Chapter XXXIV: The Temple of the Crimson Butterfly

The summit of the next hill revealed to them a vast circular amphitheatre from the centre of which a path led up to the spot where, at the top of a huge mound, an enormous brazier was burning. Behind the brazier they could just make out the entrance to what appeared to be a cave and, standing before it, three figures.

Packed closely into this hollow, partly in the moonlight and partly in the shadow of the cliffs, was a multitude of crouching forms.

Battiscombe caught the professor’s arm.

“Lord!” he exclaimed, “what a mob! Did you ever see anything like it?”

“No,” said Standen, “never in my life. It puzzles me that so barren a country-side should be able to produce so many.”

The magistrate unhitched a pair of binoculars and focussed them on the temple.

“Well?” asked his companion after a long pause.

“Vera’s there,” said Battiscombe huskily, “and Samar. There’s a black chap with them with nothing much on but paint.”

Their guide halted before them.

“It is time, O _Tuan_,” he said.

Battiscombe gritted his teeth.

“The crucial moment has arrived, Standen. What d’you think about it?”

The professor smiled.

“I’m profoundly interested,” he confessed.

They began the descent.

They came presently, by way of a winding path, to a flight of steps roughly hewn from the bare rock, and ten minutes later they embarked upon the narrow passage-way that stretched between the two sections of worshippers at the shrine of the Crimson Butterfly.

The professor, walking a couple of paces behind Battiscombe, stared blandly at an ocean of dark heads and a veritable forest of spears that extended, seemingly, from either side of them to infinity.

Battiscombe, pipe in mouth, strode along with his head held high and one hand resting lightly in his jacket-pocket. He appeared delightfully at his ease, but the hidden hand was closed over a pistol-butt and his eye was ever alert for a hostile sign in his immediate neighbourhood.

It was an eerie moment.

The slightest sign of nervousness, of hesitation, would have spelt inevitable disaster. This puny band that marched to the rescue of Vera Battiscombe would have been overwhelmed and crushed out of existence by sheer weight of numbers.

Battiscombe was within twenty yards of the shrine itself when the native who spoke Malay appeared at his side and signed to him to stop.

Just above them a man was speaking in the queer, discordant dialect these people employed. The magistrate could not hope to follow the text, but kept his eyes on the speaker, endeavouring to gather from his actions and change of expression the gist of what he was saying.

“It is the high-priest,” whispered his guide.

Battiscombe nodded.

“He says that this is the night of all nights, that the prophecy has been fulfilled and there is once more a white goddess at the shrine of the Butterfly.”

“Oh, he does, does he?” muttered the magistrate between his teeth, and looked round for Dara. But the black girl was nowhere to be seen.

The priest--a fantastic figure in crimson loincloth and headpiece like a skull-cap with wings, his body smeared with broad lines of red and yellow paint--seized the white girl by a wrist and led her forward.

Battiscombe, an ugly light in his eyes, the veins standing out on his temples, made an effort to choke down his emotion. He saw his wife mauled by this bedaubed savage--a trembling, terrified Vera, clothed in a black _sarong_ spotted with gold, and with barbaric ornaments hanging at her wrists.

The gathering was on its knees now and the incantation they repeated rumbled in that vast hollow like thunder.

The murmuring ceased and, in the grim silence that followed, Battiscombe caught the guide’s eye.

“Ask him where the token is--the ornament that the goddess should be wearing.”

The man raised his arm and shouted.

The priest was about to respond when Abu-Samar sprang in front of him and levelled an accusing finger at Battiscombe.

“It is he who has stolen the ornament,” he screamed. “The white man who has come to rob the shrine of its goddess has taken the Crimson Butterfly.”

A shrieking tumult rose to the heavens, there was an ominous clash of weapons, and two walls of gesticulating humanity began to close in on them.

“This is beginning to look awkward,” whispered the professor in the magistrate’s ear. “Can’t our black friend do something?”

“I’m pumping some good sound logic into him now,” the other jerked back over his shoulder. “Tell my fellows to keep their heads and not attempt to use their rifles until I give the order.”

He planted the flat of his hand on a black chest that had come too close to be pleasant, and deliberately pushed it back.

