Chapter 14

'Well, then, knowing the facts, and the lady, you have a far stronger motive than the other six.'

'That's true,' said Bude.

'Again, though the others are good men (not that I like Jenkins of All Souls), none of them has your experience and knowledge. Jones Harvey's testimonials would carry it if it were a question of election to a professorship.'

'You flatter me,' answered Bude.

'_Lastly, did the trustees ask you if you were a married man_?'

'No, by Jove, they didn't.'

'Well, nothing about the competitors being unmarried men occurs in the clause of McCabe's last will and testament. He took it for granted, the prize being what it is, that only bachelors were eligible. But he forgot to say so, in so many words, and the trustees did not go beyond the deed. Now, Dodge is married; Fry of Trinity is a married don; Rustler (I happen to know) is an engaged man, who can't afford to marry a charming girl in Detroit, Michigan; and Professor Potter has buried one wife, and wedded another. If Rustler is loyal to his plighted word, you have nobody against you but Wilkinson and old Jenkins of All Souls--a tough customer, I admit, though what a Stinks man like him has to do at All Souls I don't know.'

'I say, this is hard on the other sportsmen! What ought I to do? Should I tell them?'

'You can't: you have no official knowledge of their existence. You only know through Miss McCabe. You have just to sit tight.'

'It seems beastly unsportsmanlike,' said Bude.

'Wills are often most carelessly drafted,' answered Merton, 'and the usual consequences follow.'

'It is not cricket,' said Bude, and really he seemed much more depressed than elated by the reduction of the odds against him from 6 to 1 to 2 to 1.

This is the magnificent type of character produced by our British system of athletic sports, though it is not to be doubted that the spirit of Science, in the American gentlemen, would have been equally productive of the sense of fair play.

* * * * * *

A year, by the terms of McCabe's will, was allotted to the quest. Candidates were to keep the trustees informed as to their whereabouts. Six weeks before the end of the period the competitors would be instructed as to the port of rendezvous, where an ocean liner, chartered by the trustees, was to await them. Bude, as Jones Harvey, had obtained leave to sail his own steam yacht of 800 tons.

The earl's preparations were simple. He carried his usual stock of scientific implements, his usual armament, including two Maxim guns, and a package of considerable size and weight, which was stored in the hold. As to the preparations of the others he knew nothing, but Miss McCabe became aware that Rustler had not left the American continent. Concerning Jenkins, and the probable aim of his enterprise, the object of his quest, she gleaned information from a junior Fellow of All Souls, who was her slave, was indiscreet, and did not know how deeply concerned she was in the expeditions. But she never whispered a word of what she knew to her lover, not even in the hour of parting.

It was in an unnamed creek of the New Zealand coast, six weeks before the end of the appointed year, that Bude received a telegram in cipher from the trustees. Bearded, and in blue spectacles, clad rudely as a mariner, Bude was to all, except Logan, who had accompanied him, plain Jones Harvey. None could have recognised in his rugged aspect the elegant aristocrat of Mayfair.

Bude took the message from the hands of the Maori bearer. As he deciphered it his fingers trembled with eagerness. 'Oh, Heaven! Here is the Hand of Destiny!' he exclaimed, when he had read the message; and with pallid face he dropped into a deck-chair.

'No bad news?' asked Logan with anxiety.

'The port of rendezvous,' said Bude, much agitated. 'Come down to my cabin.'

Entering the sumptuous cabin, Bude opened the locked door of a state-room, and uttered some words in an unknown tongue. A tall and very ancient Maori, tatooed with the native 'Moka' on every inch of his body, emerged. The snows of some eighty winters covered his broad breast and majestic head. His eyes were full of the secrets of primitive races. For clothing he wore two navy revolvers stuck in a waist-cloth.

'Te-iki-pa,' said Bude, in the Maori language, 'watch by the door, we must have no listeners, and your ears are keen as those of the youngest Rangatira' (warrior).

The august savage nodded, and, lying down on the floor, applied his ear to the chink at its foot.

'The port of tryst,' whispered Bude to Logan, as they seated themselves at the remotest extremity of the cabin, 'is in Cagayan Sulu.'

'And where may that be?' asked Logan, lighting a cigarette.

'It is a small volcanic island, the most southerly of the Philippines.'

'American territory now,' said Logan. 'But what about it? If it was anybody but you, Bude, I should say he was in a funk.'

