Part 15

He had no idea, of course, what he was waiting for, unless he had some dim expectation that his dead mother, or his owner, or the man on the ferryboat would come and lead him home. His instinct taught him that the dark of the wilderness held unknown perils for him, though his guarded babyhood had afforded him no chance to learn by experience. Young as he was, he took up the position which gave his peculiar weapons opportunity for exercise. Instead of backing up against the trees and the rock, and facing such foes as the dread dark might send upon him, he stood with his back toward the danger and his formidable heels in readiness, while over first one shoulder, then the other, his eyes and ears kept guard. The situation was one that might well have cowed him completely; but the blood in his baby veins was that of mettled ancestors, and terrified though he was, and trembling, his fear did not conquer his spirit.

Soon after he had taken his stand in this strange and desolate stabling, from a little way back in the underbrush there came a pounce, a scuffle, and a squeal, more scuffle, and then silence. He could not even guess what was happening, but whatever it was, it was terrible to him. For some moments there came, from the same spot, little, soft, ugly, thickish sounds. These stopped abruptly. Immediately afterwards there was a hurried beating of wings, and something floated over him. The big owl had been disturbed at its banquet. A few seconds more and the watcher's ears caught a patter of light footsteps approaching. Next he saw a faint gleam of eyes, which seemed to scrutinize him steadily, fearlessly, indifferently, for perhaps the greater part of a minute. Then they vanished, with more patter of light footsteps; and as they disappeared a wandering puff of night air brought to the colt's nostrils a musky scent which he knew. It was the smell of a red fox, such as he had seen once prowling around his owner's barn-yard. This smell, from its associations, was comforting rather than otherwise, and he would have been glad if the fox had stayed near.

For some time now there was stillness all about the big rock, the owl's kill and the passing of the fox having put all the small wild creatures on their guard. Little by little the colt was beginning to get used to the situation. He was even beginning to relax the tense vigilance of his watching, when suddenly his heart gave a leap and seemed to stand still. Just about ten paces behind him he saw a pair of pale, green-gleaming eyes, round, and set wider apart than those of the fox, slowly floating toward him. At the same time his nostrils caught a scent which was absolutely unknown to him, and peculiarly terrifying.

As these two dreadful eyes drew near, the colt's muscles grew tense. Then he distinguished a shadowy, crouching form behind the eyes; and he gathered his haunches under him for a desperate defense. But the big lynx was wary. This long-legged creature who stood thus with his back to him and eyed him with watchful, sidelong glances was something he did not understand. Before he came within range of the colt's heels he swerved to one side and stole around at a safe distance, investigating. He was astonished, and at first discomfited, to find that, whichever way he circled, the unknown animal under the rock persisted in keeping his back to him. For perhaps half an hour, with occasional intervals of motionless crouching, he kept up this slow circling, unable to allay his suspicions. Then, apparently making up his mind that the unknown was not a dangerous adversary, or perhaps in some subtle way detecting his youth, he crept closer. He crept so close, indeed, that he felt emboldened to spring; and he was just about to do so.

Just at this moment, luckily just the right moment, the colt let loose the catapult of his strong haunches. His hoofs struck the lynx fairly in the face, and hurled him backwards against a neighbouring tree.

Half-stunned, and his wind knocked out, the big cat picked himself up with a sharp spitting and snarling, and slunk behind the tree. Then he turned tail and ran away, thoroughly beaten. The strange animal had a fashion in fighting which he did not know how to cope with; and he had no spirit left for further lessons.

After this the night wore on without great event, though with frequent alarms which kept the colt's nerves ceaselessly on the rack. Now it was the faint, almost imperceptible sound of a hunting weasel; now it was the erratic scurrying of the wood-mice; now it was the loud but muffled thumping of a hare, astonished at this long-limbed intruder upon the wilderness domains. The colt was accustomed to sleeping well through the night, and this protracted vigil upon his feet (for he was afraid to lie down) exhausted him. When the first spectral gray of dawn began to work its magic through the forest, his legs were trembling so that he could hardly stand. When the first pink rays crept in beneath the rock, he sank down and lay for half an hour, not sleeping, but resting. Then he got up and resumed his homeward journey, very hungry, but too desperate with chill and homesickness to stop and eat.

