The Castaways, Mayne Reid [best color ereader TXT] 📗
- Author: Mayne Reid
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One near the centre, from its greater width and more numerous supporting pillars, seemed the patriarch of the tribe; and to this their eyes were especially directed. For out of its leafy shadows came the strange sounds which had hitherto guided them.
Among its branches, without any doubt, the red gorilla had his home; and there he would be found in the bosom of his family.
Grasping his gun, and whispering to Saloo to follow him, Captain Redwood started towards the tree so clearly indicated as the goal of their expedition.
Soon after the intended assailants stood among the rooted branches of the banyan. The gloom underneath its umbrageous branches was deepened by what appeared to be an immense scaffolding constructed near the top of the tree, and extending far out along the horizontal limbs.
Saloo at once recognised the permanent nest or roosting-place of a mias rombi—such as he had often seen in the forests of Sumatra, where the same, or a closely allied species, has its home.
The tree was not a tall one, but low and widespreading; while the broad platform-like nest, formed by interwoven branches, upon which lay a thick layer of grass and leaves, was not more than twenty feet above the surface of the earth.
The obscurity which prevailed around favoured their stealthy approach; and like a pair of spectres gliding through the upright pillars, Captain Redwood and his old pilot at length found a position favourable for a survey of the platform erected by the gorilla.
The father’s heart was filled with strange indescribable emotions, as with eye keenly bent he stood upon a projecting branch, that brought his head on a level with this curious structure.
There he saw a scene which stirred his soul to its deepest depths.
His daughter, appearing snow-white amid the gloom, was lying upon the scaffold, her golden hair dishevelled, her dress torn into ribbons—portions of it detached and scattered about.
To all appearance she was dead; for, scanning her with the earnest anxious glance of a keen solicitude, he could not detect any movement either in body or limbs; and it was too dark for him to tell whether her eyes were open or closed.
But he had now very little hope. He was indeed too certain they were closed in the sleep of death.
Around her were assembled three human-like forms, monstrous withal, and all alike covered with a coating of red hair, thick, long, and shaggy. They were of different sizes, and in the largest one he recognised the abductor of his child.
The second in size, whose form proclaimed it to be a female, was evidently the wife of the huge man-ape; while the little creature, about eighteen inches in height—though a perfect miniature likeness of its parents—was the infant whose squalling had contributed more than anything else to guide them through the shades of the lagoon.
The old male, perhaps suffering fatigue from its fight with the crocodile, as well as from the chase he had sustained, crouched upon the scaffold, seemingly asleep.
The other two were still in motion, the mother at intervals seizing her hairy offspring, and grotesquely caressing it; then letting it go free to dance fantastically around the recumbent form of the unconscious captive child. This it did, amusing itself by now and then tearing off a strip of the girl’s dress, either with its claws or teeth.
It was a spectacle wild, weird, altogether indescribable; and by Captain Redwood not to be looked upon a moment longer than was necessary to embrace its details.
Having satisfied himself, he raised his rifle to fire upon the family party, intending first to aim at the father, whose death he most desired, and who living would no doubt prove by far the most dangerous antagonist.
In another instant his bullet would have sped towards the breast of the sleeping giant, but for Saloo, who, grasping his arm, restrained him.
“Tay, cappen,” said the Malay in a whisper; “leave me kill em. Sumpit bettel dun bullet. De gun makee noise—wake old mias up, an’ maybe no killee em. De upas poison bettel. It go silent—quick. See how Saloo slay dem all tlee!”
There was something in Saloo’s suggestions which caused Captain Redwood to ground his rifle and reflect. His reflections quickly ended in his giving place to his old pilot, and leaving the latter to work out the problem in his own way.
Stepping up to the branch assigned to him, which commanded a view of the spectacle so torturing to his master, the Malay took a brief glance at the scene—only a very brief one. It enabled him to select the first victim for his envenomed shaft, the same which Captain Redwood had destined to receive the leaden missile from his gun.
Bringing to his mouth the sumpitan, in whose tube he had already placed one of his poisoned arrows, and compressing the trumpet-shaped embouchure against his lips, he gave a puff that sent the shaft on its deadly way with such velocity, that even in clear daylight its exit could only have been detected like a spark from a flint.
In the obscurity that shrouded the gorilla’s roost, nothing at all was seen, and nothing heard; for the sumpit is as silent on its message as the wing of an owl when beating through the twilight.
True, there was something heard, though it was not the sound of the arrow.
Only a growl from the great red gorilla, that had felt something sting him, and on feeling it threw up his paw to scratch the place, no doubt fancying it to be but the bite of a mosquito or hornet. The piece of stick broken off by his fingers may have seemed to him rather strange, but not enough so to arouse him from his dreamy indifference.
