before setting out. Meanwhile we’ll have to find a upas vine, or something like it. Either of you boys know strychnine when you see it?”

They shook their heads. Botany was out of their line.

“Got to know ’most everything if you’re a scientist,” grinned the curator, deprecatingly. “Well, the species we want is _S. tieute_, native of all this archipelago, the upas vine. It’s a climbing shrub, five-leaved, with little bunches of berries in a leathery rind like a small dried orange.”

“I think I’ve noticed one or two like that, sir, myself, going through the jungle,” said Dwight, reminiscently. “Climbs all over larger trees, doesn’t it?” He sketched a leaf on a bit of rock as he spoke.

“Yep. That’s him. You and Sadok scout around for one while Nick and I get ready some eats,” said the curator. “You may also find the upas _tree_, which is of the bread-fruit family, but I doubt it. Never heard of it south of Java. Look for a tall tree a hundred feet high, with lanceolate leaves and berries in a drooping cluster. Both are used for poisoning arrows and darts, from the Philippines south.”

Dwight arranged a lory call for Sadok, in case either of them should need the other, and they separated, each vanishing into the lower jungle.

Dwight walked along, searching the jungle growth with keen eyes. Gradually his course led him around the flank to the south and into a deep ravine, with great trees dropping down the slopes below him into the depths. It was impossible to see far, in here, so he climbed up a small tree and looked out. The ravine led up the mountain side, with all the jungle spread out like a map on its flanks. Searching carefully each giant trunk, he at length spied one overgrown with a profusion of some vine that looked promising, and, marking it, he set out. In ten minutes he was close enough to the vine to examine it more carefully. The reddish bark, the five-fingered leaf, looked as if it might be one of that famous family of strychnine trees that extends all around the tropics, from India through the archipelago, to South America and across Africa. Dwight thrilled with a primal, almost superstitious fear as he looked at this sinister representative of its race. It was more deadly than a cobra, if it could bite you! All the stories he had ever heard of the poisonous air that surrounds the strychnine trees came to him; and that fabled Valley of Death in Java, grown thick with upas trees in which nothing can live, came to mind. He kept his distance from the dreaded vine, respectfully, and was about to try to reach Sadok with a call, when voices coming through the jungle arrested him. He sank into the undergrowth and watched through its green depths.

The voices came nearer, guttural tones that set him shivering with excitement. They were coming down the ravine on his side and would pass quite near him, he judged. He drew his automatic and waited.

Then three diminutive black-bearded warriors came into view, passing down what must have been a trail through the jungle, although he had not noticed any in crossing. They passed silently through the green glade, and then two more came into view. Before them they drove a prisoner, a tall Papuan.

Dwight gasped as he looked to make sure--it was Baderoon--captured by the pygmies!

All the generous instincts of youth rose up in him at the sight, and without thinking further he raised his pistol and fired at the nearest pygmy. With grunts of surprise they all bolted into the forest, while Baderoon leaped into the jungle and came running toward him, his arms bound behind his back. Dwight raised his helmet out of the underbrush an instant so Baderoon could find him, and then sank out of sight. An arrow came singing and tanging through the twigs, and then Baderoon stumbled into his lair and fell at his feet.

“_Orang-kichil!_ Cut!” he gasped, turning over on his face. Dwight drew his hunting knife and severed the fibers that bound him. Baderoon wriggled over, his face alight with its happy, care-free Papuan smile. Then came the grim lines of pain as he bore stoically the throes of returning circulation in his arms. Dwight kept up a cautious vigil, expecting momentarily an arrow from some unseen source in the jungle. And the presence of the deadly upas vine behind him did not leave any illusions as to how that arrow would be armed!

Still the stealthy silence! It was his first taste of real jungle fighting, and the boy would gladly have exchanged it for any amount of odds in the open, where one could see and think. Not a bush moved, not a stick cracked; the pygmies might have utterly vanished from the earth, for any sign that the jungle gave to the contrary.

Then came the call of the Papuan lory, twice repeated. It was not far off, and it roused Dwight to a frenzy of hard thinking. The curator and Nicky, with perhaps Sadok, also, were coming, having heard his pistol shot. They must be warned at any hazards. To move from his place of concealment was death. He cudgeled his brains for an answer, turning over one plan after another rapidly and rejecting them all.

