CHAPTER XXI

CAPTURED BY PIRATES

When they rose the next morning Peter Gross inquired for his host, but was met with evasive replies. A premonition that something had gone wrong came upon him. He asked for Koyala.

"The Bintang Burung has flown to the jungle," one of the servant lads informed him after several of the older natives had shrugged their shoulders, professing ignorance.

"When did she go?" he asked.

"The stars were still shining, Datu, when she spread her wings," the lad replied. The feeling that something was wrong grew upon the resident.

An hour passed, with no sign of Lkath. Attempting to leave the house, Peter Gross and Paddy were politely but firmly informed that they must await the summons to the _balais_, or assembly-hall, from the chieftain.

"This is a rum go," Paddy grumbled.

"I am very much afraid that something has happened to turn Lkath against us," Peter Gross remarked. "I wish Koyala had stayed."

The summons to attend the _balais_ came a little later. When they entered the hall they saw a large crowd of natives assembled. Lkath was seated in the judge's seat. Peter Gross approached him to make the customary salutation, but Lkath rose and folded his hands over his chest.

"Mynheer Resident," the chief said with dignity, "your mission in Sadong is accomplished. You have saved us from a needless war with the hill people. But I and the elders of my tribe have talked over this thing, and we have decided that it is best you should go. The Sadong Dyaks owe nothing to the _orang blanda_. They ask nothing of the _orang blanda_. You came in peace. Go in peace."

A tumult of emotions rose in Peter Gross's breast. To see the fruits of his victory snatched from him in this way was unbearable. A wild desire to plead with Lkath, to force him to reason, came upon him, but he fought it down. It would only hurt his standing among the natives, he knew; he must command, not beg.

"It shall be as you say, Lkath," he said. "Give me a pilot and let me go."

"He awaits you on the beach," Lkath replied. With this curt dismissal, Peter Gross was forced to go.

The failure of his mission weighed heavily upon Peter Gross, and he said little all that day. Paddy could see that his chief was wholly unable to account for Lkath's change of sentiment. Several times he heard the resident murmur: "If only Koyala had stayed."

Shortly before sundown, while their proa was making slow headway against an unfavorable breeze Paddy noticed his chief standing on the raised afterdeck, watching another proa that had sailed out of a jungle-hid creek-mouth shortly before and was now following in their wake. He cocked an eye at the vessel himself and remarked:

"Is that soap-dish faster than ours, or are we gaining?"

"That is precisely what I am trying to decide," Peter Gross answered gravely.

Paddy observed the note of concern in the resident's voice.

"She isn't a pirate, is she?" he asked quickly.

"I am very much afraid she is." Peter Gross spoke calmly, but Paddy noticed a tremor in his voice.

"Then we'll have to fight for it?" he exclaimed.

Peter Gross avoided a direct reply. "I'm wondering why she can stay so close inshore and outsail us," he said. "The wind is offshore, those high hills should cut her off from what little breeze we're getting, yet she neither gains nor loses an inch on us."

"Why doesn't she come out where she can get the breeze?"

"Ay, why doesn't she?" Peter Gross echoed. "If she were an honest trader she would. But keeping that course enables her to intercept us in case we should try to make shore."

Paddy did not appear greatly disturbed at the prospect of a brush with pirates. In fact, there was something like a sparkle of anticipation in his eyes. But seeing his chief so concerned, he suggested soberly:

"Can't we beat out to sea and lose them during the night?"

"Not if this is the ship I fear it is," the resident answered gravely.

"What ship?" The question was frankly curious.

"Did you hear something like a muffled motor exhaust a little while ago?"

Paddy looked up in surprise. "That's just what I thought it was, only I thought I must be crazy, imagining such a thing here."

Peter Gross sighed. "I thought so," he said with gentle resignation. "It must be her."

"Who? What?" There was no escaping the lad's eager curiosity.

"The ghost proa. She's a pirate--Ah Sing's own ship, if reports be true. I've never seen her; few white men have; but there are stories enough about her, God knows. She's equipped with a big marine engine imported from New York, I've heard; and built like a launch, though she's got the trimmings of a proa. She can outrun any ship, steam or sail, this side of Hong Kong, and she's manned by a crew of fiends that never left a man, woman or child alive yet on any ship they've taken."

Paddy's face whitened a little, and he looked earnestly at the ship. Presently he started and caught Peter Gross's arm.