Not even when another and another sting of the same unusual kind caused him to renew his scratching—for by this time he was beginning to succumb to the narcotic influence that would soon induce the sleep of death.
It did thus end: for after a time, and almost without a struggle, the red-haired monster lay stretched upon the platform which had long been his resting-place, his huge limbs supple and tremulous with the last throes of life.
And beside him, in the same condition, was soon after seen his wife, who, of weaker conformation, had more quickly yielded to the soporific effect of the upas poison, from which, when it has once pervaded the blood, there is no chance of recovery.
Saloo did not deem the infant mias worthy a single arrow, and after its parents had been disposed of, he sprang upon the scaffold, followed by Captain Redwood, who, the moment after, was kneeling by his child, and with ear closely pressed to her bosom, listened to learn if her heart was still beating.
It was!
“She lives! thank God, she lives!”
These were the words that fell upon the ears of Henry and Murtagh, when Saloo, swimming back to the shore, related to them what had transpired. And more too. She had recovered from her swoon, a long-protracted syncope, which had fortunately kept her in a state of unconsciousness almost from the moment of her capture to that of her rescue.
With the exception of some scratches upon her delicate skin, and a slight pain caused by the compression to which she had been subjected in that hideous hug, no harm had befallen her—at least no injury that promised to be of a permanent nature.
Such was the report and prognosis of Saloo, who had swam back to the shore to procure the ship-carpenter’s axe, and his aid in the construction of a raft.
This was to carry Helen from the islet—from a spot which had so nearly proved fatal to her.
A bamboo grove grew close at hand, and with Saloo’s knowledge and the ship-carpenter’s skill, a large life-preserver was soon set afloat on the water of the lagoon. It was at once paddled to the islet, and shortly after came back again bearing with it a precious freight—a beautiful young girl rescued by an affectionate father, and restored to an equally affectionate brother.
Long before the raft had grounded against the shore, Henry, plunging into the shallow water, had gone to meet it, and mounting upon the buoyant bamboos, had flung his arms around the form of his little sister.
How tender that embrace, how fond and affectionate, how different from the harsh hostile hug of the monster, whose long hairy arms had late so cruelly encircled her delicate form!
As the child was still weak—her strength prostrated more by her first alarm when seized, than by aught that had happened afterwards—Captain Redwood would have deemed it prudent to make some stay upon the shore of the lagoon.
But the place seemed so dismal, while the air was evidently damp and unhealthy, to say naught of the unpleasant thoughts the scene suggested, he felt desirous to escape from it as soon as possible.
In this matter the Malay again came to his assistance, by saying they could soon provide a litter on which the child might be transported with as much ease to herself as if she were travelling in the softest sedan-chair that ever carried noble lady of Java or Japan.
“Construct it then,” was the reply of Captain Redwood, who was altogether occupied in caressing his restored child.
Saloo needed no further directions: he only requested the assistance of Murtagh, along with what remained to him of his tools; and these being as freely as joyfully furnished, a score of fresh bamboos soon lay prostrate on the ground, out of which the palanquin was to be built up.
Lopped into proper lengths, and pruned of their great leaf-blades, they were soon welded into the shape of a stretcher, with a pair of long handles projecting from each end.
The palanquin was not yet complete, and by rights should have had a roof over it to shelter its occupant from rain or sun; but as there was no appearance of rain, and certainly no danger of being scorched by the sun in a forest where its glowing orb was never seen nor its rays permitted to penetrate, a roof was not thought necessary, and Saloo’s task was simplified by leaving it a mere stretcher.
He took pains, however, that it should be both soft and elastic. The latter quality he obtained by a careful choice of the bamboos that were to serve as shafts; the former requisite he secured by thickly bedding it with the lopped-off leaves, and adding an upper stratum of cotton, obtained from a species of bombyx growing close at hand, and soft as the down of the eider-duck.
Reclining upon this easy couch, borne upon its long shafts of elastic bamboo, Saloo at one end and Murtagh at the other, Helen was transported like a queen through the forest she had lately traversed as a captive in a manner so strange and perilous.
Before the sun had set, they once more looked upon its cheering light, its last declining rays falling upon her pale face as she was set down upon the shore of the lake, beside that same tree from which she had taken her involuntary departure.
The captain’s daughter, with the natural vigour of youth, soon recovered from the slight injuries she had sustained in her singular journey through the maze of boughs. The previous perils of shipwreck, and the various hairbreadth escapes through which she had more recently passed, made her last danger all the lighter to bear; for by these her child’s spirit had become steeled to endurance, and her courage was equal to that of a full-grown woman. Otherwise the fearful situation in which she had been placed, if leaving life, might have deprived her of reason.
As it happened, no serious misfortune had befallen, and with Helen’s strength and spirits both fully
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