Chapter XXIX: In the Clutches of Abu-Samar

When Vera Battiscombe came to her senses, she found herself lying on a sort of hammock made from the entire skin of some animal and fastened at either end to a wooden frame by means of leathern thongs. A blanket had been thrown over her, and as soon as she was conscious of the touch of its rough surface against her neck, she pushed it off in disgust.

She felt hot and sticky, her limbs ached, and there was an acute pain behind her eyes, so that she was forced to close them continually, opening them only at intervals to gaze in bewilderment upon her new surroundings.

Presently she raised herself on her arms and endeavoured, from a mingling of memories, thoughts and fears, to discover something that might account for her presence in so primitive a dwelling.

The room was approximately ten feet square and, except for a heap of miscellaneous articles ranged along the far wall and partially covered with a length of sacking, there was scarcely anything in the nature of furniture. There was a square of coloured matting on the floor, a roughly carved stool, some odd sacks, which might have contained grain, and a large earthenware water-jar.

At the foot of her bed, a strip of matting concealed what she surmised to be the only door; there were no windows and the light filtered in through great chinks in the walls and gaps in the thatching above.

The watch at her wrist registered a quarter to one, but she discovered upon a closer examination that it had stopped.

The atmosphere was one of intense heat and from somewhere close at hand came the incessant buzzing of flies.

She sank back again, one hand pressed to her forehead, and tried to think.

The throbbing was easier now. Gradually, as she groped for a starting-point, the picture of Joyce’s room in Armourer’s bungalow built itself up before her. How had she come to leave it? At some time or other in her life--it seemed countless ages distant--she had quarrelled with Michael about something. However her thoughts rambled, they always came back to that. She had cried, she remembered now, and gone back to her room. A Chinaman had brought her food--that would be Chong-Si. She had found a pencil and written, and presently she had gone out. She remembered that it was dark and that there were stars. She remembered being frightened under the trees when she found that she had lost her way, and a queer house with an open door. Something had made her enter. Queer, disjointed fragments kept coming back to her. She had been looking for something--something which persisted in eluding her.

“The Crimson Butterfly!” she exclaimed aloud--and then laughed at her own folly in voicing what must have been an absurd hallucination--a dream-phantom.

She thought again.

Perhaps this, too, was a dream? In a little while these unfamiliar surroundings would vanish, and the walls of the sick-room--in which she must actually be--would take their place. She remembered quite well that she had been ill--very ill. Joyce had been there, sleeping in another bed, and the professor, with his scrubby beard and serious owl-like expression, had hovered over her. She seemed to recollect that Jim had been there too; she had heard his voice on the verandah.

A lizard, creeping suddenly into a lozenge of sunshine on the wall at her side, screamed shrilly and she sat bolt upright.

She rubbed her eyes, fingered the leathern thongs curiously, reached over and pulled at the nearest sack--and a shower of rice pattered to the floor.

Her clenched fists pressed against her temples. It was real then--all real! Merciful heaven! What did it all mean?

She looked at her clothes. They were stained, crumpled and torn, and, except for her shoes, she was in outdoor attire. Becoming curiously scrupulous as to details, she stared round in search of those shoes. She looked at the stool. There was something lying on it that she had not noticed before. She leaned forward. It appeared to be a hat--a red hat with a black tassel. She wanted to go over to it and examine it, but her initial attempts to gain her feet sent her staggering stupidly back on to the couch.

She laughed weakly and suddenly dissolved into tears, her face buried in her hands.

Presently she choked down her sobs, summoned all the strength at her command and made a further effort. This time she stumbled on to her hands, pushed herself up again and finally fell in a heap to the floor, setting the entire building rocking.

She crawled the remainder of the distance and was within an ace of touching the hat when horror seized her and she shrank from it as from some ghastly apparition.

It was a red _fez_!

Abu-Samar! Where had she heard that name before? Her lips formed the syllables glibly, as if the name were one which she had voiced repeatedly. Abu-Samar! A tall man, in a blue suit and that same hat, standing by a white bridge! A coloured man! It was all coming back to her now, overwhelming her in great waves.

She had gone to his house; but not this house. There were orange-coloured curtains and a cedar-wood box brimming over with precious ornaments that glinted and sparkled in the light. He had given her a Crimson Butterfly--a ruby thing with emerald eyes, on a chain of gold filigree. He had clasped it round her neck--and she had run away, leading her pony after her. There was a blank here which she strove to fill. She had lost that ornament somehow, found it, then lost it again. That was why she had wandered out that night into the trees. She went into the hut because she thought it was there. Somebody had told her it would be there.