Three of anything means “Danger!” in the wilderness, all over the world; such a signal they would at once comprehend, and act accordingly. Three pistol shots would give his location away by their smoke. Dwight raised his voice and gave the lory call three times in answer.

Bows instantly twanged in the jungle, and two arrows swished through the thickets around his position. Dwight took off his helmet and peered furtively through every vista, searching every tree trunk, but not a sign could he discover whence they came.

Then came the cough of Sadok’s sumpitan from somewhere, and a small black-bearded hill man rose suddenly out of the bushes, not thirty feet away, and fell over backward, silently.

“Me go! Me-fellah catch’m bow’n arrow!” whispered Baderoon, from the ground, wringing his wrists vigorously and eying Dwight’s hunting knife longingly.

Dwight nodded approval. Two could play at this bushwhacking game! And none better than their own native bushman. He handed Baderoon the knife and the Papuan melted off into the undergrowth toward the body of the dead pygmy.

A long, sinister silence set in. Dwight watched in every direction, scanning the forest intensely through his leafy screen, but nothing that he could fire at appeared. Then a sudden shock of fright went through him. Surely that bush over there was much nearer now than when he had looked at it last! Surely it was not natural, growing so close to the roots of that giant euphorbia that towered up near it! Nature did not grow bushes in such dense shade! He was about to fire into it, when a long black arm struck out from behind the tree trunk and there was a flash of bright steel, while the bush writhed in convulsions and then lay still.

Baderoon! In spite of his religious taboo against steel, he had broken it for them. Dwight could appreciate that, and he began to have immense confidence in their two wild allies. In the jungle, where he and the curator and Nicky were helpless, these two were masters. They could beat the pygmies at their own game.

“That’s three,” muttered the boy to himself. Then the essential need to prevent the other two getting away to the main war parties of the pygmies and telling them of their presence presented itself. It seemed vital, to the boy’s imagination, and he even thought of sacrificing himself by exposing his position to draw their fire, so that they could be shot by the others and their plans for running the gantlet during the storm could go through.

He was maturing the idea, when a faint rustle in the jungle back of him turned him around, with the hair rising under his helmet with alarm and his pistol ready for instant fire. He saw Sadok’s sumpitan rise up cautiously out of the green and lowered again, and the boy breathed relievedly. Presently he caught a glimpse of the Dyak’s brown body moving serpentlike toward the upas vine. Out of the depths between it and the trunk of the larger tree overhead the leaves moved. Then came a quick, silent jab of Sadok’s kriss into the blood-red bark of the vine. It flashed down again, and Dwight could see the thick, white juice oozing from the wound in the bark. Two brown hands rose out of the foliage and tied on the tiny bamboo poison cup with gingerly care, and then all signs of movement in that direction ceased.

After a long wait, two low calls of the lory came out of the jungle near by. Dwight answered them.

“Come on out, Dwight,” came the curator’s voice. “They’re gone. We’re over this way.”

Dwight rose hesitatingly, inch by inch, half expecting every moment to be pierced by a deadly arrow. Then came the exhilaration of freedom. He felt wonderfully alive, eager and able to perform prodigies. He sought out the party, stepping as if on air, his eyes sparkling with an unearthly brilliance. The curator regarded him curiously as he came up.

“Hel-lo! What’s struck you, old top?” he exclaimed, vivaciously. “You look as if you’d seen an angel! Mostly devils around here. Baderoon tells me there were only five of them. They ambushed him and trussed him up before he could make a kick or a jump. We got two, and two more got away. The third is outlying somewhere, with Sadok and Baderoon looking for him.”

“I got that one, myself,” said Dwight. “That was the pistol shot you heard. He was walking just in front of Baderoon. And I found your upas vine, too!” he cried, excitedly.

“Ah, that accounts for it,” mused the curator. “Been lying near it a long while?”

“Accounts for what? Yes, I was right near it, ever since I fired that shot.”