"There," he exclaimed. "The motor again! Did you hear it?"

"Ay," Peter Gross replied. "We had gained a few hundred yards on them, and they've made it up."

Paddy noted the furtive glances cast at them by the crew of their own proa, mostly Bugis and Bajaus, the sea-rovers and the sea-wash, with a slight sprinkling of Dyaks. He called Peter Gross's attention to it.

"They know the proa," the resident said. "They'll neither fight nor run. The fight is ours, Paddy. You'd better get some rifles on deck."

"We're going to fight?" Rouse asked eagerly.

"Ay," Peter Gross answered soberly. "We'll fight to the end." He placed a hand on his protege's shoulder.

"I shouldn't have brought you here, my lad," he said. There was anguish in his voice. "I should have thought of this--"

"I'll take my chances," Paddy interrupted gruffly, turning away. He dove into their tiny cubicle, a boxlike contrivance between decks, to secure rifles and cartridges. They carried revolvers. When he came up the sun was almost touching the rim of the horizon. The pursuing proa, he noticed had approached much nearer, almost within hailing distance.

"They don't intend to lose us in the dark," he remarked cheerfully.

"The moon rises early to-night," Peter Gross replied.

A few minutes later, as the sun was beginning to make its thunderclap tropic descent, the _juragan_, or captain of the proa issued a sharp order. The crew leaped to the ropes and began hauling in sail. Peter Gross swung his rifle to his shoulder and covered the navigator.

"Tell your crew to keep away from those sails," he said with deadly intentness.

The _juragan_ hesitated a moment, glanced over his shoulder at the pursuing proa, and then reversed his orders. As the crew scrambled down they found themselves under Paddy's rifle.

"Get below, every man of you," Peter Gross barked in the _lingua franca_ of the islands. "Repeat that order, _juragan_!"

The latter did so sullenly, and the crew dropped hastily below, apparently well content at keeping out of the impending hostilities.

These happenings were plainly visible from the deck of the pursuing proa. The sharp chug-chug of a motor suddenly sounded, and the disguised launch darted forward like a hawk swooping down on a chicken. Casting aside all pretense, her crew showed themselves above the rail. There were at least fifty of them, mostly Chinese and Malays, fierce, wicked-looking men, big and powerful, some of them nearly as large, physically, as the resident himself. They were armed with magazine rifles and revolvers and long-bladed krisses. A rapid-firer was mounted on the forward deck.

Paddy turned to his chief with a whimsical smile. "Pretty big contract," he remarked with unimpaired cheerfulness.

Peter Gross's face was white. He knew what Paddy did not know, the fiendish tortures the pirates inflicted on their hapless victims. He was debating whether it were more merciful to shoot the lad and then himself or to make a vain stand and take the chance of being rendered helpless by a wound.

The launch was only a hundred yards away now--twenty yards. A cabin door on her aft deck opened and Peter Gross saw the face of Ah Sing, aglow in the dying rays of the sun with a fiendish malignancy and satisfaction. Lifting his rifle, he took quick aim.

Four things happened almost simultaneously as his rifle cracked. One was Ah Sing staggering forward, another was a light footfall on the deck behind him and a terrific crash on his head that filled the western heavens from horizon to zenith with a blaze of glory, the third was the roaring of a revolver in his ear and Paddy's voice trailing into the dim distance:

"I got you, damn you."

When he awoke he found himself in a vile, evil-smelling hole, in utter darkness. He had a peculiar sensation in the pit of his stomach, and his lips and tongue were dry and brittle as cork. His head felt the size of a barrel. He groaned unconsciously.

"Waking up, governor?" a cheerful voice asked. It was Paddy.

By this time Peter Gross was aware, from the rolling motion, that they were at sea. After a confused moment he picked up the thread of memory where it had been broken off.

"They got us, did they?" he asked.

"They sure did," Paddy chirruped, as though it was quite a lark.

"We haven't landed yet?"

"We made one stop. Just a few hours, I guess, to get some grub aboard. I can't make out much of their lingo, but from what I've heard I believe we're headed for one of the coast towns where we can get a doctor. That shot of yours hit the old bird in the shoulder; he's scared half to death he's going to croak."

"If he only does," Peter Gross prayed fervently under his breath. He asked Paddy: "How long have we been here?"

