Chapter 10. A Serious Complication

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_ CHAPTER TEN. A SERIOUS COMPLICATION

In a few weeks all thought of considering themselves as prisoners was forgotten, and Murray and Ned were as busy as it was possible to be in that hot steamy climate.

There was, however, one point about which Murray made a complaint, and spoke to Mr Braine upon the subject, and that was the presence of armed men as guards; for wherever they went, even if it was from one end of the village to the other, there were these quiet dark sentinels, and so sure as either Murray or his nephew came to the conclusion that they were alone, the next moment one of the men would be seen pretty close at hand.

"Never mind, uncle," Ned said, laughingly; "the sun always shines here, so one must expect to have shadows."

"But I don't like it, Ned; it worries me," said his uncle; and as stated he complained to Mr Braine, who promised to speak to the rajah, and two days later came to the house where its occupants were busy skinning and drying their specimens.

"The rajah has sent me to ask if he can do anything more for you, Murray," said their visitor. "He has been saying again that he is delighted with your discovery of the tin, and that he shall some day set men to work mining and smelting, but he hopes you will persevere, and discover a good vein of gold. You are to speak as soon as you are ready for a long expedition, and the elephants will be brought up."

"Let's go soon, uncle," said Ned. "I want to have an elephant ride."

"Patience, patience, boy. There, that's not such a bad imitation of life, is it?" said Murray, holding out a beautiful amethystine-looking kingfisher.

"Capital!" said Mr Braine, smiling at the enthusiasm his new friend brought to bear in his pursuit.

"Do for us?" said Murray, thoughtfully; "do for us? No, I think not. He is wonderfully civil; feeds us too well; the attention we get is excellent, and you people treat us as if we were your brothers."

"You are satisfied, then?" said Mr Braine.

"Yes, I think so; eh, Ned?"

"I am enjoying it thoroughly," replied the latter.

"Oh yes, of course. So long as you can be always off on some prank or another with Braine's unbroken colt. It suits you, you lazy young dog."

"Oh, uncle, what a shame! Frank and I have brought you in some splendid specimens."

"Well, pretty tidy; but that rare trogon's tail feathers were wanting in the three central pens."

"We'll get you another, then," cried Ned.

"You like the place, then?" said Mr Braine.

"Like it, sir! I never imagined being a prisoner was half so good."

"Ah yes--prisoners," said Murray, looking up from his work, which he was still pursuing in spite of the arrival of his visitor. "Here! hi! Hamet!"

"Yes, master."

"Go and turn those skins over carefully, and put them out of the sun. They are drying too fast."

"Yes, master."

"Yes; prisoners," continued Murray. "You did not take my message to the rajah about those spearmen always following us about."

"I did, and that was my principal reason for coming and interrupting you this morning."

"Ah!" cried Murray, looking up with an unfortunate bird turned inside out in one hand, and a brush laden with preserving paste in the other; "what did he say?"

"That he esteemed the visit and presence of so great a scientific man too highly to run any risk of his coming to harm. That many of his people were not so enlightened as those about the court, and were likely to resent the presence of an Englishman."

"And boy," said Ned in an undertone.

"And boy," said Mr Braine, smiling; "and that he would die of grief if anything happened to you; whereas, if harm happened when you had your guard, he could punish them?"

"Poor wretches!" said Murray, brushing away at his bird-skin. "Soft soap. Gammon, Braine. He is afraid that we shall slip off, eh?"

"Yes; that is the plain English of the matter."

"And the men are to follow us still."

"Yes. You must put up with it."

"Ah, well, the place is so rich that I will not grumble. I must say that the men are never too attentive, and it would be unpleasant if we were to be speared and krissed; eh, Ned?"

"And skinned and preserved as specimens of the English for his highness's museum," said Ned, quietly, as he carefully drew the skin of a lovely blue and drab thrush over its skull.

"No one to do it," said Mr Braine, laughing.

"Well, I shall not grumble again," continued Murray. "Tell him we'll go soon right up to the hills through the jungle, and that I'll try and find him a gold-mine. You were quite right, Braine; we could not have done better for natural history if we could have gone where we liked."

"I am sure you couldn't."

"Ladies quite well--Mrs Braine and the Barnes's and Greigs?"

"Yes; but complaining that you do not visit us all more often."

"Very good of them, but I must get on with my work."

"And I with mine."

"Oh, don't hurry away. Stop and smoke a cigar. How's that boy of yours?"

"Quite well, thank you, Mr Murray."

They looked up sharply, and there was Frank standing in the veranda looking in.

"Hullo! busy, Ned?"

"Yes. Two more birds to do."

"Oh, what a bother! I want you particularly. I say, Mr Murray, why don't you let Amy Barnes skin these little tiny sun-birds? It wants some one with pretty little fingers like hers."

"Because, sir, it is not fit work for a lady," replied Murray, shortly.

"Ha, ha! what a game! Why, she asked me to get her a few, and I set that one-eyed chap to knock some down with a sumpitan--you know, Ned, a blowpipe, and she has had six these last three days, and skinned them all beautifully. She gave me one to show me how well she could do it. Here, where did I stick the thing?"