“Accounts for your looking like a man who has eaten loco weed, son. You’ll be lit up for a while yet; and you need to, for we’ve got to make a dash, now that those two got away. There’s a faint essence of strychnia in the air around the upas vine which acts like medicine on a human being through the pores, Dwight,” he explained. “You’ll think you can move mountains and perform prodigies of valor, for a time. Then will come the reaction, like a man drunk with too much coffee. Well, boys--let’s go.”

He raised the lory call to bring in Sadok and Baderoon. They rejoined the party soon, and Dwight noted that the former had the small tube of fresh poison at his belt.

The party pushed on vigorously. As they swept into the valley where the pygmies were camped, thunderclouds gathered overhead and drops of rain began to fall. It grew dark and compass ranges had to be corrected again. Then came the tropical thunder and lightning with the blinding downpour of rain, so that the three white men were glad to shroud themselves in their tent flies. It was a weird march, through the tossing forest, with rain swirling through the trunks in white sheets, and flying dead branches crashing down through the grinding limbs. Sadok and Baderoon flanked the party on ahead; so long as neither of them came in, it was understood to be safe to push on at full speed. Their course aimed to pass midway between two of the fires noted from the mountain above, and then turn and strike direct for Cassowary Camp. Baderoon was now well armed, with a bow and shield and plentiful arrows taken from the slain pygmies, and Sadok’s quiver was full of fresh darts, so that a feeling of elation filled them as they swept on. The forest was noisy and windriven with the storm; the snap of broken twigs and the rending of vines and creepers in their path did not have to be guarded against now. Their only danger was in being seen by some outlying scout, for whose abolishment they trusted their native allies.

At length the curator pulled out his watch.

“I think we’ve made it, boys!” he exulted. “At the rate we have been going we must be well past those camps. We’ll bear over to the left now, and pick up Sadok. Shove along, boys, faster!--so we can catch up to him!”

They ran through the jungle, bursting and tearing their way through the undergrowth, twisting around trunks and dodging under creepers. Still no Sadok. The curator called at intervals, and they pushed on, but no reply came. Then he stopped and raised the lory screech at the top of his lungs.

It was answered by a faint, single call, a short distance ahead. With a quick sense of foreboding they moved forward warily. Then their eyes lit on a brown, muscular figure lying by a tree trunk in the dim light of the roaring jungle--Sadok!

They flung themselves on the ground with one common impulse, and crept rapidly forward. Sadok was still alive when they reached him. His eyes looked over at the curator sleepily.

Then he pointed with three of his outstretched fingers, indicating the directions with a significant brush of his left forefinger swept out over the others. He fell over on his side with the effort and closed his eyes. A long arrow stuck out from the tree over his head and its carmine tip was covered with a whitish glaze that made one shiver to look at it. Blood flowed from a slight scratch on Sadok’s shoulder, where the arrow had merely scraped it. The curator leaped at the wound, sucking fiercely at it. He shook Sadok roughly, and, reaching for the medicine box in his hip pocket, poured a pellet into his hand and forced it between the Dyak’s teeth. Then he rubbed a pinch of purple powder into the cut and called on the boys to help. Together they rolled him back and forth vigorously. While they were at it, another arrow whizzed like a hornet between their heads. They dragged Sadok behind the tree, while Nicky stood guard with his long-barreled .38. He could see nothing in the direction the arrow had come from, but the little hill men were somewhere around them now, that was certain.

Between them, Dwight and the curator had got the Dyak moving feebly again, and, dragging and pulling him roughly, they all managed to crawl on through the jungle. Once lost in the underbrush, safety was assured by vigilance, for their adversaries dared not show themselves, either. It grew steadily darker, and the crash and boom of thunder kept up unceasingly. Now and then the vivid flashes would light up the dark glades and a black form would be seen through the trees, when the insignificant _pop!_ of the pistols would ring out.

“Now, boys, it’s dark enough to make time!” said the curator, halting the party. “Here are two poles that I picked up while crawling along. Make a stretcher of them, and you two carry Sadok, while I cover your retreat.”

