Chapter XXV: Outnumbered

Arnold Trevor, hot on the track of Abu-Samar’s men, found it increasingly difficult to keep up with his guide.

Sembilan had divested himself of the boots his uniform included and, knotting the laces together, carried them over one shoulder. The stiffness of military training had gone out of him and once more he was the savage, discovering passages through the dense undergrowth where none seemed to exist, crouching, leaping, swinging himself on to low branches like an ape to assist him in clearing the more formidable obstacles that came in his way.

In the soft earth by the bed of a miniature cataract, where giant fern and lush weed grew in rank profusion, he threw himself on his face and deciphered the impressions in the soil as a short-sighted student might peruse a book.

“Found anything?” demanded the Englishman breathlessly.

Sembilan drew himself into a squatting position and his dark face turned upwards.

“_Yah, Tuan._ There are signs everywhere. Here they have walked--and here; and there, on the other side of the water, there are many marks. They have taken this direction.”

And he began running along the bed of the torrent, forging uphill where brown rocks showed amid a broken carpet of luxuriant moss.

Trevor struggled after him.

They came presently to the summit of a hill and stood gazing across a stretch of open country bathed in yellow moonlight, pitted with holes, tossed and denuded by some far-off volcanic shock. A hundred yards to the eastward yawned a gaping chasm and, on the far side, two figures had just emerged, carrying something swung from a pole that stretched between them.

The soldier put his hands to his mouth and let forth a wild, discordant yell that echoed and re-echoed as if a thousand demon voices had hurled it back at them in mocking derision.

The foremost of the bearers turned his head and, a second after, both began running towards the belt of trees beyond.

Before Trevor could stop him Sembilan had unslung his rifle and fired. A second shot followed the first and the nearest native stumbled forward on to his knees, dropping his end of the _pikul_ to the ground.

His companion crouched low and, shouldering the rough hammock, pole and all, slid down a steep bank out of sight.

Trevor and Sembilan came to their feet together and ran for all they were worth. The brink of the chasm held them up for a couple of minutes, for its depths defied the moonlight and the path by which the others had travelled was difficult to find.

By the time they had crossed, their quarry had reached the trees.

The planter paused by the side of the man whom Sembilan had shot and marvelled at the accuracy of the soldier’s firing. The native was still kneeling, his head against a boulder, and it took but a moment to discover that he was dead.

Trevor looked up to see that his dusky companion was still pressing forward, and that he was in imminent danger of losing sight of him in the forest towards which he was now heading.

He swore softly to himself, sprinted for a couple of hundred yards, tripped over a rock and fell, recovered himself, bruised and battered, and resumed the pursuit again.

Sembilan had vanished altogether, but he thought he knew the point in the leafy screen through which he had passed. At all costs he must find him. To be left alone in this ghastly wilderness would be tragedy indeed. He was entirely without provisions and might wander for days before he found his way to any civilised habitation.

The moon passed behind a cloudbank with the trees still an appreciable distance from him. He halted and stared round him blankly. Against a pall of blackness a faint light shone. Sembilan’s hurricane-lamp! A feeling of intense relief surging within him, Trevor hastened towards the light.

He found it presently, just the lamp, but no Sembilan! The man’s intelligence had recognised his difficulty and left the lamp there to guide him. He grabbed at the handle gratefully. Armourer had been right when he had told him he would be safe with Sembilan. The little soldier with the quaint round hat strapped under his chin was a host in himself.

The trees were taller here and the dense undergrowth of the more stunted forests had given way to a moss which, though soft to the feet, it was difficult to make progress over.

A movement to his right made him hold the lamp above his head and, to his intense horror, he saw an immense ape, standing in the fork of a tree, staring stupidly down at him. The thing gibbered at him, smiting its great chest until it resounded like a drum, and the planter, knowing well that a bad shot would produce unpleasant complications, slithered on in a panic.

If he had once pined for adventure, he was wallowing in it now to a degree far greater than he had bargained for!

Something was going on ahead of him. He could hear extraordinary grunting sounds, the noise of heavy bodies being dragged about among the dried leaves… a hoarse panting for breath. With the memory of that horror in the branches, it occurred to him that he might have plunged upon a colony of these creatures, and that in the event of such being the case his prospects of survival were singularly small.

He turned completely round, swinging the lamp so that it threw its light over a large area.

He saw them now--two dark figures wrestling on the ground--and one of these he recognised as Sembilan.

As he plunged with a wild cry to his assistance, something swept his cheek so closely that he felt the breath of it--and the lamp was dashed from his hand.

The impact of the blow set him stumbling.

Supporting himself on one hand, he wrenched his revolver free from the pocket in which he carried it, and fired into the shadowy mass that hovered over him.

The mass swayed away from him, uttering wild, unearthly yells that woke the hairy denizens of the trees and sent them screaming and whining in chorus.

He heard Sembilan calling.

“Quick, _Tuan_! The light!”

He groped around him until he found it and, lifting what remained of the glass chimney, applied a match to the wick. Presently a corner of it caught the flame and he dropped the glass.

