It was Inchi who brought the news of Paddy's return. Three days after Koyala's departure the little Dyak lad burst breathlessly upon a colloquy between Peter Gross and Captain Carver and announced excitedly:
"Him, Djath boy, him,orang blandaDjath boy, him come."
"What the devil is he driving at?" Carver growled. The circumlocution of the south-sea islander was a perennial mystery to him.
"Paddy is coming," Peter Gross cried. "Now get your breath, Inchi, and tell us where he is."
His scant vocabulary exhausted, Inchi broke into a torrent of Dyak. By requiring the lad to repeat several times, Peter Gross finally understood his message.
"Paddy, Koyala, and some of Koyala's Dyaks are coming along the mountain trail," he announced. "They will be here in an hour. She sent a runner ahead to let us know, but the runner twisted an ankle. Inchi found him and got the message."
There was a wild cheer as Paddy, dusty and matted with perspiration, several Dyaks, and Koyala emerged from the banyan-grove and crossed the plain. Discipline was forgotten as the entire command crowded around the lad.
"I shot two Chinamans for you," Vander Esse announced. "An' now daat vas all unnecessary."
"Ye can't keep a rid-head bottled up," Larry Malone, another member of the company, shouted exultingly.
"Aye ban tank we joost get it nice quiet van you come back again," Anderson remarked in mock melancholy. The others hooted him down.
Koyala stood apart from the crowd with her Dyaks and looked on. Glancing upward, Peter Gross noticed her, noticed, too, the childishly wistful look upon her face. He instantly guessed the reason—she felt herself apart from these people of his, unable to share their intimacy. Remorse smote him. She, to whom all their success was due, and who now rendered this crowning service, deserved better treatment. He hastened toward her.
"Koyala," he said, his voice vibrant with the gratitude he felt, "how can we repay you?"
Koyala made a weary gesture of dissent.
"Let us not speak of that now,mynheer," she said.
"But come to my home," he said. "We must have luncheon together—you and Captain Carver and Paddy and I." With a quick afterthought he added: "I will invite Mynheer Muller also."
The momentary gleam of pleasure that had lit Koyala's face at the invitation died at the mention of Muller's name.
"I am sorry," she said, but there was no regret inher voice. "I must go back to my people, to Djath's temple and the priests. It is a long journey; I must start at once."
"You cannot leave us now!" Peter Gross exclaimed in consternation.
"For the present I must," she said resignedly. "Perhaps when the moon is once more in the full, I shall come back to see what you have done."
"But we cannot do without you!"
"Is a woman so necessary?" she asked, and smiled sadly.
"You are necessary to Bulungan's peace," Peter Gross affirmed. "Without you we can have no peace."
"If you need me, send one of my people," she said. "I will leave him here with you. He will know where to find me."
"But that may be too late," Peter Gross objected. His tone became very grave. "The crisis is almost upon us," he declared. "Ah Sing will make the supreme test soon—how soon I cannot say—but I do not think he will let very many days pass by. He is not accustomed to being thwarted. I shall need you here at my right hand to advise me."
Koyala looked at him searchingly. The earnestness of his plea, the troubled look in his straight-forward, gray eyes fixed so pleadingly upon her, seemed to impress her.
"There is a little arbor in the banyan-grove yonder where we can talk undisturbed," she said in a voice of quiet authority. "Come with me."
"We can use my office," Peter Gross offered, but Koyala shook her head.
"I must be on my journey. I will see you in the grove."
Peter Gross walked beside her. He found difficulty in keeping the pace she set; she glided along like a winged thing. Koyala led him directly to the clearing and reclined with a sigh of utter weariness in the shade of a stunted nipa palm.
"It has been a long journey," she said with a wan smile. "I am very tired."
"Forgive me," Peter Gross exclaimed in contrition. "I should not have let you go. You must come back with me to the residency and rest until to-morrow."
"A half-hour's rest will be all I need," Koyala replied.
"But this is no place for you," Peter Gross expostulated.
"The jungle is my home," Koyala said with simple pride. "The Argus Pheasant nests in the thickets."
"Surely not at night?"
"What is there to harm me?" Koyala smiled wearily at his alarm.
"But the wild beasts, the tigers, and the leopards, and the orang-utans in the hill districts, and the snakes?"
"They are all my friends. When the tiger calls, I answer. If he is hungry, I keep away. I know all the sounds of the jungle; my grandfather, Chawatangi, taught them to me. I know the warning hiss of the snake as he glides through the grasses, I know the timid hoofbeat of the antelope, I know the stealthy rustle of the wild hogs. They and the jackals are the only animals I cannot trust."
"But where do you sleep?"
"If the night is dark and there is no moon, I cut a bundle of bamboo canes. I bind these with creepers to make a platform and hang it in a tree. Then I swing between heaven and earth as securely or more securely, than you do in your house, for I am safe from the malice of men. If it rains I make a shelter of palm-leaves on a bamboo frame. These things one learns quickly in the forest."
"You wonderful woman!" Peter Gross breathed in admiration.
Koyala smiled. She lay stretched out her full length on the ground. Peter Gross squatted beside her.
"You haven't told me where you found Paddy?" he remarked after a pause.
"Oh, that was easy," she said. "Ah Sing has a station a little way this side of the Sadong country—"
Peter Gross nodded.
"I knew that he would go there. So I followed. When I got there Ah Sing was loading his proa with stores. I learned that your boy was a prisoner in one of the houses of his people. I went to Ah Sing and begged his life. I told him he was sacred to Djath, that the Dyaks of Bulungan thought him very holy indeed. Ah Sing was very angry. Hestormed about the loss of his proa and refused to listen to me. He said he would hold the boy as a hostage.