"About fourteen hours, I'd say on a guess. We turned back a ways, made a stop, and then headed this way. I'm not much of a sailor, but I believe we've kept a straight course since. At least the roll of the launch hasn't changed any."

"Fourteen hours," Peter Gross mused. "It might be toward Coti, or it might be the other way. Have they fed you?"

"Not a blankety-blanked thing. Not even sea-water. I'm so dry I could swallow the Mississippi."

Peter Gross made no comment. "Tell me what happened," he directed.

Paddy, who was sitting cross-legged, tried to shuffle into a more comfortable position. In doing so he bumped his head against the top of their prison. "Ouch!" he exclaimed feelingly.

"You're not hurt?" Peter Gross asked quickly.

"A plug in the arm and a tunk on the head," Paddy acknowledged. "The one in my arm made me drop my rifle, but I got two of the snakes before they got me. Then I got three more with the gat before somebody landed me a lallapaloosa on the beano and I took the count. One of the steersmen--_jurumuddis_ you call 'em, don't you?--got you. We forgot about those chaps in the steersmen's box when we ordered the crew below. But I finished him. He's decorating a nice flat in a shark's belly by now."

Peter Gross was silent.

"Wonder why they didn't chuck us overboard," Paddy remarked after a time. "I thought that was the polite piratical stunt. Seeing they were so darned considerate, giving us this private apartment, they might rustle us some grub."

"How shall I tell this light-hearted lad what is before us?" Peter Gross groaned in silent agony.

A voluble chatter broke out overhead. Through the thin flooring they heard the sound of naked feet pattering toward the rail. A moment later the ship's course was altered and it began pitching heavily in the big rollers. Peter Gross sat bolt upright, listening intently.

"What's stirring now?" Paddy asked.

"Hist! I don't know," Peter Gross warned sharply.

There was a harsh command to draw in sail, intelligible only to Peter Gross, for it was in the island patois. Paddy waited in breathless anticipation while Peter Gross, every muscle strained and tense, listened to the dissonancy above, creaking cordage, the flapping of bamboo sails, and the jargon of two-score excited men jabbering in their various tongues.

There was a series of light explosions, and then a steady vibration shook the ship. It leaped ahead instantly in response to its powerful motor. It was hardly under way when they heard a whistling sound overhead. There was a moment's pause, then the dull boom of an explosion reached their ear.

"We're under shell-fire!" Paddy gasped.

"That must be the _Prins_," Peter Gross exclaimed. "I hope to Heaven Enckel doesn't know we're aboard."

Another whistle of a passing shell and the thunder of an explosion. The two were almost simultaneous, the shell could not have fallen far from the launch's bow, both knew.

"They may sink us!" Paddy cried in a half-breath.

"Better drowning than torture." The curt reply was cut short by another shell. The explosion was more distant.

"They're losing the range." Paddy exclaimed in a low voice. In a flash it came to him why Peter Gross had said: "I hope Enckel doesn't know we're here."

Peter Gross stared, white, and silent into the blackness, waiting for the next shell. It was long in coming, and fell astern. A derisive shout rose from the pirates.

"The _Prins_ is falling behind," Paddy cried despairingly.

"Ay, the proa is too fast for her," the resident assented in a scarcely audible voice. Tears were coursing down his cheeks, tears for the lad that he had brought here to suffer unnameable tortures, for Peter Gross did not underestimate the fiendish ingenuity of Ah Sing and his crew. He felt grateful for the wall of darkness between them.

"Well, there's more than one way to crawl out of a rain-barrel," Paddy observed with unimpaired cheerfulness.

Peter Gross felt that he should speak and tell Rouse what they had to expect, but the words choked in his throat. Blissful ignorance and a natural buoyant optimism sustained the lad, it would be cruel to take them away, the resident thought. He groaned again.

"Cheer up," Paddy cried, "we'll get another chance."

The grotesqueness of the situation--his youthful protege striving to raise his flagging spirits--came home to Peter Gross even in that moment of suffering and brought a rueful smile to his lips.

"I'm afraid, my lad, that the _Prins_ was our last hope," he said. There was an almost fatherly sympathy in his voice, responsibility seemed to have added a decade to the slight disparity of years between them.

"Rats!" Paddy grunted. "We're not going to turn in our checks just yet, governor. This bird's got to go ashore somewhere, and it'll be deuced funny if Cap Carver and the little lady don't figure out some way between 'em to get us out of this."