They rolled a tent fly around the two poles and laid Sadok on the narrow strip of canvas left in between them, while the curator crept off into the jungle to reconnoiter. The crash of Nicky’s revolver in his hands came to them once, and after a time he returned and they rose to push on. The Dyak was heavy, and the two boys staggered along, forcing their way through maddening vines and thorn ropes that tore at them in the dark. Behind them, somewhere, was the curator, covering the slow retreat, circling through the forest, occasionally visible when a lightning flash lit up the jungle with its vivid glare.

Once or twice the red flash of his pistol spat out in the dark, and once the sharp blow of an arrow on his back caused Dwight to drop his burden hastily, while Nicky tore it out of his clothing anxiously and made sure that it had not penetrated to the skin.

An hour passed, and then, utterly weary, the boys fell in a heap, pulled down by the wrench of some particularly obstinate vine in their path. They waited for the curator despondently. They could do no more. Suddenly Sadok sat up, as if in a trance. He did not speak, but the boys, delighted with this evidence of returning power, pounced on him and pumped his arms and legs with all their strength. They were still at it when the curator returned.

“Glory, Mr. Baldwin--he’s coming round!” yelped Nicky, looking up from his work. “He’s going to get over it!”

“Looks promising!” smiled the curator, getting out another pellet to give Sadok. “We can thank the rain for that! No arrow can stay virulent long in this weather! Raise him to his feet and we’ll try to make him walk.”

They propped Sadok up and, half carrying him, half leading him, they set out again. He staggered along as if walking in his sleep, leaning heavily against first one and then the other of the boys. Gradually the rain abated and the lightning flashes grew less frequent, so that it was necessary for the curator to stop and crouch in the jungle to light up the compass with his flasher concealed under the tent robe. Then came pitch blackness, and the dripping silent jungle hid them like a shroud.

“I’m afraid we’ve lost Baderoon, boys,” whispered the curator during a stop to take a bearing. “He had plenty of chance to locate us, back there in the storm, we did so much firing. I’ve had to reload entirely, once. You can’t have more than six shots left, Nick.”

“I’ve got a clip and a half, sir,” interrupted Dwight, cheerily, “and what is more, Sadok will be in shape again soon. I’ve noticed his muscles flexing occasionally, of their own steam, while helping him walk. Let’s go. We’ve got two good hours of this yet!”

His artificial buoyancy and untiring energy were a great asset to the tired party now, and they pushed on faster, with Sadok walking almost normally. Mile after mile was passed, and then a glimpse of the stars showed occasionally through the tree tops. They were tired to the limit, but Dwight, under his strange stimulant, pushed on as fresh as if just out of his sleeping bag. Dawn came at length, to sift its dim light through the jungle. It found them still on the march, with Sadok walking unaided, occasionally muttering an incoherent word of Malay.

Then came the murmur of a brook and they burst out of the jungle, to splash across it into the open glades, with the mountains towering all around them, their tops hidden by the rising mists of early daylight. The party heaved a huge sigh of relief as they stepped out into the deep wet saw grass. They were about a mile above Cassowary Camp, and it was their own stream that they had crossed. The country looked like home, indeed, to them, for half a day’s march farther lay their base camp, the canoe, and freedom.

XII

THE ESCAPE TO ARU

Suddenly Sadok began to run. The boys attempted to restrain him, but the curator held them off.

“Let him alone, boys. His mentality’s coming back--it’s a good sign. Wait.”

They watched the Dyak, who was now running in a crouching position, his long sumpitan trailing over the grass in his left hand. As he neared a clump of trees out in the swales he dropped from sight in the grass, his progress only marked by the waving of the blades. They searched the tree carefully, but only what appeared to be a large black mass, well hidden in the dense foliage, offered any possible mark.

Then the sumpitan rose slowly out of the field, and presently a large black bird tumbled down through the trees. The Dyak was on his feet in an instant, dashed through the thicket, and seized his trophy. Then he came back, holding it up triumphantly.

“Me catch’m new spec’men, _Orang-kaya_!” he announced, exuberantly. Gone was the dull, expressionless look in his eyes, replaced now by the sparkling zest of the primitive hunter.

“Boys, he’s got a long-tailed bird of paradise, by Jove!” cried the curator, excitedly. “Rarer than the superba! Great work, Sadok!”