"That night I went to the hut and found one of my people on guard. He let me in. I cut the cords that bound the boy, dyed his face brown and gave him a woman's dress. I told him to wait for me in the forest until he heard my cry. The guard thought it was me when he left."
Her voice drooped pathetically.
"They brought me to Ah Sing. He was very angry, he would have killed me, I think, if he had dared. He struck me—see, here is the mark." She drew back the sleeve of her kabaya and revealed a cut in the skin with blue bruises about it. Peter Gross became very white and his teeth closed together tightly.
"That is all," she concluded.
There was a long silence. Koyala covertly studied the resident's profile, so boyish, yet so masterfully stern, as he gazed into the forest depths. She could guess his thoughts, and she half-smiled.
"When you left, I promised you that you should have a reward—anything that you might name and in my power as resident to give," Peter Gross said presently.
"Let us not speak of that—yet," Koyala dissented. "Tell me, Mynheer Gross, do you love my country?"
"It is a wonderfully beautiful country," Peter Gross replied enthusiastically, falling in with hermood. "A country of infinite possibilities. We can make it the garden spot of the world. Never have I seen such fertile soil as there is in the river bottom below us. All it needs is time and labor—and men with vision."
Koyala rose to a sitting posture and leaned on one hand. With deft motion of the other she made an ineffectual effort to cover her nut-brown limbs, cuddled among the ferns and grasses, with the shortened kabaya. Very nymphlike she looked, a Diana of the jungle, and it was small wonder that Peter Gross, the indifferent to woman, gave her his serious attention while she glanced pensively down the forest aisles.
"Men with vision!" she sighed presently. "That is what we have always needed. That is what we have always lacked. My unhappy people! Ignorant, and none to teach them, none to guide them into the better way. Leaders have come, have stayed a little while, and then they have gone again. Brooke helped us in Sarawak—now only his memory is left." A pause. "I suppose you will be going back to Java soon again,mynheer?"
"Not until my work is completed," Peter Gross assured gravely.
"But that will be soon. You will crush your enemies. You will organize the districts and lighten our burdens for a while. Then you will go. A new resident will come. Things will slip back into the old rut. Our young men are hot-headed, there willbe feuds, wars, piracy. There are turns in the wheel, but no progress for us,mynheer. Borneo!" Her voice broke with a sob, and she stole a covert glance at him.
"By heaven, I swear that will not happen, Koyala," Peter Gross asserted vehemently. "I shall not go away, I shall stay here. The governor owes me some reward, the least he can give me is to let me finish the work I have begun. I shall dedicate my life to Bulungan—we, Koyala, shall redeem her, we two."
Koyala shook her head. Her big, sorrowful eyes gleamed on him for a moment through tears.
"So you speak to-day when you are full of enthusiasm,mynheer. But when one or two years have passed, and you hear naught but the unending tales of tribal jealousies, and quarrels over buffaloes, and complaints about the tax, and falsehood upon falsehood, then your ambition will fade and you will seek a place to rest, far from Borneo."
The gentle sadness of her tear-dimmed eyes, the melancholy cadences of her voice sighing tribulation like an October wind among the maples, and her eloquent beauty, set Peter Gross's pulses on fire.
"Koyala," he cried, "do you think I could give up a cause like this—forget the work we have done together—to spend my days on a plantation in Java like a buffalo in his wallow?"
"You would soon forget Borneo in Java,mynheer—and me."
The sweet melancholy of her plaintive smile drove Peter Gross to madness.
"Forget you? You, Koyala? My right hand, my savior, savior thrice over, to whom I owe every success I have had, without whom I would have failed utterly, died miserably in Wobanguli's hall? You wonderful woman! You lovely, adorable woman!"
Snatching her hands in his, he stared at her with a fierce hunger that was half passion, half gratitude.
A gleam of savage exultation flashed in Koyala's eyes. The resident was hers. The fierce, insatiate craving for this moment, that had filled her heart ever since she first saw Peter Gross until it tainted every drop of blood, now raced through her veins like vitriol. She lowered her lids lest he read her eyes, and bit her tongue to choke utterance. Still his grasp on her hands did not relax. At last she asked in a low voice, that sounded strange and harsh even to her:
"Why do you hold me,mynheer?"
The madness of the moment was still on Peter. He opened his lips to speak words that flowed to them without conscious thought, phrases as utterly foreign to his vocabulary as metaphysics to a Hottentot. Then reason resumed her throne. Breathing heavily, he released her.
"Forgive me, Koyala," he said humbly.
A chill of disappointment, like an arctic wave, submerged Koyala. She felt the sensation of havingwhat was dearest in life suddenly snatched from her. Her stupefaction lasted but an instant. Then the fury that goads a woman scorned possessed her and lashed on the blood-hounds of vengeance.
"Forgive you?" she spat venomously. "Forgive you for what? The words you did not say, just now,orang blanda, when you held these two hands?"
Peter Gross had risen quickly and she also sprang to her feet. Her face, furious with rage, was lifted toward his, and her two clenched fists were held above her fluttering bosom. Passion made her almost inarticulate.
"Forgive you for cozening me with sweet words ofourwork, andourmission when you despised me for the blood of my mother that is in me? Forgive you for leading me around like a pet parrot to say your words to my people and delude them? Forgive you for the ignominy you have heaped upon me, the shame you have brought to me, the loss of friendships and the laughter of my enemies?"
