________________________________________________
_ It was quite a formidable expedition that departed from Berande at
break of day next morning in a fleet of canoes and dinghies. There
were Joan and Sheldon, with Binu Charley and Lalaperu, the eight
Tahitians, and the ten Poonga-Poonga men, each proud in the
possession of a bright and shining modern rifle. In addition,
there were two of the plantation boat's-crews of six men each.
These, however, were to go no farther than Carli, where water
transportation ceased and where they were to wait with the boats.
Boucher remained behind in charge of Berande.
By eleven in the morning the expedition arrived at Binu, a cluster
of twenty houses on the river bank. And from here thirty odd Binu
men accompanied them, armed with spears and arrows, chattering and
grimacing with delight at the warlike array. The long quiet
stretches of river gave way to swifter water, and progress was
slower and more dogged. The Balesuna grew shallow as well, and
oftener were the loaded boats bumped along and half-lifted over the
bottom. In places timber-falls blocked the passage of the narrow
stream, and the boats and canoes were portaged around. Night
brought them to Carli, and they had the satisfaction of knowing
that they had accomplished in one day what had required two days
for Tudor's expedition.
Here at Carli, next morning, half-way through the grass-lands, the
boat's-crews were left, and with them the horde of Binu men, the
boldest of which held on for a bare mile and then ran scampering
back. Binu Charley, however, was at the fore, and led the way
onward into the rolling foot-hills, following the trail made by
Tudor and his men weeks before. That night they camped well into
the hills and deep in the tropic jungle. The third day found them
on the run-ways of the bushmen--narrow paths that compelled single
file and that turned and twisted with endless convolutions through
the dense undergrowth. For the most part it was a silent forest,
lush and dank, where only occasionally a wood-pigeon cooed or snow-
white cockatoos laughed harshly in laborious flight.
Here, in the mid-morning, the first casualty occurred. Binu
Charley had dropped behind for a time, and Koogoo, the Poonga-
Poonga man who had boasted that he would eat the bushmen, was in
the lead. Joan and Sheldon heard the twanging thrum and saw Koogoo
throw out his arms, at the same time dropping his rifle, stumble
forward, and sink down on his hands and knees. Between his naked
shoulders, low down and to the left, appeared the bone-barbed head
of an arrow. He had been shot through and through. Cocked rifles
swept the bush with nervous apprehension. But there was no rustle,
no movement; nothing but the humid oppressive silence.
"Bushmen he no stop," Binu Charley called out, the sound of his
voice startling more than one of them. "Allee same damn funny
business. That fella Koogoo no look 'm eye belong him. He no
savvee little bit."
Koogoo's arms had crumpled under him, and he lay quivering where he
had fallen. Even as Binu Charley came to the front the stricken
black's breath passed from him, and with a final convulsive stir he
lay still.
"Right through the heart," Sheldon said, straightening up from the
stooping examination. "It must have been a trap of some sort."
He noticed Joan's white, tense face, and the wide eyes with which
she stared at the wreck of what had been a man the minute before.
"I recruited that boy myself," she said in a whisper. "He came
down out of the bush at Poonga-Poonga and right on board the Martha
and offered himself. And I was proud. He was my very first
recruit--"
"My word! Look 'm that fella," Binu Charley interrupted, brushing
aside the leafy wall of the run-way and exposing a bow so massive
that no one bushman could have bent it.
The Binu man traced out the mechanics of the trap, and exposed the
hidden fibre in the tangled undergrowth that at contact with
Koogoo's foot had released the taut bow.
They were deep in the primeval forest. A dim twilight prevailed,
for no random shaft of sunlight broke through the thick roof of
leaves and creepers overhead. The Tahitians were plainly awed by
the silence and gloom and mystery of the place and happening, but
they showed themselves doggedly unafraid, and were for pushing on.
The Poonga-Poonga men, on the contrary, were not awed. They were
bushmen themselves, and they were used to this silent warfare,
though the devices were different from those employed by them in
their own bush. Most awed of all were Joan and Sheldon, but, being
whites, they were not supposed to be subject to such commonplace
emotions, and their task was to carry the situation off with
careless bravado as befitted "big fella marsters" of the dominant
breed.
Binu Charley took the lead as they pushed on, and trap after trap
yielded its secret lurking-place to his keen scrutiny. The way was
beset with a thousand annoyances, chiefest among which were thorns,
cunningly concealed, that penetrated the bare feet of the invaders.