He had travelled perhaps a mile, when he caught the sound of heavy, careless footsteps, and stopped. Staring anxiously through the trees, he saw a woodsman striding along the trail, with an axe over his shoulder. At sight of one of those beings that stood to him for protection, and kindly guidance, and shelter, his terror and loneliness all slipped away. He gave a shrill, loud whinny of delight, galloped forward with much crashing of underbrush, and snuggled a coaxing muzzle under the arm of the astonished woodsman.

The Terror of the Sea Caves

I

It was in Singapore that big Jan Laurvik, the diver, heard about the lost pearls.

As he was passing the head of a mean-looking alley near the waterside, late one sweltering afternoon, he was halted by a sudden uproar of cries and curses. The noise came from a courtyard about twenty paces up the alley. It was a fight, evidently, and Jan's blood responded with a sympathetic thrill. But the curses which he caught were all in Malay or Chinese, and he curbed his natural desire to rush in and help somebody. Though he knew both languages very well, he knew that he did not know, and never could know, the people who spoke those languages. Interference on the part of a stranger might be resented by both parties to the quarrel. He shrugged his great shoulders, and walked on reluctantly.

Hardly three steps had he taken, however, when above the shrill cries a great voice shouted.

"Take that, you damned--" it began, in English. And at that it ended, with a kind of choking.

Jan Laurvik wheeled round in a flash and ran furiously for the door of the courtyard, which stood half-open. He was a Norwegian, but English was as a native tongue to him; and amid the jumble of races in the East he counted all of European speech his brothers. An Englishman was being killed in there. The quarrel was clearly his.

Six feet two in height, swift, and of huge strength, with yellow hair, so light as to be almost white, waving thickly over a face that was sunburnt to a high red, his blue eyes flaming with the delight of battle, Jan burst in upon the mob of fighters. Several bodies lay on the floor. One dark-faced, low-browed fellow, a Lascar apparently, with his back to the wall and a bloody kreese in his hand, was putting up a savage fight against five or six assailants, who seemed to be Chinamen and Malays. The body of the Englishman whose voice Jan had heard lay in an ugly heap against the wall, its head far back and almost severed.

Jan's practised eye took in everything at a glance. The heavy stick he carried was, for a mêlée like this, a better weapon than knife or gun. With a great bellowing roar he sprang upon the knot of fighters.

The result was almost instantaneous. The two nearest rascals went down at his first two strokes. At the sound of that huge roar of his all had turned their eyes; and the man at bay, seizing his opportunity, had cut down two more of his foes with lightning slashes of his blade. The remaining two, scattering and ducking, had leaped for the door like rabbits. Jan wheeled, and sprang after them. But they were too quick for him. As he reached the head of the alley they darted into a narrow doorway across the street which led into a regular warren of low structures. Knowing it would be madness to follow, Jan turned back to the courtyard, curious to find out what it had all been about.

The silence was now startling. As he entered, there was no sound but the painful breathing of the Lascar, whom he found sitting with his back against the wall, close beside the body of the Englishman. He was desperately slashed. His eyes were half-closed; and Jan saw that there was little chance of his recovery. Besides that of the Englishman, there were six bodies lying on the floor, all apparently quite lifeless. Jan saw that the place was a kind of drinking den. The proprietor, a brutal-looking Chinaman, lay dead beside his jugs and bottles. Jan reached for a jug of familiar appearance, poured out a cup of arrack, and held it to the lips of the dying Lascar. At the first gulp of the potent spirit his eyes opened again. He swallowed it all, eagerly, then straightened himself up, held out his hand in European fashion to Jan, and thanked him in Malayan.