"Koyala—" Peter Gross attempted, but he might as well have tried to stop Niagara.
"Are these the things you seek forgiveness for?" Koyala shrieked. "Liar! Seducer!Orang blanda!"
She spat the word as though it were something vile. At that moment there was a rustling in the cane back of Peter Gross. Bewildered, contrite, striving to collect his scattered wits that he might calm the tempest of her wrath, he did not hear it. But Koyala did. There was a savage exultation in her voice as she cried:
"To-morrow the last white will be swept from Bulungan. But you will stay here,mynheer—"
Hearing the footsteps behind him, Peter Gross whirled on his heel. But he turned too late. A bag was thrust over his head. He tried to tear it away, but clinging arms, arms as strong as his, held it tightly about him. A heavy vapor ascended into his nostrils, a vapor warm with the perfume of burning sandalwood and aromatic unguents and spices. He felt a drowsiness come upon him, struggled to cast it off, and yielded. With a sigh like a tired child's he sagged into the waiting arms and was lowered to the ground.
"Very good, Mynheer Muller," Koyala said. "Now, if you and Cho Seng will bind his legs I will call my Dyaks and have him carried to the house we have prepared for him."
When Peter Gross failed to return by noon that day Captain Carver, becoming alarmed, began making inquiries. Hughes supplied the first clue.
"I saw him go into the bush with the heathen woman while we was buzzin' Paddy," he informed his commander. "I ain't seen him since."
A scouting party was instantly organized. It searched the banyan grove, but found nothing. One, of the members, an old plainsman, reported heel-marks on the trail, but as this was a common walk of the troops at the fort the discovery had no significance.
"Where is Inchi?" Captain Carver inquired. Search also failed to reveal the Dyak lad. As this disquieting news was reported, Lieutenant Banning was announced.
The lieutenant, a smooth-faced, clean-cut young officer who had had his commission only a few years, explained the object of his visit without indulging in preliminaries.
"One of my Java boys tells me the report is current in Bulungan that we are to be attacked to-morrow," he announced. "A holy war has been preached, and all the sea Dyaks and Malays inthe residency are now marching this way, he says. The pirate fleet is expected here to-night. I haven't seen or heard of Captain Van Slyck since he left for Padang."
He was plainly worried, and Carver correctly construed his warning as an appeal for advice and assistance. The captain took from his wallet the commission that Peter Gross had given him some time before.
"Since Captain Van Slyck is absent, I may as well inform you that I take command of the fort by order of the resident," he said, giving the document to Banning. The lieutenant scanned it quickly.
"Very good, captain," he remarked with a relieved air. His tone plainly indicated that he was glad to place responsibility in the crisis upon an older and more experienced commander. "I suppose you will enter the fort with your men?"
"We shall move our stores and all our effects at once," Carver declared. "Are your dispositions made?"
"We are always ready, captain," was the lieutenant's reply.
From the roof of the residency Carver studied Bulungan town through field-glasses. There was an unwonted activity in the village, he noticed. Scanning the streets, he saw the unusual number of armed men hurrying about and grouped at street corners and in the market-place. At the water-front several small proas were hastily putting out to sea.
"It looks as if Banning was right," he muttered.
By sundown Carver's irregulars were stationed at the fort. Courtesy denominated it a fort, but in reality it was little more than a stockade made permanent by small towers of crude masonry, filled between with logs set on end. The elevation, however, gave it a commanding advantage in such an attack as they might expect. Peter Gross had been careful to supply machine-guns, and these were placed where they would do the most efficient service. Putting the Javanese at work, Carver hastily threw up around the fort a series of barbed-wire entanglements and dug trench-shelters inside. These operations were watched by an ever-increasing mob of armed natives, who kept a respectful distance away, however. Banning suggested a sortie in force to intimidate the Dyaks.
"It would be time wasted," Carver declared. "We don't have to be afraid of this mob. They won't show teeth until the he-bear comes. We'll confine ourselves to getting ready—every second is precious."
A searchlight was one of Carver's contributions to the defenses. Double sentries were posted and the light played the country about all night, but there was no alarm. When dawn broke Carver and Banning, up with the sun, uttered an almost simultaneous exclamation. A fleet of nearly thirty proas, laden down with fighting men, lay in the harbor.
"Ah Sing has arrived," Banning remarked. Absent-mindedly he mused: "I wonder if Captain Van Slyck is there?"
Carver had by this time mastered just enough Dutch to catch the lieutenant's meaning.
"What do you know about Captain Van Slyck's dealings with this gang?" he demanded, looking at the young man fixedly.
"I can't say—that is—" Banning took refuge in an embarrassed silence.
"Never mind," Carver answered curtly. "I don't want you to inform against a superior officer. But when we get back to Batavia you'll be called upon to testify to what you know."
Banning made no reply.
Carver was at breakfast when word was brought him that Mynheer Muller, thecontrolleur, was at the gate and desired to see him. He had left orders that none should be permitted to enter or leave without special permission from the officer of the day. The immediate thought that Muller was come to propose terms of surrender occurred to him, and he flushed darkly. He directed that thecontrolleurbe admitted.
"Goeden-morgen, mynheer kapitein," Muller greeted as he entered. His face was very pale, but he seemed to carry himself with more dignity than customarily, Carver noticed.
"State your mission,mynheer," Carver directed bluntly, transfixing thecontrolleurwith his stern gaze.
"Mynheer kapitein, you must fight for your lives to-day," Muller said. "Ah Sing is here, there are three thousand Dyaks and Malays below." Hisvoice quavered, but he pulled himself together quickly. "I see you are prepared. Therefore what I have told you is no news to you." He paused.