Once, during the afternoon, Binu Charley barely missed being
impaled in a staked pit that undermined the trail. There were
times when all stood still and waited for half an hour or more
while Binu Charley prospected suspicious parts of the trail.
Sometimes he was compelled to leave the trail and creep and climb
through the jungle so as to approach the man-traps from behind; and
on one occasion, in spite of his precaution, a spring-bow was
discharged, the flying arrow barely clipping the shoulder of one of
the waiting Poonga-Poonga boys.
Where a slight run-way entered the main one, Sheldon paused and
asked Binu Charley if he knew where it led.
"Plenty bush fella garden he stop along there short way little
bit," was the answer. "All right you like 'm go look 'm along."
"'Walk 'm easy," he cautioned, a few minutes later. "Close up,
that fella garden. S'pose some bush fella he stop, we catch 'm."
Creeping ahead and peering into the clearing for a moment, Binu
Charley beckoned Sheldon to come on cautiously. Joan crouched
beside him, and together they peeped out. The cleared space was
fully half an acre in extent and carefully fenced against the wild
pigs. Paw-paw and banana-trees were just ripening their fruit,
while beneath grew sweet potatoes and yams. On one edge of the
clearing was a small grass house, open-sided, a mere rain-shelter.
In front of it, crouched on his hams before a fire, was a gaunt and
bearded bushman. The fire seemed to smoke excessively, and in the
thick of the smoke a round dark object hung suspended. The bushman
seemed absorbed in contemplation of this object.
Warning them not to shoot unless the man was successfully escaping,
Sheldon beckoned the Poonga-Poonga men forward. Joan smiled
appreciatively to Sheldon. It was head-hunters against head-
hunters. The blacks trod noiselessly to their stations, which were
arranged so that they could spring simultaneously into the open.
Their faces were keen and serious, their eyes eloquent with the
ecstasy of living that was upon them--for this was living, this
game of life and death, and to them it was the only game a man
should play, withal they played it in low and cowardly ways,
killing from behind in the dim forest gloom and rarely coming out
into the open.
Sheldon whispered the word, and the ten runners leaped forward--for
Binu Charley ran with them. The bushman's keen ears warned him,
and he sprang to his feet, bow and arrow in hand, the arrow fixed
in the notch and the bow bending as he sprang. The man he let
drive at dodged the arrow, and before he could shoot another his
enemies were upon him. He was rolled over and over and dragged to
his feet, disarmed and helpless.
"Why, he's an ancient Babylonian!" Joan cried, regarding him.
"He's an Assyrian, a Phoenician! Look at that straight nose, that
narrow face, those high cheek-bones--and that slanting, oval
forehead, and the beard, and the eyes, too."
"And the snaky locks," Sheldon laughed.
The bushman was in mortal fear, led by all his training to expect
nothing less than death; yet he did not cower away from them.
Instead, he returned their looks with lean self-sufficiency, and
finally centred his gaze upon Joan, the first white woman he had
ever seen.
"My word, bush fella kai-kai along that fella boy," Binu Charley
remarked.
So stolid was his manner of utterance that Joan turned carelessly
to see what had attracted his attention, and found herself face to
face with Gogoomy. At least, it was the head of Gogoomy--the dark
object they had seen hanging in the smoke. It was fresh--the
smoke-curing had just begun--and, save for the closed eyes, all the
sullen handsomeness and animal virility of the boy, as Joan had
known it, was still to be seen in the monstrous thing that twisted
and dangled in the eddying smoke.
Nor was Joan's horror lessened by the conduct of the Poonga-Poonga
boys. On the instant they recognized the head, and on the instant
rose their wild hearty laughter as they explained to one another in
shrill falsetto voices. Gogoomy's end was a joke. He had been
foiled in his attempt to escape. He had played the game and lost.
And what greater joke could there be than that the bushmen should
have eaten him? It was the funniest incident that had come under
their notice in many a day. And to them there was certainly
nothing unusual nor bizarre in the event. Gogoomy had completed
the life-cycle of the bushman. He had taken heads, and now his own
head had been taken. He had eaten men, and now he had been eaten
by men.
The Poonga-Poonga men's laughter died down, and they regarded the
spectacle with glittering eyes and gluttonous expressions. The
Tahitians, on the other hand, were shocked, and Adamu Adam was
shaking his head slowly and grunting forth his disgust. Joan was
angry. Her face was white, but in each cheek was a vivid spray of
red. Disgust had been displaced by wrath, and her mood was clearly
vengeful.