'I _am_ in a funk,' answered Bude simply.

'Why?'

'I have been there before and left--a blood-feud.'

'What of it? We have one here, with the Maori King, about you know what. Have we not the Maxims, and any quantity of Lee-Metfords? Besides, you need not go ashore at Cagayan Sulu.'

'But they can come aboard. Bullets won't stop _them_.'

'Stop whom? The natives?'

'The Berbalangs: you might as well try to stop mosquitoes with Maxims.'

'Who are the Berbalangs then?'

Bude paced the cabin in haggard anxiety. 'Least said, soonest mended,' he muttered.

'Well, I don't want your confidence,' said Logan, hurt.

'My dear fellow,' said Bude affectionately, 'you are likely to know soon enough. In the meantime, please accept this.'

He opened a strong box, which appeared to contain jewellery, and offered Logan a ring. Between two diamonds of the finest water it contained a bizarre muddy coloured pearl. 'Never let that leave your finger,' said Bude. 'Your life may hang on it.'

'It is a pretty talisman,' said Logan, placing the jewel on the little finger of his right hand. 'A token of some friendly chief, I suppose, at Cagayan--what do you call it?'

'Let us put it at that,' answered Bude; 'I must take other precautions.'

It seemed to Logan that these consisted in making similar presents to the officers and crew, all of whom were Englishmen. Te-iki-pa displaced his nose-ring and inserted his pearl in the orifice previously occupied by that ornament. A little chain of the pearls was hung on the padlock of the huge packing-case, which was the special care of Te-iki-pa.

'Luckily I had the yacht's painting altered before leaving England,' said Bude. 'I'll sail her under Spanish colours, and perhaps they won't spot her. Any way, with the pearls--lucky I bought a lot--we ought to be safe enough. But if any one of the competitors has gone for specimens of the Berbalangs, I fear, I sadly fear, the consequences.' His face clouded; he fell into a reverie.

Logan made no reply, but puffed rings of cigarette smoke into the still blue air. There was method in Bude's apparent madness, but Logan suspected that there was madness in his method.

A certain coolness had not ceased to exist between the friends when, after their long voyage, they sighted the volcanic craters of the lonely isle of Cagayan Sulu and beheld the Stars and Stripes waving from the masthead of the _George Washington_ (Captain Noah P. Funkal).

Logan landed, and noted the harmless but well-armed half-Mahometan natives of the village. He saw the other competitors, whose 'exhibits,' as Miss McCabe called them, were securely stored in the _George Washington_--strange spoils of far-off mysterious forests, and unplumbed waters of the remotest isles. Occasionally a barbaric yap, or a weird yell or hoot, was wafted on the air at feeding time. Jenkins of All Souls (whom he knew a little) Logan did not meet on the beach; he, like Bude, tarried aboard ship. The other adventurers were civil but remote, and there was a jealous air of suspicion on every face save that of Professor Potter. He, during the day of waiting on the island, played golf with Logan over links which he had hastily improvised. Beyond admitting, as they played, that _his_ treasure was in a tank, 'and as well as could be expected, poor brute, but awful noisy,' Professor Potter offered no information.

'Our find is quiet enough,' said Logan.

'Does he give you trouble about food?' asked Mr. Potter.

'Takes nothing,' said Logan, adding, as he holed out, 'that makes me dormy two.'

From the rest of the competitors not even this amount of information could be extracted, and as for Captain Noah Funkal, he was taciturn, authoritative, and, Logan thought, not in a very good temper.

The _George Washington_ and the _Pendragon_ (so Jones Harvey had christened the yacht which under Bude's colours sailed as _The Sabrina_) weighed anchor simultaneously. If possible they were not to lose sight of each other, and they corresponded by signals and through the megalophone.

The hours of daylight on the first day of the return voyage passed peacefully at deck-cricket, as far as Logan, Bude, and such of the officers and men as could be spared were concerned. At last night came 'at one stride,' and the vast ocean plain was only illuminated by the pale claritude that falls from the stars. Logan and Bude (they had not dressed for dinner, but wore yachting suits) were smoking on deck, when, quite suddenly, a loud, almost musical, roar or hum was heard from the direction of the distant island.

'What's that?' asked Logan, leaping up and looking towards Cagayan Sulu.

'The Berbalangs,' said Bude coolly. 'You are wearing the ring I gave you?'