"Who's that?" inquired Jan in the same tongue, pointing to the dead white man.

Grief and rage convulsed the fierce face of the wounded Lascar.

"He was my friend," he answered. "The sons of filthy mothers, they killed him!"

"Too bad!" said Jan sympathetically. "But you gave a pretty good account of yourselves, you two. I like a man that can fight like you were fighting when I came in. What can I do for you?"

"I'm dead, pretty soon now!" said the fellow indifferently. And from the blood that was soaking down his shirt and spreading on the floor about him, Jan saw that the words were true. Anxious, however, to do something to show his good will, he pulled out his big red handkerchief, and knelt to bandage a gaping slash straight across the man's left forearm, from which the bright arterial blood was jumping hotly. As he bent, the fellow's eyes lifted and looked over his shoulder.

"Look out!" he screamed. Before the words were fairly out of his mouth Jan had thrown himself violently to one side and sprung to his feet. He was just in time. The knife of one of the Chinamen whom he had supposed to be dead was sticking in the wall beside the Lascar's arm.

Jan stared at the bodies--all, apparently, lifeless.

"That's the one did it," cried the Lascar excitedly, pointing to the one whom Jan had struck on the head with his stick. "Put your knife into the son of a dog!"

But that was not the big Norseman's way. He wanted to assure himself. He went and bent over the limp-looking, sprawling shape, to examine it. As he did so the slant eyes opened upon his with a flash of such maniacal hate that he started back. He was just in time to save his eyes, for the Chinaman had clutched at them like lightning with his long nails.

Startled and furious at this novel attack, Jan reached for his knife. But before he could get his hand on it the Chinaman had leaped into the air like a wildcat, wound arms and legs about his body, and was struggling like a mad beast to set teeth into his throat. The attack was so miraculously swift, so disconcerting in its beast-like ferocity, that Jan felt a strange qualm that was almost akin to panic. Then a black rage swelled his muscles; and tearing the creature from him he dashed him down upon the floor, on the back of his neck, with a violence which left no need of pursuing the question further. Not till he had examined each of the bodies carefully, and tried them with his knife, did he turn again to the wounded Lascar leaning against the wall.

"Thank you, my friend!" he said simply.

"You're a good fighting man. You're--like him," answered the Lascar feebly, nodding toward the dead Englishman. "Give me more arrack. I will tell you something. Hurry, for I go soon."

Jan brought him the liquor, and he gulped it. Then from a pouch within his knotted silk waistband he hurriedly produced a bit of paper which he unfolded with trembling fingers, Jan saw that it was a rough map sketched with India ink and marked with Malayan characters. The Lascar peered about him with fierce eyes already growing dim.

"Are you sure they are all gone?" he demanded.

"Certain!" answered Jan, highly interested.

"They'll try their best to kill you," went on the dying man. "Don't let them. If you let them get the pearls, I'll come back and haunt you."

"I won't let them kill me, and I won't let them get the pearls, if that's what it is that's made all the trouble. Don't worry about that," responded Jan confidently, reaching out his great hand for the paper, which was evidently so precious that men were giving up their lives for it.

The man handed it over with a groping gesture, though his savage black eyes were wide open.

"That'll show you where the wreck of the junk lies, in seven or eight fathom of water, close inshore. The pearls are in the deck-house. _He_ kept them. The steamer was on a reef, going to pieces, and we came up just as the boats were putting off. We sunk them all, and got the pearls. And next night, in a storm, the junk was carried on to the rocks by a current we didn't know about. Only five of us got ashore--for the sharks were around, and the 'killers,' that night. _Him_ and me, we were the only ones knew enough to make that map."

Here the dying pirate--for such he had declared himself--sank forward with his face upon his knees. But with a mighty effort he sat up again and fixed Jan Laurvik with terrible eyes.