"Proceed," Carver directed curtly.
"Mynheer kapitein, I am here to fight and die with you," thecontrolleurannounced.
A momentary flash of astonishment crossed Carver's face. Then his suspicions were redoubled.
"I hadn't expected this," he said, without mincing words. "I thought you would be on the other side."
Muller's face reddened, but he instantly recovered. "There was a time when I thought so, too,kapitein," he admitted candidly. "But I now see I was in the wrong. What has been done, I cannot undo. But I can die with you. There is no escape for you to-day, they are too many, and too well armed. I have lived a Celebes islander, a robber, and a friend of robbers. I can at least die a white man and a Hollander."
Carver looked at him fixedly.
"Where is the resident?" he demanded.
"In a hut, in the jungle."
"In Ah Sing's hands?"
"He is Koyala's prisoner. Ah Sing does not know he is there."
"Um!" Carver grunted. The exclamation hid a world of meaning. It took little thought on his part to vision what had occurred.
"Why aren't you with Koyala?" he asked crisply.
Muller looked away. "She does not want me," he said in a low voice.
For the first time since coming to Bulungan, Carver felt a trace of sympathy for Muller. He, too, had been disappointed in love. His tone was a trifle less gruff as he asked: "Can you handle a gun?"
"Ja, mynheer."
"You understand you'll get a bullet through the head at the first sign of treachery?"
Muller flushed darkly. "Ja, mynheer," he affirmed with quiet dignity. It was the flush that decided Carver.
"Report to Lieutenant Banning," he said. "He'll give you a rifle."
It was less than an hour later that the investment of the fort began. The Dyaks, scurrying through the banyan groves and bamboo thickets, enclosed it on the rear and landward sides. Ah Sing's pirates and the Malays crawled up the rise to attack it from the front. Two of Ah Sing's proas moved up the bay to shut off escape from the sea.
An insolent demand from Ah Sing and Wobanguli that they surrender prefaced the hostilities.
"Tell the Rajah and his Chinese cut-throat that we'll have the pleasure of hanging them," was Carver's reply.
To meet the attack, Carver entrusted the defense of the rear and landward walls to the Dutch and Javanese under Banning, while he looked after the frontal attack, which he shrewdly guessed would be the most severe. Taking advantage of every bush and tree, and particularly the hedges thatlined the lane leading down to Bulungan, the Malays and pirates got within six hundred yards of the fort. A desultory rifle-fire was opened. It increased rapidly, and soon a hail of bullets began sweeping over the enclosure.
"They've got magazine-rifles," Carver muttered to himself. "Latest pattern, too. That's what comes of letting traders sell promiscuously to natives."
The defenders made a vigorous reply. The magazine-rifles were used with telling effect. Banning had little difficulty keeping the Dyaks back, but the pirates and Malays were a different race of fighters, and gradually crept closer in, taking advantage of every bit of cover that the heavily grown country afforded.
As new levies of natives arrived, the fire increased in intensity. There were at least a thousand rifles in the attacking force, Carver judged, and some of the pirates soon demonstrated that they were able marksmen. An old plainsman was the first casualty. He was sighting along his rifle at a daring Manchu who had advanced within three hundred yards of the enclosure when a bullet struck him in the forehead and passed through his skull. He fell where he stood.
Shortly thereafter Gibson, an ex-sailor, uttered an exclamation, and clapped his right hand to his left shoulder.
"Are ye hit?" Larry Malone asked.
"They winged me, I guess," Gibson said.
The Dutch medical officer hastened forward. "The bone's broken," he pronounced. "We'll have to amputate."
"Then let me finish this fight first," Gibson retorted, picking up his rifle. The doctor was a soldier, too. He tied the useless arm in a sling, filled Gibson's magazine, and jogged away to other duties with a parting witticism about Americans who didn't know when to quit. There was plenty of work for him to do. Within the next half hour ten men were brought into the improvised hospital, and Carver, on the walls, was tugging his chin, wondering whether he would be able to hold the day out.
The firing began to diminish. Scanning the underbrush to see what significance this might have, Carver saw heavy columns of natives forming. The first test was upon them. At his sharp command the reply fire from the fort ceased and every man filled his magazine.
With a wild whoop the Malays and Chinese rose from the bush and raced toward the stockade. There was an answering yell from the other side as the Dyaks, spears and krisses waving, sprang from the jungle. On the walls, silence. The brown wave swept like an avalanche to within three hundred yards. The Javanese looked anxiously at their white leader, standing like a statue, watching the human tide roll toward him. Two hundred yards—a hundred and fifty yards. The Dutch riflemen began to fidget. A hundred yards. An uneasy murmur ran down the whole line. Fifty yards.
Carver gave the signal. Banning instantly repeated it. A sheet of flame leaped from the walls as rifles and machine-guns poured their deadly torrents of lead into the advancing horde. The first line melted away like butter before a fire. Their wild yells of triumph changed to frantic shrieks of panic, the Dyaks broke and fled for the protecting cover of the jungle while the guns behind them decimated their ranks. The Malays and Chinese got within ten yards of the fort before they succumbed to the awful fusillade, and fled and crawled back to shelter. A mustached Manchu alone reached the gate. He waved his huge kris, but at that moment one of Carver's company emptied a rifle into his chest and he fell at the very base of the wall.