'Yes, always do,' said Logan, looking at his hand.

'All the men have their pearls; I saw to that,' said Bude.

'Why, the noise is dwindling,' said Logan. 'That is odd; it seemed to be coming this way.'

'So it is,' said Bude; 'the nearer they approach the less you hear them. When they have come on board you won't hear them at all.'

Logan stared, but asked no more questions.

The musical boom as it approached had died to a whisper, and then had fallen into perfect silence. At the very moment when the mysterious sound ceased, a swarm of things like red fire-flies, a host of floating specks of ruby light, invaded the deck in a cluster. The red points then scattered, approached each man on board, and paused when within a yard of his head or breast. Then they vanished. A queer kind of chill ran down Logan's spine; then the faint whispered musical moan tingled in each man's ears, and the sounds as they departed eastwards gathered volume and force till, in a moment, there fell perfect stillness.

Stillness, broken only by a sudden and mysterious chorus of animal cries from the _George Washington_. A kind of wail, high, shrieking, strenuous, ending in a noise as of air escaping from a pipe; a torrent of barks such as no known beast could utter, subsiding into moans that chilled the blood; a guttural scream, broken by heavy sounds as if of water lapping on a rock at uncertain intervals; a human cry, human words, with unfamiliar vowel sounds, soon slipping into quiet--these were among the horrors that assailed the ears of the voyagers in the _Pendragon_. Such a discord of laments has not tingled to the indifferent stars since the ice-wave swept into their last retreats, and crushed among the rocks that bear their fossil forms, the fauna of the preglacial period, the Ichthyosaurus, the Brontosaurus, the Guyas Cutis (or Ring-tailed Roarer), the Mastodon, and the Mammoth.

'What a row in the menagerie!' said Logan.

He was not answered.

Bude had fallen into a deck-chair, his face buried in his hands, his arms rocking convulsively.

'I say, old cock, pull yourself together,' said Logan, and rushing down the companion stairs, he reappeared with a bottle of champagne. To extract the cork (how familiar, how reassuring, sounded the _cloop_!), and to pour the foaming beverage into two long tumblers, was, to the active Logan, the work of a moment. Shaking Bude, he offered him the beaker; the earl drained it at a draught. He shuddered, but rose to his feet.

'Not a man alive on that doomed vessel,' he was saying, when anew the still air was rent by the raucous notes of a megalophone:

'Is _your_ exhibit all right?'

'Fit as a fiddle,' answered Logan through a similar instrument.

'Our exhibits are gone bust,' answered Captain Noah Funkal. 'Our professors are in fits. Our darkeys are all dead. Can your skipper come aboard?'

'Just launching a boat,' cried Logan.

Bude gave the necessary orders. His captain stepped up to him and saluted.

'Do you know what these red fire-flies were that come aboard, sir?' he asked.

'Fire-flies? Oh, _musae volitantes sonorae_, a common phenomenon in these latitudes,' answered Bude.

Logan rejoiced to see that the earl was himself again.

'The other gentlemen's scientific beasts don't seem to like them, sir?'

'So Captain Funkal seems to imply,' said Bude, and, taking the ropes, with Logan beside him, while the _Pendragon_ lay to, he steered the boat towards the _George Washington_.

The captain welcomed them on deck in a scene of unusual character. He himself had a revolver in one hand, and a belaying pin in the other; he had been quelling, by the tranquillising methods of Captain Kettle, a mutiny caused by the terror of the crew. The sailors had attempted to leap overboard in the alarm caused by the invasion of the Berbalangs.

'You will excuse my friend and myself for not being in evening dress, during a visit at this hour,' said Bude in the silkiest of tones.

'Glad to see you shipshape, gentlemen,' answered the American mariner. 'My dudes of professors were prancing round in Tuxedos and Prince Alberts when the darned fire-flies came aboard.'

Bude bowed. Study of Miss McCabe had taught him that Tuxedos and Prince Alberts mean evening dress and frock-coats.

'Did _your_ men have fits?' asked the captain.

'My captain, Captain Hardy, made a scientific inquiry about the--insects,' said Bude. 'The crew showed no emotion.'

'I guess our fire-bugs were more on business than yours,' said Captain Funkal; 'they've wrecked the exhibits, and killed the darkeys with fright: except two, and _they_ were exhibits themselves. Will you honour me by stepping into my cabin, gentlemen. I am glad to see sane white men to-night.'