Sembilan was kneeling over the prostrate form of a man--and Trevor’s antagonist was nowhere to be seen.

As the planter approached, the soldier rose slowly.

“Dead!” he declared grimly.

“Who is it?” asked the Englishman.

Sembilan shrugged his shoulders.

“Who shall say?--He leapt on me from a tree as I followed after the man who carried the _mem_.” He rubbed his shoulder and screwed up his face. “He had the strength of a panther--that man!--And yet I killed him,” he added with pride. “We wrestled for a long time--and then I tripped him and slipped from his hands. I split his skull with my rifle-butt--so! There were others in the forest.”

“I know,” said Trevor. “I fired at one of them myself. Which way have they taken the _mem_?”

The soldier shook his head.

“I do not know, _Tuan_. Many people have been here to-night and it is impossible to recognise one track from another. Abu-Samar has sent men to stop us. They are bigger than the natives at the coast and they carry poisoned darts and blow-pipes. We must wait for the light.”

Trevor rested his back against a tree and mopped his forehead. He was conscious of acute fatigue and an aching void within, but it went badly against the grain to give up all hope of rescuing Mrs. Battiscombe.

“How far are we from dawn?”

Sembilan consulted a patch of sky just visible through the trees.

“More than three hours, _Tuan_.”

“They will have carried the white lady a long way by now?”

“A very long way.”

A deep groan from somewhere close at hand attracted their attention.

Moving warily, Trevor discovered a native doubled up in a hollow beneath a giant tree. The man was lying in a pool of blood and there was a hole in his side that the planter could have put his fist in.

“There is your man, _Tuan_,” said Sembilan. “I think he cannot live very long.”

“Poor devil!” muttered Trevor.

A thought struck him.

“Talk to him, Sembilan; try and get him to say something. He should know which way they have gone.”

The soldier addressed the man in Malay, in the Dusun dialect, and in a language Trevor could not follow.

“It is no good, _Tuan_,” explained Sembilan after a while. “He does not understand. He belongs to one of those tribes that live in the heart of the island. He speaks only his own tongue--and who shall say what that is?”

The creature stiffened suddenly, clutched with both hands at the moss and lay very still.

“_Sudah habis_!” murmured the soldier. “It is finished, O _Tuan_!”

He thrust an arm through the sling of his rifle and began threading his way through the trees.

“Where are you going?” asked Trevor.

“Back to the open again. There is no good to be done here. It is not so easy to shoot a man when he hides behind a tree. If Abu-Samar’s men come in search of us, there are holes out there where we can lie in ambush for them and pick them off before they find us with their blow-pipes.”

The planter hesitated.

“I should like to see what is beyond the trees,” he told the man doggedly.

Sembilan shrugged his shoulders.

“_Baik, Tuan_! If you go I will follow, and if you ask me to lead I will lead; but after the trees there are more trees, and after that more trees again. Also I know that the men Abu sent have not followed the other, but are waiting in the shadows.”

“And the _mem_?”

The soldier shook his head sadly.

“Not even the _Tuan-Hakim_--who is wise--could bring her back to-night.”

He reached over suddenly and knocked out the light.

Five minutes later, when they were in the open again, with the stars shining reassuringly down on them, Trevor turned to Sembilan.

“What did you think you saw?” he asked.

“I saw shadows,” said the soldier, “long patches of shadow that were swiftly closing in on us--and the shadows had eyes!”

“There are apes in the forest,” suggested Trevor.

“These were not apes,” retorted Sembilan grimly.

He cast an apprehensive glance over his shoulder and, catching the planter’s arm, drew him behind a boulder as a shower of tiny objects pattered to the ground like the first drops of a thunder-shower.

Without waiting for a second occurrence of this phenomenon they ran until they had placed the chasm between them and their unseen enemy.

“Apes do not use the _sumpitan_!” announced Sembilan, as they came to a halt.

They were staring back at the trees, trying to get a glimpse of the attacking party, when the soldier--who seemed to have eyes all round his head--touched his companion and pointed to two figures swinging towards them from behind.

Trevor gripped his revolver-butt tightly, thinking for a moment that the enemy had outflanked them.

A reassuring remark from Sembilan set him laughing.

“It is the _Tuan-Hakim’s_ men,” he said. “He has sent them after us.”

They ran to meet them.

The taller of the two men saluted and handed Trevor a note from Armourer:

“My Dear Old Thing,

“Use your own judgment. If you have any hope of success, take these men with you and go right ahead. I’ll square things with Vance. If, on the other hand, you have come to a dead-end, come back here at your leisure. I have made an important capture. I am sending some _grub_ along. I daresay you can do with it!

“M. Armourer.”

The second man handed him a basket.

It contained a loaf of bread, some butter and cheese, a tin of salmon, a tin-opener, and an odd assortment of cutlery.

But the thing which amused the planter most was a glowing tribute to Armourer’s thoughtfulness and sense of humour: it was a bottle of champagne, the gilded neck of which towered above all the other contents of the basket!