"Don't let the sons of a dog get them, or I will come back and choke you in your sleep," he gasped, suddenly pointing a lean finger straight at the Norseman's face. Then his black eyes opened wide, a strange red light blazed up in them for an instant and faded. With a sigh he toppled over, dead, his head resting on the dead Englishman's feet.

II

Jan Laurvik looked down upon the slack form with a sort of grim indulgence. "He was game, and he loved his comrade, though he _was_ but a bloody-hearted pirate!" he muttered to himself.

With the paper folded small and hidden in his great palm, he glanced again from the door to see if any of the routed scoundrels were coming back. Satisfied on this point, he once more investigated the dead bodies on the floor, to assure himself that all were as dead as they appeared. Then he set himself to examine the precious paper, which held out to his imagination all sorts of fascinating possibilities. He knew that the swift boats carrying the proceeds of the pearl-fisheries were always eagerly watched by the piratical junks infesting those waters, but carried an armament which secured them from all interference. In case of wreck, however, the pirates' opportunity would come. Jan knew that the story he had just heard was no improbable one.

The map proved to be rough, but very intelligible. It indicated a stretch of the eastern coast of Java, which Jan recognized; but the spot where the junk had gone down was one to which passing ships always gave a wide berth. It was a place of treacherous anchorage, of abrupt, forbidding, uninhabited shore, and of violent currents that shifted erratically. So much the better, thought Jan, for his investigations, if only the pirate junk should prove to have been considerate enough to sink in water not too deep for a diver to work in. There would be so much the less danger of interruption.

Jan was on the point of hurrying away from the gruesome scene, which might at any moment become a scene of excitement and annoying investigation, when a new idea flashed into his mind. It was over this precious paper that all the trouble had been. The scoundrels who had fled would undoubtedly return as soon as they dared, and would search for it. Finding it gone they would conclude that he had it; and they would be hot on his trail. He had no fancy for the sleepless vigilance that this would entail upon him. He had no fancy for the heavy armed expedition which it would force him to organize for the pearl hunt. He saw his airy palaces toppling ignominiously to earth. He saw that all he was likely to get was a slit throat.

As he glanced about him for a way out of his dilemma his eyes fell on a bottle of India ink containing the fine-tipped brush with which these Orientals did their writing. His resourcefulness awoke to this chance. The moments were becoming very pearls themselves for preciousness, but seizing the brush, he made a workable copy of the map on the back of a letter which he had in his pocket. Then he made a minute and very careful correction in the original, in such a manner as to indicate that the position of the wreck was in a deep fiord some fifty miles east of where it actually was. This done to his critical satisfaction, he returned the map to its hiding-place in the dead pirate's belt, and made all haste away. Not till he was back in the European quarter did he feel himself secure. Once among his fellow whites, where he was a man of known standing and reputed to be the best diver in the Archipelago, he knew that he would run no risk of being connected with a drinking brawl of Lascars and pirates. As for the dead Englishman, he knew the odds were that the Singapore police would know all about him.

Jan Laurvik had a little capital. But he needed a trusty partner with more. To his experienced wits his other needs were clear. There would have to be a very seaworthy little steamer, powerfully engined for service on that stormy coast, and armed to defend herself against prowling pirate junks. This small and fit craft would have to be manned by a crew equally fit, and at the same time as small as possible, for the reason that in a venture of this sort every one concerned would of necessity come in for a share of the winnings. Moreover, the fewer there were to know, the fewer the chances of the secret leaking out; and Jan was even more in dread of the Dutch Government getting wind of it than he was of the pirates picking up his trail.

Up to a certain point, he had no difficulty in verifying the dead pirate's story. He had heard of the wreck of the Dutch steamer _Viecht_ on a reef off the Celebes, and of the massacre of all the crew and passengers, except one small boat-load, by pirates. This had happened about eight months ago. Discreet inquiry developed the fact that the _Viecht_ had carried about $300,000 worth of pearls. The evidence was sufficiently convincing and the prize was sufficiently alluring to make it worth his while to risk the adventure.