The attack was begun, checked, and ended within four minutes. Over two hundred dead and wounded natives and Chinese lay scattered about the plain. The loss within the fort had been four killed and five wounded. Two of the dead were from Carver's command, John Vander Esse and a Californian. As he counted his casualties, Carver's lips tightened. His thoughts were remarkably similar to that of the great Epirot: "Another such victory and I am undone."
Lieutenant Banning, mopping his brow, stepped forward to felicitate his commanding officer.
"They'll leave us alone for to-day, anyway," he predicted.
Carver stroked his chin in silence a moment.
"I don't think Ah Sing's licked so soon," he replied.
For the next three hours there was only desultory firing. The great body of natives seemed to have departed, leaving only a sufficient force behind to hold the defenders in check in case they attempted to leave the fort. Speculation on the next step of the natives was soon answered. Scanning the harbor with his glasses, Carver detected an unwonted activity on the deck of one of the proas. He watched it closely for a few moments, then he uttered an exclamation.
"They're unloading artillery," he told Lieutenant Banning.
The lieutenant's lips tightened.
"We have nothing except these old guns," he replied.
"They're junk," Carver observed succinctly. "These proas carry Krupps, I'm told."
"What are you going to do?"
"We'll see whether they can handle it first. If they make it too hot for us—well, we'll die fighting."
The first shell broke over the fort an hour later and exploded in the jungle on the other side. Twenty or thirty shells were wasted in this way before the gunner secured the range. His next effort landed against one of the masonry towers on the side defended by the Dutch. When the smoke had cleared away the tower lay leveled. Nine dead and wounded men were scattered among the ruins. A yell rosefrom the natives, which the remaining Dutch promptly answered with a stinging volley.
"Hold your fire," Carver directed Banning. "We'd better take to the trenches." These had been dug the day before and deepened during the past hour. Carver issued the necessary commands and the defenders, except ten pickets, concealed themselves in their earthen shelters.
The gunnery of the Chinese artilleryman improved, and gaunt breaches were formed in the walls. One by one the towers crumbled. Each well-placed shell was signalized by cheers from the Dyaks and Malays. The shelling finally ceased abruptly. Carver and Banning surveyed the scene. A ruin of fallen stones and splintered logs was all that lay between them and the horde of over three thousand pirates and Malay and Dyak rebels. The natives were forming for a charge.
Carver took the lieutenant's hand in his own firm grip.
"This is probably the end," he said. "I'm glad to die fighting in such good company."
Lying on the bamboo floor of the jungle hut which Muller had spoken of, his hands and feet firmly bound, and a Dyak guard armed with spear and kris at the door, Peter Gross thought over the events of his administration as resident of Bulungan. His thoughts were not pleasant. Shame filled his heart and reddened his brow as he thought of how confidently he had assumed his mission, how firmly he had believed himself to be the chosen instrument of destiny to restore order in the distracted colony and punish those guilty of heinous crimes, and how arrogantly he had rejected the sage advice of his elders.
He recollected old Sachsen's warning and his own impatient reply—the event that he deemed so preposterous at that time and old Sachsen had foreseen had actually come to pass. He had fallen victim to Koyala's wiles. And she had betrayed him. Bitterly he cursed his stupid folly, the folly that had led him to enter the jungle with her, the folly of that mad moment when temptation had assailed him where man is weakest.
In his bitter self-excoriation he had no thought of condemnation for her. The fault was his, he vehemently assured himself, lashing himself with the scorpions of self-reproach. She was what nature and the sin of her father had made her, a child of two alien, unincorporable races, a daughter of the primitive, wild, untamed, uncontrolled, loving fiercely, hating fiercely, capable of supremest sacrifice, capable, too, of the most fiendish cruelty.
He had taken this creature and used her for his own ends, he had praised her, petted her, treated her as an equal, companion, and helpmate. Then, when that moment of madness was upon them both, he had suddenly wounded her acutely sensitive, bitterly proud soul by drawing the bar sinister. How she must have suffered! He winced at the thought of the pain he had inflicted. She could not be blamed, no, the fault was his, he acknowledged. He should have considered that he was dealing with a creature of flesh and blood, a woman with youth, and beauty, and passion. If he, who so fondly dreamed that his heart was marble, could fall so quickly and so fatally, could he censure her?
Carver, too, had warned him. Not once, but many times, almost daily. He had laughed at the warnings, later almost quarreled. What should he say if he ever saw Carver again? He groaned.
There was a soft swish of skirts. Koyala stood before him. She gazed at him coldly. There was neither hate nor love in her eyes, only indifference. In her hand she held a dagger. Peter Gross returned her gaze without flinching.
"You are my prisoner,orang blanda," she said."Mine only. This hut is mine. We are alone here, in the jungle, except for one of my people."
"You may do with me as you will, Koyala," Peter Gross replied weariedly.
Koyala started, and looked at him keenly.
"I have come to carry you away," she announced.
Peter Gross looked at her in silence.
"But first there are many things that we must talk about," she said.
Peter Gross rose to a sitting posture. "I am listening," he announced.
Koyala did not reply at once. She was gazing fixedly into his eyes, those frank, gray eyes that had so often looked clearly and honestly into hers as he enthusiastically spoke of their joint mission in Bulungan. A half-sob broke in her throat, but she restrained it fiercely.
"Do you remember,mynheer, when we first met?" she asked.
"It was at the mouth of the Abbas River, was it not? At Wolang's village?"
"Why did you laugh at me then?" she exclaimed fiercely.
Peter Gross looked at her in astonishment. "I laughed at you?" he exclaimed.
"Yes, on the beach. When I told you you must go. You laughed. Do not deny it, you laughed!" The fierce intensity of her tone betrayed her feeling.