She had wandered from the hut again into the open and shrunk back into the shelter of a big tree. She had been very tired, had sunk to the ground exhausted. After that she remembered little, save a sensation of being whirled into the air by some mysterious force--and rocked into a deep sleep. This slumber had continued apparently for centuries, interrupted at intervals by wild nightmares, dreams of falling from great heights, strange noises and the rushing of waters.

A sense of unutterable loneliness gripped her, and, creeping over on all fours, she drew back the matting from the opening. The scene that met her eyes startled her.

The hut in which she was revealed itself as a tree-dwelling, a crazy crow’s-nest nestling among the branches, with a flimsy ladder leading down to the ground, twenty or more feet below. Beneath her was the long thatched roof of another building, to her right a few more trees--and then, stretching to the horizon, a wilderness of moss-clad boulders, over the whole expanse of which no living thing was visible.

The mystery was deepening. The landscape was entirely strange to her. How had she crossed that cheerless desert--and why? What was the significance of her presence in this lonely, ramshackle dwelling on an oasis in the midst of utter desolation.

She thrust her head and shoulders forward cautiously, trying to see what was at the foot of the ladder--and drew herself quickly out of sight again.

She had seen a colossal native, immobile as an ebony statue, with a _parang_ sheathed at his side and a spear-shaft nestling in the crook of his arm!

She was a prisoner; Abu-Samar’s prisoner; for there on the stool was irrefutable evidence.

She clasped her hands over her knees and rocked to and fro in the agony of her terror.

And presently, as she crouched there, starting at every sound that came from the earth below, the house itself or the tree-tops above her, the jig-saw pieces that had defied her when she sought them crept into the picture of their own accord and silently filled themselves in.

As he had prophesied at their first meeting, she had walked from her own people--and come to him, apparently of her own accord, but in reality in obedience to an insistent command that he had somehow succeeded in transmitting through space. He had plagued her, tormented her, haunted her sleeping and her waking hours until all the barriers of her resistance had been broken down.

Contrite now and immeasurably sorry for herself, she saw the Gehenna that her own follies had wrought, stretched out her arms to the cruel flames, recognising them, acknowledging their right to envelop her. She had been faithless--faithless to Jim, faithless in a more limited degree to Dick Moberly, who had paid bitterly for his infatuation. Her thirst for conquest, her recklessness, her mad desire to employ her beauty to ensnare every decent man who came in her way, had brought her to this.

She beat her forehead with her clenched fists in her misery. If there were indeed a kind fate of any sort watching over her, she promised it that, in the unlikely event of being snatched from the horror that threatened her, she would act squarely with Jim for as long as she lived.

And then she fell the victim to another mood.

After all, a voice within her argued, there must have been countless women more culpable than she who had never been called upon to face the consequence of their misdeeds like this. The instincts that had impelled her to embark upon the course she had followed were inherited ones, her looks had been given her at birth, the climate that gave men fever had been her inspiration. This Samar, this primeval savage masquerading in civilised attire, had planted himself deliberately in her path, shaking her limited world from its very foundations.

The thought of him made her shudder. She remembered the loathsome touch of his fingers when he gave her the crimson pendant. And she was in his power!

She gazed round her helplessly.

She must do something, feign sickness, madness, anything! She ran her fingers madly through her hair, dishevelling it until she imagined it encircled her head like an unkempt mop.

She must disfigure herself, make herself so distasteful to him that he would recoil from her.

She wondered if anywhere among that pile under the sacking there were a mirror.

She was about to make for it when the sound of voices below brought her to a standstill. Her heart beating a devil’s tattoo, she listened.

Abu-Samar! The softer tones were surely his and the queer guttural utterances those of the sentry outside. Somebody was coming up the ladder.

For seconds she remained there, rooted to the spot. Suddenly, with a great effort, she threw off the _incubus_ that held her there, and creeping back to her couch, drew the blanket over her.

Frightened--horribly, genuinely frightened--she watched through half-closed lids as the strip of matting swung inwards, revealing a triangle of bright light across which extended an arm in a blue serge sleeve.

Abu-Samar, bending almost double, came into the room and the matting dropped back into place.