He began searching his pockets, and ended by dragging out a rough tuft of glistening metallic feathers, at which he looked down with a comical expression of countenance.

"A delightful specimen," said Murray, grimly.

"Yes, now. But it was beautiful when she showed it to me. I oughtn't to have put it in my pocket, I suppose. But, I say, Mr Murray, can't you spare Ned?"

"What do you want him for, Frank?" said his father.

"To try for that big croc that hangs about the river half-way between here and the stockade. He has just taken another poor girl, father."

"What!" cried Mr Braine, with a look of horror.

"I only just heard of it. She was reaching over to pick lotus-leaves close by, where you were so nearly caught, Ned."

"Eh?" cried Murray, looking up sharply. "Oh yes, I remember, and you are thinking of trying to shoot this monster?"

"No; going to catch him," said Frank.

"You two boys?"

"They will have some of the men to help them," said Mr Braine. "The brute ought to be destroyed."

"Why don't your rajah do it?"

"Because he does nothing that does not tend toward his pleasure or prosperity," replied Mr Braine, bitterly. "Have you made any preparations, Frank?"

"Yes, father; we're all ready. Only waiting for Ned."

He gave the latter a merry look as he spoke.

"Like to go?" said Murray.

"I don't like to leave you so busy, uncle, and seem to neglect preparing the specimens."

"But that would be getting another specimen," said Frank, merrily. "Mr Murray may have it when it's caught, mayn't he, father?"

"You go along with you, sir," cried Murray, with mock sternness. "You are spoiling my boy here. Be off with you, and mind and don't get into any danger. Here, you Ned, go and wash your fingers well first. Don't neglect that after using the paste."

Five minutes after, the two lads were off toward the bank of the river near where the rajah's stockade was situated--a strongly-palisaded place commanding the river, and within which four of the light brass guns known as lelahs were mounted. Mere popguns in the eyes of a naval officer, but big enough, to awe people who traded up and down the river in boats, and whose one or two pound balls or handfuls of rough shot and rugged scraps of iron and nails were awkward enemies for the slight timbers of a good-sized prahu.

"There will not be any danger for the boys, eh?" said Murray, looking up at where Mr Braine stood thoughtfully smoking his cigar.

"Oh no; they will have quite a little party of active men with them, ready to despatch the brute with their spears if they are lucky enough to catch him; but that is very doubtful."

He relapsed into silence, and Murray went on busily with his work, for he had had a successful shooting trip on the previous afternoon, and was trying to make up for it before his specimens decayed, as they did rapidly in that hot climate. He was so intent upon his task as he sat at the rough bamboo work-table he had rigged up, that for a time he forgot the presence of his silent visitor, till, looking up suddenly he saw that Mr Braine was gazing thoughtfully before him in a rapt and dreamy way.

"Anything the matter?" he said.

Mr Braine started, looked at his cigar, which was out, and proceeded to relight it.

"No--yes," he said slowly; "I was thinking."

"What about? No, no. I beg pardon. Like my impudence to ask you."

"No. It is quite right," said Mr Braine, slowly, and with his brow knit. "You are one of us now, and in a little knot of English people situated as we are, there ought to be full confidence and good-fellowship so that we could help each other in distress."

"Yes, of course," said Murray, laying down his work. "But, my dear fellow, don't be so mysterious. You are in trouble. What is wrong?"

Mr Braine walked to the door to see that Hamet was out of hearing, and then returning, he said in a low voice: "Look here, Murray; it is of no use to mince matters; we are all prisoners here, at the mercy of as scoundrelly a tyrant as ever had power to make himself a scourge to the district round."

"Well, it is as well to call a spade a spade," said Murray.

"Both Barnes and I were doing badly, and we were tempted by the offers we received from the rajah, and certainly I must own that, from a worldly point of view, we have both prospered far better here than we could have done in an English settlement. But we are not free agents. We never know what mine may be sprung upon us, nor how the chief people among the rajah's followers may be affected toward us through petty jealousies."

"I see--I see," said Murray.

"So far we have got on well. For years and years Barnes, who is very clever in his profession, has made himself indispensable to the rajah, and has also gained some very good friends by the way in which he has treated different chiefs and their families in serious illnesses, and for accidents and wounds. While on my part, though mine is a less satisfactory position, I have by firmness and strict justice gained the respect of the rajah's fighting men, whom I have drilled to a fair state of perfection, and the friendship of the various chiefs by acting like an honourable Englishman, and regardless of my own safety, interceding for them when they have offended their master, so that now they always come to me as their counsellor and friend, and I am the only man here who dares to tell the tyrant he is unjust."

"I see your position exactly," said Murray; "but what is behind all this. What is wrong?"

"Perhaps nothing--imagination, may be, and I don't know that I should have spoken to you yet, if it had not been for an admission--I should say a remark, made by my son just now."

"I do not understand you. What did he say?"

"That Miss Barnes--Amy--had been devoting herself to the preparation of some of the tiny gems of our forests."

"Yes, yes, and very strange behaviour on the part of a young lady too."