Sheldon laughed.
"It's nothing to be angry over," he said. "You mustn't forget that
he hacked off Kwaque's head, and that he ate one of his own
comrades that ran away with him. Besides, he was born to it. He
has but been eaten out of the same trough from which he himself has
eaten."
Joan looked at him with lips that trembled on the verge of speech.
"And don't forget," Sheldon added, "that he is the son of a chief,
and that as sure as fate his Port Adams tribesmen will take a white
man's head in payment."
"It is all so ghastly ridiculous," Joan finally said.
"And--er--romantic," he suggested slyly.
She did not answer, and turned away; but Sheldon knew that the
shaft had gone home.
"That fella boy he sick, belly belong him walk about," Binu Charley
said, pointing to the Poonga-Poonga man whose shoulder had been
scratched by the arrow an hour before.
The boy was sitting down and groaning, his arms clasping his bent
knees, his head drooped forward and rolling painfully back and
forth. For fear of poison, Sheldon had immediately scarified the
wound and injected permanganate of potash; but in spite of the
precaution the shoulder was swelling rapidly.
"We'll take him on to where Tudor is lying," Joan said. "The
walking will help to keep up his circulation and scatter the
poison. Adamu Adam, you take hold that boy. Maybe he will want to
sleep. Shake him up. If he sleep he die."
The advance was more rapid now, for Binu Charley placed the captive
bushman in front of him and made him clear the run-way of traps.
Once, at a sharp turn where a man's shoulder would unavoidably
brush against a screen of leaves, the bushman displayed great
caution as he spread the leaves aside and exposed the head of a
sharp-pointed spear, so set that the casual passer-by would receive
at the least a nasty scratch.
"My word," said Binu Charley, "that fella spear allee same devil-
devil."
He took the spear and was examining it when suddenly he made as if
to stick it into the bushman. It was a bit of simulated
playfulness, but the bushman sprang back in evident fright.
Poisoned the weapon was beyond any doubt, and thereafter Binu
Charley carried it threateningly at the prisoner's back.
The sun, sinking behind a lofty western peak, brought on an early
but lingering twilight, and the expedition plodded on through the
evil forest--the place of mystery and fear, of death swift and
silent and horrible, of brutish appetite and degraded instinct, of
human life that still wallowed in the primeval slime, of savagery
degenerate and abysmal. No slightest breezes blew in the gloomy
silence, and the air was stale and humid and suffocating. The
sweat poured unceasingly from their bodies, and in their nostrils
was the heavy smell of rotting vegetation and of black earth that
was a-crawl with fecund life.
They turned aside from the run-way at a place indicated by Binu
Charley, and, sometimes crawling on hands and knees through the
damp black muck, at other times creeping and climbing through the
tangled undergrowth a dozen feet from the ground, they came to an
immense banyan tree, half an acre in extent, that made in the
innermost heart of the jungle a denser jungle of its own. From out
of its black depths came the voice of a man singing in a cracked,
eerie voice.
"My word, that big fella marster he no die!"
The singing stopped, and the voice, faint and weak, called out a
hello. Joan answered, and then the voice explained.
"I'm not wandering. I was just singing to keep my spirits up.
Have you got anything to eat?"
A few minutes saw the rescued man lying among blankets, while fires
were building, water was being carried, Joan's tent was going up,
and Lalaperu was overhauling the packs and opening tins of
provisions. Tudor, having pulled through the fever and started to
mend, was still frightfully weak and very much starved. So badly
swollen was he from mosquito-bites that his face was
unrecognizable, and the acceptance of his identity was largely a
matter of faith. Joan had her own ointments along, and she
prefaced their application by fomenting his swollen features with
hot cloths. Sheldon, with an eye to the camp and the preparations
for the night, looked on and felt the pangs of jealousy at every
contact of her hands with Tudor's face and body. Somehow, engaged
in their healing ministrations, they no longer seemed to him boy's
hands, the hands of Joan who had gazed at Gogoomy's head with pale
cheeks sprayed with angry flame. The hands were now a woman's
hands, and Sheldon grinned to himself as his fancy suggested that
some night he must lie outside the mosquito-netting in order to
have Joan apply soothing fomentations in the morning. _
Read next: CHAPTER XXV - THE HEAD-HUNTERS
Read previous: CHAPTER XXIII - A MESSAGE FROM THE BUSH
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