It was with a certain amount of Northern deliberation that Jan Laurvik thought these points all out, and made up his mind what to do. Then he acted promptly. First he cabled to Calcutta, to one Captain Jerry Parsons, to join him in Singapore without fail by the very next steamer. Then he set himself unobtrusively to the task of finding the craft he wanted and looking up the equipment for her.

Captain Jerry Parsons was a New Englander, from Portland, Me. He had been whaler, gold-hunter, filibuster, copra-trader, general-in-chief to a small Central American republic, and sheepfarmer in the Australian bush. At present he was conducting a more or less regular trade in precious stones among the lesser Indian potentates. He loved gain much, but he loved adventure more.

When he received the cable from his good friend Jan Laurvik, he knew that both were beckoning to him. With light-hearted zest he betook himself to the steamship offices, found a P. & O. boat sailing on the morrow, and booked his passage. Throughout the journey he amused himself with trying to guess what Jan Laurvik was after; and, as it happened, almost the only thing he failed to think of was pearls.

When Captain Jerry reached Singapore Jan Laurvik told him the story of the dead pirate's map.

"Let's see the map!" said he, chewing hard on the butt of his unlighted Manila.

Jan passed his copy over. The New Englander inspected it carefully, in silence, for several minutes.

"'Tain't much of a map!" said he at length disparagingly. "You think the varmint was straight?"

"In his way, yes," answered Jan with conviction. "He had it in him to be straight in his way to a friend, which wouldn't hinder him cuttin' the throats of a thousand chaps he didn't take an interest in."

"When shall we start?" asked Captain Jerry. Now that his mind was quite made up he took out his match-box and carefully lighted his cheroot.

The big Norseman's face lighted up with pleasure, and he reached out his hand. The grip was all, in the way of a bargain, that was needed between them.

"Why, to-morrow night!" he answered.

"Well," said the New Englander, "I'll draw some cash in the morning."

The boat which Jan had hired was a fast and sturdy seagoing tug, serviceable, but not designed for comfort. Jan had retained her engineer, a shrewd and close-mouthed Scotchman. Her sailing-master would be Captain Jerry. For crew he had chosen a wiry little Welshman and two lank leather-skinned Yankees. To these four, for whose honesty and loyalty he trusted to his own insight as a reader of men, he explained, partially, the nature of the undertaking, and agreed to give them, over and above their wages, a substantial percentage of whatever treasure he might succeed in recovering. He had made his selection wisely, and every man of the four laid hold of the opportunity with ardour.

The tug was swift enough to elude any of the junks infesting those waters, but the danger was that she might be taken by surprise at her anchorage while Laurvik was under water. He fitted her, therefore, with a Maxim gun on the roof of the deck-house, and armed the crew with repeating Winchesters.

Thus equipped, he felt ready for any perils that might confront him above the surface of the water. As to what might lurk below he felt somewhat less confident, as these he should have to face alone, and he remembered the ominous warning of his pirate friend, about the sharks and the "killers." For sharks Jan Laurvik had comparatively small concern; but for the "killers," those swift and implacable little whales who fear no living thing, he entertained the highest respect.

On the evening of the day after Captain Jerry's arrival, the tug _Sarawak_ steamed quietly out of the harbour. As this was a customary thing for her to do, it excited no particular comment among the frequenters of the waterside. By the pirates' spies, who abounded in the city, it was not considered an event worth making note of.

The journey, across the Straits, and down the treacherous Javan Sea, was so prosperous that Jan Laurvik, his blood steeped in Norse superstition, began to feel uneasy. The sea was like a millpond all the way, and they were sighted by no one likely to interfere or ask questions. Jan distrusted Fortune when she seemed to smile too blandly. But Captain Jerry comforted him with the assurance that there'd be trouble enough ahead; and strangely enough this singular variety of comfort quite relieved Jan's depression.