Peter Gross shook his head while his gaze met hers frankly. "I do not recollect," he said. "I surelydid not laugh at you—I do not know what it was—" A light broke upon him. "Ay, to be sure, I remember, now. It was a Dyak boy with a mountain goat. He was drinking milk from the teats. Don't you recall?"
"You are trying to deceive me," Koyala cried angrily. "You laughed because—because—"
"As God lives, it is the truth!"
Koyala placed the point of her dagger over Peter Gross's heart.
"Orang blanda," she said, "I have sworn to kill you if you lie to me in any single particular to-day. I did not see that whereof you speak. There was no boy, no goat. Quick now, the truth, if you would save your life."
Peter Gross met her glance fearlessly.
"I have told you why I laughed, Koyala," he replied. "I can tell you nothing different."
The point of the dagger pricked the resident's skin.
"Then you would rather die?"
Peter Gross merely stared at her. Koyala drew a deep breath and drew back the blade.
"First we shall talk of other things," she said.
At that moment the rattle of rifle-fire reached Peter Gross's ears.
"What is that?" he cried.
Koyala laughed, a low laugh of exultation. "That,mynheer, is the children of Bulungan driving the white peccaries from Borneo."
"Ah Sing has attacked?" Peter Gross could not help, in his excitement, letting a note of his dismay sound in his voice.
"Ah Sing and his pirates," Koyala cried triumphantly. "Wobanguli and the warriors of Bulungan. Lkath and his Sadong Dyaks. The Malays from the coast towns. All Bulungan except the hill people. They are all there, as many as the sands of the seashore, and they have theorang blandafrom Holland, and the Javanese, and the loud-voicedorang blandathat you brought with you, penned in Van Slyck's kampong. None will escape."
"Thank God Carver's in the fort," Peter Gross ejaculated.
"But they cannot escape," Koyala insisted fiercely.
"We shall see," Peter Gross replied. Great as were the odds, he felt confident of Carver's ability to hold out a few days anyway. He had yet to learn of the artillery Ah Sing commanded.
"Not one shall escape," Koyala reiterated, the tigerish light glowing in her eyes. "Ah Sing has pledged it to me, Wobanguli has pledged it to me, the lastorang blandashall be driven from Bulungan." She clutched the hilt of her dagger fiercely—.
Amazed at her vehemence, Peter Gross watched the shifting display of emotion on her face.
"Koyala," he said, suddenly, "why do you hate us whites so?"
He shrank before the fierce glance she cast at him.
"Is there any need to ask?" she cried violently. "Did I not tell you the first day we met, when I told you I asked no favors of you, and would accept none? What have you and your race brought to my people and to me but misery, and more misery? You came with fair promises, how have you fulfilled them? In theorang blandaway, falsehood upon falsehood, taking all, giving none. Why don't I kill you now, when I have you in my power, when I have only to drop my hand thus—" she flashed the dagger at Peter Gross's breast—"and I will be revenged? Why? Because I was a fool, white man, because I listened to your lies and believed when all my days I have sworn I would not. So I have let you live, unless—" She did not finish the thought, but stood in rigid attention, listening to the increasing volume of rifle-fire.
"They are wiping it out in blood there," she said softly to herself, "the wrongs of Bulungan, what my unhappy country has suffered from theorang blanda."
Peter Gross's head was bowed humbly.
"I have wronged you," he said humbly. "But, before God, I did it in ignorance. I thought you understood—I thought you worked with me for Bulungan and Bulungan only, with no thought of self. So I worked. Yet somehow, my plans went wrong. The people did not trust me. I tried to relieve them of unjust taxes. They would not let me take the census. I tried to end raiding. Therewere always disorders and I could not find the guilty. I found a murderer for Lkath, among his own people, yet he drove me away. I cannot understand it."
"Do you know why?" Koyala exclaimed exultingly. "Do you know why you failed? It was I—I—I, who worked against you. Theorang kayassent their runners to me and said: 'Shall we give thecontrolleurthe count of our people?' and I said: 'No, Djath forbids.' To the Rajahs and Gustis I said: 'Let there be wars, we must keep the ancient valor of our people lest they become like the Javanese, a nation of slaves.' You almost tricked Lkath into taking the oath. But in the night I went to him and said: 'Shall the vulture rest in the eagle's nest?' and he drove you away."
Peter Gross stared at her with eyes that saw not. The house of his faith was crumbling into ruins, yet he scarcely realized it himself, the revelation of her perfidy had come so suddenly. He groped blindly for salvage from the wreck, crying:
"But you saved my life—three times!"
She saw his suffering and smiled. So she had been made to suffer, not once, but a thousand times.
"That was because I had sworn the revenge should be mine, not Ah Sing's or any one else's,orang blanda."
Peter Gross lowered his face in the shadow. He did not care to have her see how great had been his disillusionment, how deep was his pain.
"You may do with me as you will,juffrouw," he said.
Koyala looked at him strangely a moment, then rose silently and left the hut. Peter Gross never knew the reason. It was because at that moment, when she revealed her Dyak treachery and uprooted his faith, he spoke to her as he would to a white woman—"juffrouw."
"They are holding out yet," Peter Gross said to himself cheerfully some time later as the sound of scattered volleys was wafted over the hills. Presently he heard the dull boom of the first shell. His face paled.