"I do not see it," said the Resident, gravely. "She is a very sweet, true-hearted, handsome womanly girl. Let me see: she is past one and twenty now, and has always displayed a great liking for natural history."

"Yes, of course," said Murray, hurriedly. "The collection of butterflies and beetles she showed me is most creditable."

"And it is only natural that, situated as she is, a prisoner in these wilds, she should be much attracted by the companionship of a gentleman of similar tastes, and of wide experience and knowledge."

"Oh, nonsense, nonsense!" said Murray, fidgeting. "She has been very patient and kind of an evening in listening to me, though I am afraid I have often bored her terribly with my long-winded twaddle about ornithology and botany."

"I can vouch for it you have not, and also that you have caused great disappointment when you have not come and joined us."

"Oh, fancy, my dear sir," said Murray, tugging at his great brown beard, and colouring like a girl; "your imagination."

"It is her father's, her mother's, the Greigs' and my wife's imagination too; and this experiment of hers--commenced directly after you had been telling us all how difficult you found it with your big fingers to manipulate the tiny sun-birds--confirms what we thought."

"My dear sir, what nonsense!" cried Murray, sweeping a bird-skin off the table in his confusion, as he snatched up his pipe, lit it, and began to smoke. "I talked like that because I wanted that idle young scamp, Ned, to devote his fingers to the task. I had not the most remote idea that it would make a young lady commence such an uncongenial pursuit."

"Straws show which way the wind blows."

"Look here, sir," cried Murray, jumping up, and making the bamboo floor creak as he strode up and down. "I am not such a fool or so blind as not to comprehend what you mean. Miss Amy Barnes is a very sweet, amiable young lady."

"Far more so than you think," said Mr Braine, warmly. "She is a good daughter--a dear girl, whom I love as well as if she were my own child. I shall never forget the way in which she devoted herself to my boy when he came out here, still weak, and a perfect skeleton, and it is my tender affection for the girl that makes me speak as I do."

"Then, then--oh, I am very sorry--very sorry indeed," cried Murray. "I wish to goodness I had never come. It is nonsense, madness, impossible. I am nearly forty--that is over four and thirty. I am a confirmed bachelor, and I would not be so idiotically conceited as to imagine, sir, that the young lady could have even a passing fancy for such a dry-as-dust student as myself. I tell you honestly, sir, I have never once spoken to the lady but as a gentleman, a slight friend of her father, would."

"My dear Murray, we have only known you a few weeks, but that has been long enough to make us esteem and trust--"

"Exactly; and it is preposterous."

"That means, you could never care for the lady well enough to ask her to be your wife?"

"Never--certainly--never--impossible--that is--at least--no, no, no, quite impossible. I am a bookworm, a naturalist, and I shall never marry."

"I am sorry," said Mr Braine, thoughtfully, "for, to be frank, I rather thought there was a growing liking on your part for Amy."

"A mistake, sir--a mistake, quite," said Murray, warmly.

"And it would have been a happy circumstance for us now, at this rather troublesome time."

"Eh? Troublesome? What do you mean? Is anything more the matter?"

"Yes," said Mr Braine, with his brow full of lines. "I may be wrong-- we may be wrong. We have dreaded something of the kind might happen, but years have gone on, and we have had no occasion to think anything serious till now."

"You startle me. What do you mean?" said Murray, excitedly.

"Well, you see the rajah is a Mussulman."

"Yes, of course. Allah, Mahomet, and so on."

"He has several wives."

"Yes, whom he keeps shut up like birds in a cage. Well, what of that?"

"Last night we were all very much disturbed. It was before you came in."

"Ah! Yes, I noticed you were all very quiet. Why was it?"

"The rajah had sent Amy a present. It was a magnificent specimen of goldsmith's work--a large bangle of great value."

"Well?"

"Gentlemen, especially eastern gentlemen, do not send such presents as that to ladies without having some ulterior object in view."

"What!" roared Murray, in so fierce a tone of voice that Hamet came running in.

"Master call?"

"No, no: go away. Nothing.--Here Braine, you horrify me. That old tyrant dare to--to think--to send her presents--to--oh, it is horrible. The old scoundrel! He to presume to--oh!"

"We may be mistaken. It may be only a compliment."

"Nothing of the sort, sir. He meant an offer of marriage, which is sure to follow, and--oh, the insolent, tyrannical, old scoundrel!"

Mr Braine looked at Murray with a grave smile.

"This indignation's all real?" he said.

"Real? I could go and horsewhip him."

"Then you do care for Amy Barnes, in spite of your short acquaintance, Murray; and I tell you frankly I am very glad, for it may put a stop to a terrible complication, which might have risked all our lives."

Murray's face was scarlet, and he stood looking at his visitor without a word, for in his heart of hearts he owned that he was right, and that out there, in those wild jungles, he, Johnstone Murray, naturalist, who had never thought of such a thing before, had found his fate.

"Yes," said Mr Braine again, thoughtfully, "a serious complication, which might have risked all our lives." _

Read next: Chapter 11. The White Hen

Read previous: Chapter 9. Ned Loses His Hat

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