Bude and Logan followed him through a scene of melancholy interest. Beside the mast, within a shattered palisade, lay huddled the vast corpse of the Mylodon of Patagonia, couchant amidst his fodder of chopped hay. The expression of the huge animal was placid and urbane in death. He was the victim of the ceaseless curiosity of science. Two of the five-horned antelope giraffes of Central Africa lay in a confused heap of horns and hoofs. Beside an immense tank couched a figure in evening dress, swearing in a subdued tone. Logan recognised Professor Potter. He gently laid his hand on the Professor's shoulder. The Scottish savant looked up:

'It is a dommed mismanaged affair,' he said. 'I could have brought the poor beast safe enough from the Clyde to New York, but the Americans made me harl him round by yon island of camstairy deevils,' and he shook his fist in the direction of Cagayan Sulu.

'What had you got?' asked Logan.

'The _Beathach na Loch na bheiste_,' said Potter. 'I drained the Loch to get him. Fortunately,' he added, 'it was at the expense of the Trust.'

After a few words of commonplace but heartfelt condolence, Logan descended the companion, and followed Bude and Captain Funkal into the cabin of that officer. The captain placed refreshments on the table.

'Now, gentlemen,' he said, 'you have seen the least riled of my professors, and you can guess what the rest are like. Professor Rustler is weeping in his cabin over a shrivelled old mummy. "Never will he speak again," says he, and I am bound to say that I _hev_ heard the critter discourse once. The mummy let some awful yells out of him when the fire-bugs came aboard.'

'Yes, we heard a human cry,' said Bude.

'I had thought the talk was managed with a concealed gramophone,' said the captain, 'but it wasn't. The Bunyip from Central Australia has gone to his long home. That was Professor Wilkinson's pet. There is nothing left alive out of the lot but the natives that Professor Jenkins of England brought in irons from Cagayan Sulu. I reckon them two niggers are somehow at the bottom of the whole ruction.'

'Indeed, and why?' asked Bude.

'Why, sir--I am addressing Professor Jones Harvey?'

Bude bowed. 'Harvey, captain, but not professor--simple amateur seaman and explorer.'

'Sir, your hand,' said the captain. 'Your friend is not a professor?'

'Not I,' said Logan, smiling.

The captain solemnly shook hands. 'Gentlemen, you have sand,' he said, a supreme tribute of respect. 'Well, about these two natives. I never liked taking them aboard. They are, in consequence of the triumph of our arms, American subjects, natives of the conquered Philippines. I am no lawyer, and they may be citizens, they may have votes. They are entitled, anyway, to the protection of the Flag, and I would have entered them as steerage passengers. But that Professor Jenkins (and the other professors agreed) would have it that they came under the head of scientific exhibits. And they did allow that the critters were highly dangerous. I guess they were right.'

'Why, what could they do?'

'Well, gentlemen, I heard stories on shore that I took no stock in. I am not a superstitious man, but they allowed that these darkeys are not of a common tribe, but what the papers call "highly developed mediums." And I guess they are at the bottom of the stramash.'

'Captain Funkal, may I be frank with you?' asked Bude.

'I am hearing you,' said the captain.

'Then, to put it shortly, I have been at Cagayan Sulu before, on an exploring cruise. That was in 1897. I never wanted to go back to it. Logan, did I not regret the choice of that port when the news reached us in New Zealand?'

Logan nodded. 'You funked it,' he said.

'When I was at Cagayan Sulu in 1897 I heard from the natives of a singular tribe in the centre of the island. This tribe is the Berbalangs.'

'That's what Professor Jenkins called them,' said the captain.

'The Berbalangs are subject to neither of the chiefs in the island. No native will approach their village. They are cannibals. The story is that they can throw themselves into a kind of trance. They then project a something or other--spirit, astral body, influence of some kind--which flies forth, making a loud noise when distant.'

'That's what we heard,' said the captain.

'But is silent when they are close at hand.'

'Silent they were,' said the captain.

'They then appear as points of red flame.'

'That's so,' interrupted the captain.

'And cause death to man and beast, apparently by terror. I have seen,' said Bude, shuddering, 'the face of a dead native of high respectability, into whose house, before my own eyes, these points of flame had entered. I had to force the door, it was strongly barred within. I never mentioned the fact before, knowing that I could not expect belief.'

