Part 11

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.

The curator shook his head. It would be at least another hour before Dwight could even move his own legs. The curator fidgeted with impatience as he cursed the upas vine and all its relatives. Hours were precious as dear life, now. He had about decided on a scheme for pushing along and carrying Dwight in relays, when a low whistle from Nicky brought him to his feet.

“Here they come, sir!” announced the boy, tensely.

He peered out of their lair. A long line of the little black men swept across the upper swales, arrows on bows, walking about fifteen feet apart, searching warily every foot of the grass. More burst out of the jungle along the creek every few moments, and far to the right, other parties could be seen beating across the jungle toward the banyan-tree mountain. Nothing could escape such a dragnet!

They watched them impotently, as the warriors slowly worked down the swales toward their position. There were at least fifty of them in the line that finally reached the site of Cassowary Camp. Then they began to slowly filter up the mountain side.

“Now’s our only chance!” said the curator in a low voice. “Sadok, you pick off any that come near this position, or any that seem likely to discover us, and we’ll hope that the rest may go by without finding us.”

“How about their finding the canoe before we do?” suggested Nicky, eagerly.

“I’ve thought of that. We’ve got to move as soon as they pass us, and get Dwight along somehow. Sadok and I will carry him. We’ll have to beat ’em to it.”

A pygmy came out of the bushes directly below him, and his little black eyes popped with sudden discovery. Before he could utter a yell a dart from Sadok’s sumpitan ended him. Then another appeared, working uphill to their right, and he, too, was tumbled over in a silent heap. The curator felt a touch on his arm. He turned his head, to see Dwight, who had crawled over on hands and knees, and he was pointing up to their left with a look of horror in his eyes. There stood a pygmy in plain sight in the act of raising the warwhoop!

The pistols barked in unison with the high-pitched yell that the man let out. There were swift rustlings all over the mountain side, and a knot of warriors below charged up the hill, shouting their battle cries. The curator dropped a shell on them. A great brown geyser of earth and stones obliterated the group, simultaneous with its thundering report, and the jungle below burst into flames with the intense heat of the explosion. In another instant there was not a pygmy in sight anywhere on the whole landscape.

“Now, then, cut and run for it!” hissed the curator. “Make for the canoe, Nick, and get sail on her. We’ll come along with Dwight, somehow!”

Nicky darted off into the jungle to their left, while Sadok and the curator hoisted Dwight to his feet and started off along the rocky side of the mountain. They saw a party of the pygmies scuttling along in the valley below to get ahead of them. Stopping an instant to aim, the curator drove another shell down on them. Its detonation was followed by a sudden silence, and then out of the green depths of the jungle across the creek burst a full, deep-throated war chant.

“Ko! Ko! Ko! Hy-_yah!_ Hy-_yah!_ Hy-_yah!_ To-yah-hyah! To-yah-hyah! Ko! Ko! Ko!”

The curator stopped, exulting. These were _men_!--not the little, dwarfed aborigines of the hills, but big, tall, deep-chested men--the Outanatas!

He scarce dared to hope. An arrow whispered through the jungle over his shoulder, but he heeded it not, his eyes fixed on that open green tunnel that opened out on the creek bank. The marching song continued, and he got glimpses of spears and white-scrolled shields moving along through the greens of the forest below. Then a tall chief stood in the mouth of the tunnel, his face hideously streaked with white marks, and, hanging like an apron from his girdle, was the curator’s flaming red bandanna. It was the war chief of the Outanatas--and behind him came Baderoon, pointing and urging them on vigorously!

The curator cupped his hands.

“Baderoon! Baderoon! Here we are!” he yelled. Then he and Sadok laid Dwight down under a rock ledge and sought ambushes. Yells and war cries sounded from the mountain side all about them as the long line of Outanata warriors splashed across the creek, brandishing their weapons. Parties of pygmies formed for the assault in the swales. The occasional cough of Sadok’s sumpitan at different places on the mountain showed that he was outlying and picking off men here and there.

Then a knot of the pygmies gathered below the curator, evidently bent on taking the Outanatas in the rear. He aimed carefully into the midst of them and fired his third shell. Its stunning report was the signal for a general attack, for the Outanatas dashed out into the grass country, a cloud of arrows preceding them, while javelins soared and poised in the air, to sink out of sight in the long grass.

