________________________________________________
_ The morning's action had been settled the night before. Tudor was
to stay behind in his banyan refuge and gather strength while the
expedition proceeded. On the far chance that they might rescue
even one solitary survivor of Tudor's party, Joan was fixed in her
determination to push on; and neither Sheldon nor Tudor could
persuade her to remain quietly at the banyan tree while Sheldon
went on and searched. With Tudor, Adamu Adam and Arahu were to
stop as guards, the latter Tahitian being selected to remain
because of a bad foot which had been brought about by stepping on
one of the thorns concealed by the bushmen. It was evidently a
slow poison, and not too strong, that the bushmen used, for the
wounded Poonga-Poonga man was still alive, and though his swollen
shoulder was enormous, the inflammation had already begun to go
down. He, too, remained with Tudor.
Binu Charley led the way, by proxy, however, for, by means of the
poisoned spear, he drove the captive bushman ahead. The run-way
still ran through the dank and rotten jungle, and they knew no
villages would be encountered till rising ground was gained. They
plodded on, panting and sweating in the humid, stagnant air. They
were immersed in a sea of wanton, prodigal vegetation. All about
them the huge-rooted trees blocked their footing, while coiled and
knotted climbers, of the girth of a man's arm, were thrown from
lofty branch to lofty branch, or hung in tangled masses like so
many monstrous snakes. Lush-stalked plants, larger-leaved than the
body of a man, exuded a sweaty moisture from all their surfaces.
Here and there, banyan trees, like rocky islands, shouldered aside
the streaming riot of vegetation between their crowded columns,
showing portals and passages wherein all daylight was lost and only
midnight gloom remained. Tree-ferns and mosses and a myriad other
parasitic forms jostled with gay-coloured fungoid growths for room
to live, and the very atmosphere itself seemed to afford clinging
space to airy fairy creepers, light and delicate as gem-dust,
tremulous with microscopic blooms. Pale-golden and vermilion
orchids flaunted their unhealthy blossoms in the golden, dripping
sunshine that filtered through the matted roof. It was the
mysterious, evil forest, a charnel house of silence, wherein naught
moved save strange tiny birds--the strangeness of them making the
mystery more profound, for they flitted on noiseless wings,
emitting neither song nor chirp, and they were mottled with morbid
colours, having all the seeming of orchids, flying blossoms of
sickness and decay.
He was caught by surprise, fifteen feet in the air above the path,
in the forks of a many-branched tree. All saw him as he dropped
like a shadow, naked as on his natal morn, landing springily on his
bent knees, and like a shadow leaping along the run-way. It was
hard for them to realize that it was a man, for he seemed a weird
jungle spirit, a goblin of the forest. Only Binu Charley was not
perturbed. He flung his poisoned spear over the head of the
captive at the flitting form. It was a mighty cast, well intended,
but the shadow, leaping, received the spear harmlessly between the
legs, and, tripping upon it, was flung sprawling. Before he could
get away, Binu Charley was upon him, clutching him by his snow-
white hair. He was only a young man, and a dandy at that, his face
blackened with charcoal, his hair whitened with wood-ashes, with
the freshly severed tail of a wild pig thrust through his
perforated nose, and two more thrust through his ears. His only
other ornament was a necklace of human finger-bones. At sight of
their other prisoner he chattered in a high querulous falsetto,
with puckered brows and troubled, wild-animal eyes. He was
disposed of along the middle of the line, one of the Poonga-Poonga
men leading him at the end of a length of bark-rope.
The trail began to rise out of the jungle, dipping at times into
festering hollows of unwholesome vegetation, but rising more and
more over swelling, unseen hill-slopes or climbing steep hog-backs
and rocky hummocks where the forest thinned and blue patches of sky
appeared overhead.
"Close up he stop," Binu Charley warned them in a whisper.
Even as he spoke, from high overhead came the deep resonant boom of
a village drum. But the beat was slow, there was no panic in the
sound. They were directly beneath the village, and they could hear
the crowing of roosters, two women's voices raised in brief
dispute, and, once, the crying of a child. The run-way now became
a deeply worn path, rising so steeply that several times the party
paused for breath. The path never widened, and in places the feet
and the rains of generations had scoured it till it was sunken
twenty feet beneath the surface.
"One man with a rifle could hold it against a thousand," Sheldon
whispered to Joan. "And twenty men could hold it with spears and
arrows."
They came out on the village, situated on a small, upland plateau,
grass-covered, and with only occasional trees. There was a wild
chorus of warning cries from the women, who scurried out of the
grass houses, and like frightened quail dived over the opposite
edge of the clearing, gathering up their babies and children as
they ran. At the same time spears and arrows began to fall among
the invaders. At Sheldon's command, the Tahitians and Poonga-
Poonga men got into action with their rifles. The spears and
arrows ceased, the last bushman disappeared, and the fight was over
almost as soon as it had begun. On their own side no one had been
hurt, while half a dozen bushmen had been killed. These alone
remained, the wounded having been carried off. The Tahitians and
Poonga-Poonga men had warmed up and were for pursuit, but this
Sheldon would not permit. To his pleased surprise, Joan backed him
up in the decision; for, glancing at her once during the firing, he
had seen her white face, like a glittering sword in its fighting
intensity, the nostrils dilated, the eyes bright and steady and
shining.
"Poor brutes," she said. "They act only according to their
natures. To eat their kind and take heads is good morality for
them."
"But they should be taught not to take white men's heads," Sheldon
argued.