"That is artillery!" he exclaimed. "Can it be—?" He remembered the heavy guns on the proas and his face became whiter still. He began tugging at his bonds, but they were too firmly bound. His Dyak guard looked in and grinned, and he desisted. As time passed and the explosions continued uninterruptedly, his face became haggard and more haggard. It was because of his folly, he told himself, that men were dying there—brave Carver, so much abler and more foresighted than he, the ever-cheerful Paddy, all those he had brought with him, good men and true. He choked.
Presently the shell-fire ceased. Peter Gross knew what it meant, in imagination he saw the columns of natives forming, column upon column, all that vast horde of savages and worse than savages let loose on a tiny square of whites.
A figure stood in the doorway. It was Koyala. Cho Seng stood beside her.
"The walls are down," she cried triumphantly."There is only a handful of them left. The people of Bulungan are now forming for the charge. In a few minutes you will be the only white man left in Bulungan."
"I and Captain Van Slyck," Peter Gross said scornfully.
"He is dead," Koyala replied. "Ah Sing killed him. He was of no further use to us, why should he live?"
Peter Gross's lips tightened grimly. The traitor, at least, had met the death he merited.
Cho Seng edged nearer. Peter Gross noticed the dagger hilt protruding from his blouse.
"Has my time come, too?" he asked calmly.
The Chinaman leaped on him. "Ah Sing sends you this," he cried hoarsely—the dagger flashed.
Quick as he was, quick as a tiger striking its prey, the Argus Pheasant was quicker. As the dagger descended, Koyala caught him by the wrist. He struck her with his free hand and tried to tear the blade away. Then his legs doubled under him, for Peter Gross, although his wrists were bound, could use his arms. Cho Seng fell on the point of the dagger, that buried itself to the hilt in the fleshy part of his breast. With a low groan he rolled over. His eyeballs rolled glassily upward, thick, choked sounds came from his throat—
"Ah Sing—comeee—for Koyala—plenty quick—" With a sigh, he died.
Peter Gross looked at the Argus Pheasant. She was gazing dully at a tiny scratch on her forearm,a scratch made by Cho Seng's dagger. The edges were purplish.
"The dagger was poisoned," she murmured dully. Her glance met her prisoner's and she smiled wanly.
"I go toSangjangwith you,mynheer," she said.
Peter Gross staggered to his knees and caught her arm. Before she comprehended what he intended to do he had his lips upon the cut and was sucking the blood. A scarlet tide flooded her face, then fled, leaving her cheeks with the pallor of death.
"No, no," she cried, choking, and tried to tear her arm away. But in Peter Gross's firm grasp she was like a child. After a frantic, futile struggle she yielded. Her face was bloodless as a corpse and she stared glassily at the wall.
Presently Peter Gross released her.
"It was only a scratch," he said gently. "I think we have gotten rid of the poison."
The sound of broken sobbing was his only answer.
"Koyala," he exclaimed.
With a low moan she ran out of the hut, leaving him alone with the dead body of the Chinaman, already bloated purple.
Peter Gross listened again. Only the ominous silence from the hills, the silence that foretold the storm. He wondered where Koyala was and his heart became hot as he recollected Cho Seng's farewell message that Ah Sing was coming. Well, Ah Sing would find him, find him bound and helpless. The pirate chief would at last have his long-sought revenge. For some inexplicable reason he felt gladthat Koyala was not near. The jungle was her best protection, he knew.
A heavy explosion cut short his reveries. "They are cannonading again," he exclaimed in surprise, but as another terrific crash sounded a moment later, his face became glorified. Wild cries of terror sounded over the hills, Dyak cries, mingled with the shrieking of shrapnel—
"It's thePrins," Peter Gross exclaimed jubilantly. "Thank God, Captain Enckel came on time."
He tugged at his own bonds in a frenzy of hope, exerting all his great strength to strain them sufficiently to permit him to slip one hand free. But they were too tightly bound. Presently a shadow fell over him. He looked up with a start, expecting to see the face of the Chinese arch-murderer, Ah Sing. Instead it was Koyala.
"Let me help you," she said huskily. With a stroke of her dagger she cut the cord. Another stroke cut the bonds that tied his feet. He sprang up, a free man.
"Hurry, Koyala," he cried, catching her by the arm. "Ah Sing may be here any minute."
Koyala gently disengaged herself.
"Ah Sing is in the jungle, far from here," she said.
A silence fell upon them both. Her eyes, averted from his, sought the ground. He stood by, struggling for adequate expression.
"Where are you going, Koyala?" he finally asked. She had made no movement to go.
"Wherever you will,mynheer," she replied quietly. "I am now your prisoner."
Peter Gross stared a moment in astonishment. "My prisoner?" he repeated. "Nonsense."
"Your people have conquered,mynheer," she said. "Mine are in flight. Therefore I have come to surrender myself—to you."
"I do not ask your surrender," Peter Gross, replied gravely, beginning to understand.
"You do not ask it,mynheer, but some one must suffer for what has happened. Some one must pay the victor's price. I am responsible, I incited my people. So I offer myself—they are innocent and should not be made to suffer."
"Ah Sing is responsible," Peter Gross said firmly. "And I."
"You,mynheer?" The question came from Koyala's unwilling lips before she realized it.
"Yes, I,juffrouw. It is best that we forget what has happened—I must begin my work over again." He closed his lips firmly, there were lines of pain in his face. "That is," he added heavily, "if his excellency will permit me to remain here after this fiasco."
"You will stay here?" Koyala asked incredulously.
"Yes. And you,juffrouw?"
A moment's silence. "My place is with my people—if you do not want me as hostage,mynheer?"
Peter Gross took a step forward and placed a hand on her shoulder. She trembled violently.