Baderoon came running up the hill through the jungle.

“Me get’m! Me fetch’m, _Orang-kaya_! Come! No good for white man be here.” He was fully armed, and exuberant with delight and high spirits. The curator called in Sadok, and they raised Dwight to his feet and set off at full speed, with the Dyak covering their retreat. The boy was fast getting his strength back now, and they went along rapidly. As they left the plateau the curator looked back. The whole country behind him was full of tall and short black men, fighting like demons, catching arrows on ready shields, jabbing at each other with long spears, and occasionally the white flash of a bamboo knife would tell where one of a pair had come off victorious.

That was his last glimpse of Papuan and pygmy, for the way led down abruptly into their valley, and soon they were crossing the strip of deep jungle and had arrived on the coral bank. A shout for Nicky, answered by a low whistle, brought them to the stream bank, where the old white sail of the small proa showed up through the thickets. Nicky had already gotten the crate aboard and was all ready to shove off. They tumbled in, and Baderoon took the helm, while Sadok drew in the sheet rope. The creek banks slid swiftly by, and presently they were out in the lagoon and headed down it toward the capes of the open sea.

“Good-by, New Guinea!” shouted the curator, waving his hand at the column of smoke that rose far back in the hills. “Some day the white race will need you--but it’s a long, long way off yet, boys!” he laughed, dropping his voice. “And now let’s have those cinnabar specimens,” he added, as the proa swept along like a swallow under the fresh breeze. “Mum’s the word about them, everybody,” he warned. “It’s the one big secret of the expedition.”

“I suppose we’ll see you next as president of the New Guinea Mining Company, Limited, Mr. Baldwin?” laughed Nicky, who was busily whittling at a short bamboo stick he had brought aboard.

“That opens up a big subject, boys,” answered the curator, seriously. “If either of you want a big position in such a company, just say the word and it’s yours. You’ll be rich and prosperous beyond your dreams.”

“And you, Mr. Baldwin?” inquired Dwight, curiously.

“Such temptations are not for me,” replied the curator. “When I’ve reported this thing to certain financiers, I’m through. My whole life has been that of a scientist, a seeker after knowledge. When I have found a new thing my interest in it ceases. As a wanderer and an explorer I am happy; as a wealthy mine owner I’d be miserable. All my education has been in the service of science; it’s the only life for me.”

“Me, too!” grunted Nicky, splitting his bamboo wand and sticking a small sliver in it to hold it open. “And, there’s one specimen from New Guinea that I _didn’t_ get, and that’s a sea snake. You can have your mine for all of me!”

“By George! that’s the way I feel, too!” exclaimed Dwight. “The engineers and the moneyed men can have Red Mountain, for all I care. I’d far rather collect a new butterfly in some out-of-the-way hole than own a million dollars. All I want is to be with you on your next expedition, Mr. Baldwin.”

The curator looked into their eyes understandingly.

“It’s the way we naturalists all feel,” he said, appreciatively. “Enough to live on and the chance to do something for science is happiness to us. Sadok and I are going into the interior of Borneo next, and I’d be delighted to have you with me. Your characters are pretty well formed now; all this that we’ve gone through has simply hardened them, so I know I can depend on you--and that’s the most precious knowledge any man can have--”

“_There’s_ one! Port your helm, Baderoon!” came from Nicky. They looked around, to see a sea snake swimming carelessly along, his head a foot out of the water. He was afraid of nothing and stuck out his tongue warningly as the proa sheered toward him. Then his oarlike tail flashed into swift motion and he shot along by their gunwale, but Nicky was too quick for him, and with a swift jab of his wand brought him aboard, squirming and striking furiously from the cleft in which he was caught.

“Look out! He’s highly venomous!” warned Nicky, coming aft. “Watch out--he’s getting away!”

The snake dropped to the bottom of the canoe and darted up its side. With a swift clip of the rod Nicky broke his neck, and the “specimen” lay squirming aimlessly in the bottom of the boat as they all watched it narrowly.

“He’ll be ready for skinning out presently,” chirped Nicky, cheerily. “As a snakist I’ve got you fellows backed into the cellar!”