She nodded approval, and said, "If we find one head we'll burn the
village. Hey, you, Charley! What fella place head he stop?"
"S'pose he stop along devil-devil house," was the answer. "That
big fella house, he devil-devil."
It was the largest house in the village, ambitiously ornamented
with fancy-plaited mats and king-posts carved into obscene and
monstrous forms half-human and half-animal. Into it they went, in
the obscure light stumbling across the sleeping-logs of the village
bachelors and knocking their heads against strings of weird votive-
offerings, dried and shrivelled, that hung from the roof-beams. On
either side were rude gods, some grotesquely carved, others no more
than shapeless logs swathed in rotten and indescribably filthy
matting. The air was mouldy and heavy with decay, while strings of
fish-tails and of half-cleaned dog and crocodile skulls did not add
to the wholesomeness of the place.
In the centre, crouched before a slow-smoking fire, in the littered
ashes of a thousand fires, was an old man who blinked apathetically
at the invaders. He was extremely old--so old that his withered
skin hung about him in loose folds and did not look like skin. His
hands were bony claws, his emaciated face a sheer death's-head.
His task, it seemed, was to tend the fire, and while he blinked at
them he added to it a handful of dead and mouldy wood. And hung in
the smoke they found the object of their search. Joan turned and
stumbled out hastily, deathly sick, reeling into the sunshine and
clutching at the air for support.
"See if all are there," she called back faintly, and tottered
aimlessly on for a few steps, breathing the air in great draughts
and trying to forget the sight she had seen.
Upon Sheldon fell the unpleasant task of tallying the heads. They
were all there, nine of them, white men's heads, the faces of which
he had been familiar with when their owners had camped in Berande
compound and set up the poling-boats. Binu Charley, hugely
interested, lent a hand, turning the heads around for
identification, noting the hatchet-strokes, and remarking the
distorted expressions. The Poonga-Poonga men gloated as usual, and
as usual the Tahitians were shocked and angry, several of them
cursing and muttering in undertones. So angry was Matapuu, that he
strode suddenly over to the fire-tender and kicked him in the ribs,
whereupon the old savage emitted an appalling squeal, pig-like in
its wild-animal fear, and fell face downward in the ashes and lay
quivering in momentary expectation of death.
Other heads, thoroughly sun-dried and smoke-cured, were found in
abundance, but, with two exceptions, they were the heads of blacks.
So this was the manner of hunting that went on in the dark and evil
forest, Sheldon thought, as he regarded them. The atmosphere of
the place was sickening, yet he could not forbear to pause before
one of Binu Charley's finds.
"Me savvee black Mary, me savvee white Mary," quoth Binu Charley.
"Me no savvee that fella Mary. What name belong him?"
Sheldon looked. Ancient and withered, blackened by many years of
the smoke of the devil-devil house, nevertheless the shrunken,
mummy-like face was unmistakably Chinese. How it had come there
was the mystery. It was a woman's head, and he had never heard of
a Chinese woman in the history of the Solomons. From the ears hung
two-inch-long ear-rings, and at Sheldon's direction the Binu man
rubbed away the accretions of smoke and dirt, and from under his
fingers appeared the polished green of jade, the sheen of pearl,
and the warm red of Oriental gold. The other head, equally
ancient, was a white man's, as the heavy blond moustache, twisted
and askew on the shrivelled upper lip, gave sufficient
advertisement; and Sheldon wondered what forgotten beche-de-mer
fisherman or sandalwood trader had gone to furnish that ghastly
trophy.
Telling Binu Charley to remove the ear-rings, and directing the
Poonga-Poonga men to carry out the old fire-tender, Sheldon cleared
the devil-devil house and set fire to it. Soon every house was
blazing merrily, while the ancient fire-tender sat upright in the
sunshine blinking at the destruction of his village. From the
heights above, where were evidently other villages, came the
booming of drums and a wild blowing of war-conchs; but Sheldon had
dared all he cared to with his small following. Besides, his
mission was accomplished. Every member of Tudor's expedition was
accounted for; and it was a long, dark way out of the head-hunters'
country. Releasing their two prisoners, who leaped away like
startled deer, they plunged down the steep path into the steaming
jungle.
Joan, still shocked by what she had seen, walked on in front of
Sheldon, subdued and silent. At the end of half an hour she turned
to him with a wan smile and said, -
"I don't think I care to visit the head-hunters any more. It's
adventure, I know; but there is such a thing as having too much of
a good thing. Riding around the plantation will henceforth be good
enough for me, or perhaps salving another Martha; but the bushmen
of Guadalcanar need never worry for fear that I shall visit them
again. I shall have nightmares for months to come, I know I shall.
Ugh!--the horrid beasts!"
That night found them back in camp with Tudor, who, while improved,
would still have to be carried down on a stretcher. The swelling
of the Poonga-Poonga man's shoulder was going down slowly, but
Arahu still limped on his thorn-poisoned foot.
Two days later they rejoined the boats at Carli; and at high noon
of the third day, travelling with the current and shooting the
rapids, the expedition arrived at Berande. Joan, with a sigh,
unbuckled her revolver-belt and hung it on the nail in the living-
room, while Sheldon, who had been lurking about for the sheer joy
of seeing her perform that particular home-coming act, sighed, too,
with satisfaction. But the home-coming was not all joy to him, for
Joan set about nursing Tudor, and spent much time on the veranda
where he lay in the hammock under the mosquito-netting. _
Read next: CHAPTER XXVI - BURNING DAYLIGHT
Read previous: CHAPTER XXIV - IN THE BUSH
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