“Tell them,” he shouted to the guide, “that Abu-Samar is a liar and the son of liars; that he came by stealth and stole Dara--the goddess--from the shrine; that the white woman they see up there is no goddess, but my wife, whom he took away from my house when she was ill. Tell them that I have come from the great king who dwells on the other side of the black waters and that there are many men waiting at but a little distance. Tell them that I come as a friend, to find my wife, whom Samar has taken, and go away with her in peace; that the British _Raj_ has sent me to give them back Dara and take Abu-Samar down to the sea-shore in chains, that the prophecy may be fulfilled and the defiler of the sanctuary of the Crimson Butterfly slain. Tell them that if they receive me in peace--all is well; and if they greet me with spears, the hillsides will flash with fire and there will be many dead in the valleys.”

The man in the leopard skin waved his blow-pipe above his head and presently the shouting died down.

He spoke for fully twenty minutes by the professor’s watch, an eloquent, impassioned speech, and Standen mentally thanked his stars that they had stumbled upon a local orator for their advocate.

The speaker dropped his arms to his sides and there was a brief space of silence. Then, like a great tidal wave, the tumult burst upon them again. It was awe-inspiring, deafening, colossal; but Battiscombe, who could detect the difference between unfriendly native noises and the other kind, appeared satisfied.

He turned to Standen.

“Where’s that damn’ girl?” he demanded. “If we could only show her to ’em now, we’d beat that brute Samar all hands down.”

The professor raised a warning finger.

The high-priest was speaking again.

The guide leaned across.

“I told you so,” said Battiscombe again. “He’s asking for Dara. If she doesn’t show up inside a couple of minutes--the game’s up.”

He began shouldering his way towards the shrine with the friendly native at his heels.

“Follow me,” he shouted back. “If the worst comes to the worst, we’ll make sure of the high ground. We may find some sort of sanctuary up there.”

“The horns of the altar!” murmured Standen, as he caught him up.

A few paces from the high-priest himself, Battiscombe bowed politely.

“O wise one!” he began in Malay, assuming him to be a man of superior education, “Dara--the goddess of the Butterfly--is here.”

The priest regarded him suspiciously.

“You have said that Abu-Samar is a liar,” he reminded the Englishman, “also the son of liars. Abu-Samar, on the other hand, insists that it is you who lie and that it is you who have stolen the sacred pendant which should adorn the neck of our goddess. Restore to us Dara--and the pendant, and all will be well. Otherwise----”

Abu-Samar, still in the European garb he affected, drew himself erect.

“Battiscombe,” he called insolently, “you are a brave man and an optimist, but Abu-Samar holds your fate in the hollow of his hand. Yes, I stole your wife from Jelandang. You can shout it to these people again and again, but they will not believe you. They have waited for a white goddess all these years and, now that I have brought her to them, do you imagine they will let you take her away? In a moment I shall move one finger and you and your little party will be blotted out. I am lending your wife to these people. They shall keep her until I am ready to spirit her away, as I took Dara the brown girl.” He pointed at Battiscombe’s band contemptuously. “It will take more than that to arrest Abu-Samar. Seven little soldiers in round hats! It is an insult--the second time you have insulted me, Battiscombe!”

The magistrate held his head on one side.

“I’m afraid I shall have to inflict a third insult on you, Abu-Samar, for to-night I take you back with me--to be hanged like the dirty cut-throat you are!”

Samar drew in a deep breath and his eyes flashed.

“Dara!” he shouted to the crowd. “Where is she? They, who say they have brought her back, cannot find her. It is a lie, a trick… _Kill!_”

And then, as Battiscombe’s automatic leaped from his pocket, as grim little men gripped their rifles and a shrieking mass hesitated before sweeping down on them--a dark figure slipped from behind a rock and, drawing a long knife from her hair, buried it to the hilt in Samar’s back.

Abu-Samar dropped forward on to his knees and Dara waved the dripping blade aloft.

“Greetings, my people!” she cried, “Behold! here am I! Dara! I have come back to you. My white friends have brought me here--and he who stole me from you is dead!”

They grovelled before her now, moaning, chanting, beating their heads upon the ground, and Battiscombe, darting forward, snatched Vera up in his arms.

“We have won, _Tuan_,” said Kuraman at the professor’s side. “The _Tuan-Hakim_ has won--and the _mem_ is safe again. He is a wonderful man!”

Standen smiled.

“Kuraman,” replied the professor, “you are all wonderful men--all of you; do you understand?”

And he lit a cigarette.