They all ran to him and examined the prize. It was of glossy black, with bronze and purple glories of peacock-coal hues, making the feathers iridescent with changeable colors. A superb tail of feathers two feet long, and the side plumage brushed back, as it were, to form tufts of plumage along both sides of the back, completed the bird’s extraordinary ornaments.

“Almost makes you forget the pygmies, eh, Sadok?” grinned the curator, suggestively.

The Dyak’s face looked blank. Then his memory began slowly, painfully to work, and he put up his hand slowly and felt the bandage on his shoulder. Gradually his expression changed to comprehension, anger, disgust.

“Ugh!” he shuddered. “Me kill’m two--t’ree! Then me know nothing. Me come hit--arrow?” he asked.

“Yep. We found you. Carried you through the jungle for miles. Me cure’m upas [poison]. All well now!”

A kind of wonder grew in the Dyak’s eyes. It was the first time in his experience that any man had survived a poisoned arrow.

“_Orang-kaya!_ him know everyt’ing!” he cried. “Him God--big-fellah!” He stooped down and embraced the curator’s knees adoringly.

“Here! Cut it!” said the curator, embarrassed, as he disengaged himself, and there were tears in his eyes. “God Him _great_ big-fellah, Sadok! Him live in sky. Him hold the world in his hand, so, Sadok,” holding out his cupped hand. “Him make you-fellah save my life, plenty much; make me-fellah save your life! Me tell you ’bout Him, some day, Sadok,” he said, affectionately, laying his hand on the Dyak’s shoulder. “Gad! and I don’t know any greater pleasure than _that_ will be, either!” he exclaimed, under his breath. “A man’s God is what I will show him! Come on, fellows!” he broke off, hastily. “We got to shove along; it would be death to be caught in these open swales.”

The party marched on down toward the old site of Cassowary Camp, and were soon at the familiar grounds where so many adventures had befallen them and so many happy days spent in collecting. The mountain loomed up invitingly behind it, and the curator led the way up the slopes.

Dwight felt himself stumbling unaccountably. His eyesight appeared to be wavering, and the bushes that he grasped at to aid in climbing seemed to elude his grasp.

“Mr. Baldwin, quick! I’m fainting!” he gasped, weakly, and he pitched forward on his face, his arms still reaching uphill.

They all stopped.

“The reaction has come,” said the curator. “He’ll be better soon. I think we can risk an hour’s stop and get some rest and something to eat.”

His eye roved the mountain side, and finally rested on a rocky ledge with bowlders and thickets of thorny bushes on its brink.

“Carry him up there,” he ordered. “We’ll dig in there and lay low for a bit.”

They brought him up, and the curator applied restoratives, while Nicky and Sadok busied themselves in rolling bowlders and making the place as impregnable as possible. Then Nicky got out his alcohol kit, with a joke or two about its being the only camp fire worth a whoop, and started cooking a soup for all, composed of dried pemmican and soup powder.

The site commanded the swales below for miles. To the left lay the pebbly bars of the creek, with the old trail of the Outanatas entering the jungle like a green tunnel. With ammunition, they could hold this place for a long time, at least until flanking parties had ascended the mountain back of them, but their supply was now reduced to only a few cartridges.

The curator studied the situation over uneasily.

“I do wish Dwight could move!” he said to Nicky at his right. “We might try carrying him, but it seems suicidal to me. The pygmies are coming, sure as death, and they’ll move much faster than we could go with a burden. We’d be overtaken before we got halfway back to the canoe. We’ll have to stay here and fight. After the ammunition is all gone, every man make for that canoe at top speed. The first one there will get sail on her and wait until forced to draw out to the lagoon. That is about all I can plan ahead at the present. Too bad we lost Baderoon,” he sighed. “That was the finest black boy I ever knew! No one who ever knew that happy, rollicking native could help loving him--and I rather depended on him getting through and bringing up the Outanatas.”

He went over to where Dwight lay in the shade of a bush.

“How’s it coming, old man?”

“I’m weak as a cat,” said Dwight, lifelessly. “I can’t even move that arm. Pull it in out of the sun and lay it across my chest, won’t you?” he begged, querulously.