'Well, sir, I believe you. You are a white man.'

Bude bowed, and went on. 'The circumstances, though not generally known, have been published, captain, by a gentleman of reputation, Mr. Edward Forbes Skertchley, of Hong Kong. His paper indeed, in the _Journal_ of a learned association, the Asiatic Society of Bengal, {232}induced me, most unfortunately, to visit Cagayan Sulu, when it was still nominally in the possession of the Spaniards. My experience was similar to that of Mr. Skertchley, but, for personal reasons, was much more awful and distressing. One of the most beautiful of the island girls, a person of most amiable and winning character, not, alas! of my own faith'--Bude's voice broke--'was one of the victims of the Berbalangs. . . . I loved her.'

He paused, and covered his face with his hands. The others respected and shared his emotion. The captain, like all sailors, sympathetic, dashed away a tear.

'One thing I ought to add,' said Bude, recovering himself, 'I am no more superstitious than you are, Captain Funkal, and doubtless science will find a simple, satisfactory, and normal explanation of the facts, the existence of which we are both compelled to admit. I have heard of no well authenticated instance in which the force, whatever it is, has been fatal to Europeans. The superstitious natives, much as they dread the Berbalangs, believe that they will not attack a person who wears a cocoa- nut pearl. Why this should be so, if so it is, I cannot guess. But, as it is always well to be on the safe side, I provided myself five years ago with a collection of these objects, and when I heard that we were ordered to Cagayan Sulu I distributed them among my crew. My friend, you may observe, wears one of the pearls. I have several about my person.' He disengaged a pin from his necktie, a muddy pearl set with burning rubies. 'Perhaps, Captain Funkal, you will honour me by accepting this specimen, and wearing it while we are in these latitudes? If it does no good, it can do no harm. We, at least, have not been molested, though we witnessed the phenomena.'

'Sir,' said the captain, 'I appreciate your kindness, and I value your gift as a memorial of one of the most singular experiences in a seafaring life. I drink your health and your friend's. Mr. Logan, to _you_.' The captain pledged his guests.

'And now, gentlemen, what am I to do?'

'That, captain, is for your own consideration.'

'I'll carpet that lubber, Jenkins,' said the captain, and leaving the cabin, he returned with the Fellow of All Souls. His shirt front was ruffled, his white neckcloth awry, his pallid countenance betrayed a sensitive second-rate mind, not at unity with itself. He nodded sullenly to Logan: Bude he did not know.

'Professor Jenkins, Mr. Jones Harvey,' said the captain. 'Sit down, sir. Take a drink; you seem to need one.' Jenkins drained the tumbler, and sat with downcast eyes, his finger drumming nervously on the table.

'Professor Jenkins, sir, I reckon you are the cause of the unparalleled disaster to this exploring expedition. Why did you bring these two natives of our territory on board, you well and duly knowing that the end would not justify the proceedings?' A furtive glance from Jenkins lighted on the diamonds that sparkled in Logan's ring. He caught Logan's hand.

'Traitor!' he cried. 'What will not scientific jealousy dare, that meanest of the passions!'

'What the devil do you mean?' said Logan angrily, wrenching his hand away.

'You leave Mr. Logan alone, sir,' said the captain. 'I have two minds to put you in irons, Mr. Professor Jenkins. If you please, explain yourself.'

'I denounce this man and his companion,' said Jenkins, noticing a pearl ring on Bude's finger; 'I denounce them of conspiracy, mean conspiracy, against this expedition, and against the American flag.'

'As how?' inquired the captain, lighting a cigar with irritating calmness.

'They wear these pearls, in which I had trusted for absolute security against the Berbalangs.'

'Well, I wear one too,' said the captain, pointing to the pin in his necktie. 'Are you going to tell me that _I_ am a traitor to the flag, sir? I warn you Professor, to be careful.'

'What am I to think?' asked Jenkins.

'It is rather more important what you _say_,' replied the captain. 'What is this fine conspiracy?'

'I had read in England about the Berbalangs.'

'Probably in Mr. Skertchley's curious paper in the Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal?' asked Bude with suavity.

Jenkins merely stared at him.

'I deemed that specimens of these American subjects, dowered with their strange and baneful gift, were well worthy of the study of American savants; and I knew that the pearls were a certain prophylactic.'