"I have a better work for you,juffrouw," he said.
Her eyes lifted slowly to meet his. There was mute interrogation in the glance.
"To help me make Bulungan peaceful and prosperous," he said.
Koyala shook herself free and walked toward the door. Peter Gross did not molest her. She stood on the threshold, one hesitating foot on the jungle path that led to the grove of big banyans. For some minutes she remained there. Then she slowly turned and reëntered the hut.
"Mynheer Gross," she said, in a choking voice, "before I met you I believed that all theorang blandawere vile. I hated the white blood that was in me, many times I yearned to take it from me, drop by drop, many times I stood on the edge of precipices undecided whether to let it nourish my body longer or no. Only one thing kept me from death, the thought that I might avenge the wrongs of my unhappy country and my unhappy mother."
A stifled sob shook her. After a moment or two she resumed:
"Then you came. I prayed the Hanu Token to send a young man, a young man who would desire me, after the manner of white men. When I saw you I knew you as the man of the Abbas, the man who had laughed, and I thought the Hanu Token had answered my prayer. I saved you from Wobanguli, I saved you from Ah Sing, that you might be mine, mine only to torture." Her voice broke again.
"But you disappointed me. You were just, youwere kind, righteous in all your dealings, considerate of me. You did not seek to take me in your arms, even when I came to you in your own dwelling. You did not taunt me with my mother like that pig, Van Slyck—"
"He is dead," Peter Gross interrupted gently.
"I have no sorrow for him.Sangjanghas waited over-long for him. Now you come to me, after all that has happened, and say: 'Koyala, will you forget and help me make Bulungan happy?' What shall I answer,mynheer?"
She looked at him humbly, entreatingly. Peter Gross smiled, his familiar, confident, warming smile.
"What your conscience dictates, Koyala."
She breathed rapidly. At last came her answer, a low whisper. "If you wish it, I will help you,mynheer."
Peter Gross reached out his hand and caught hers. "Then we're pards again," he cried.
Peter Gross had just concluded an account of his administration in Bulungan to Governor-General Van Schouten at the latter'spaleisin Batavia. The governor-general was frowning.
"So!mynheer," he exclaimed gruffly. "This is not a very happy report you have brought me."
Peter Gross bent his head.
"No census, not a cent of taxes paid, piracy, murders, mycontrolleurs—God knows where they are, the whole province in revolt. This is a nice kettle of fish."
Sachsen glanced sympathetically at Peter Gross. The lad he loved so well sat with bowed head and clenched hands, lines of suffering marked his face, he had grown older, oh, so much older, during those few sorry months since he had so confidently declared his policies for the regeneration of the residency in this very room. The governor was speaking again.
"You said you would find Mynheer de Jonge's murderer for me," Van Schouten rasped. "Have you done that?"
"Yes, your excellency. It was Kapitein Van Slyck who planned the deed, and Cho Seng whocommitted the act, pricked him with a upas thorn while he slept, as I told your excellency. Here are my proofs. A statement made by Mynheer Muller to Captain Carver and Lieutenant Banning before he died, and a statement made by Koyala to me." He gave the governor the documents. The latter scanned them briefly and laid them aside.
"How did Muller come to his death?" he demanded.
"Like a true servant of the state, fighting in defense of the fort," Peter Gross replied. "A splinter of a shell struck him in the body."
"H-m!" the governor grunted. "I thought he was one of these traitors, too."
"He expiated his crimes two weeks ago at Fort Wilhelmina, your excellency."
"And Cho Seng?" the governor demanded. "Is he still alive?"
"He fell on his own dagger." Peter Gross described the incident. "It was not the dagger thrust that killed him," he explained. "That made only a flesh wound. But the dagger point had been dipped in a cobra's venom." Softly he added: "He always feared that he would die from a snake's poison."
"It is the judgment of God," Van Schouten pronounced solemnly. He looked at Peter Gross sharply.
"Now this Koyala," he asked, "where is she?"
"I do not know. In the hills, among her own people, I think. She will not trouble you again."
The governor stared at his resident. Gradually the stern lines of his face relaxed and a quaintly humorous glint came into his eyes.
"So, Mynheer Gross, the woman deceived you?" he asked sharply.
Peter Gross made no reply. The governor's eyes twinkled. He suddenly brought down his fist on the table with a resounding bang.
"Donder en bliksem!" he exclaimed, "I cannot find fault with you for that. The fault is mine. I should have known better. Why, when I was your age, a pretty woman could strip the very buttons from my dress coat—dammit, Mynheer Gross, you must have had a heart of ice to withstand her so long."
He flourished a highly colored silk handkerchief and blew his nose lustily.
"So you are forgiven on that count, Mynheer Gross. Now for the other. It appears that by your work you have created a much more favorable feeling toward us among many of the natives. The hill Dyaks did not rise against us as they have always done before, and some of the coast Dyak tribes were loyal. That buzzard, Lkath, stayed in his lair. Furthermore, you have solved the mysteries that have puzzled us for years and the criminals have been muzzled. Lastly, you were the honey that attracted all these piratical pests into Bulungan harbor where Kapitein Enckel was able to administer them a blow that will sweep those seas clear of this vermin for years to come, I believe. You have not done sobadly after all, Mynheer Gross. Of course, you and your twenty-five men might have come to grief had not Sachsen, here, heard reports that caused me to send thePrins Lodewykpost-haste to Bulungan, but we will overlook your too great confidence on the score of your youth." He chuckled. "Now as to the future."
He paused and looked smilingly into the eyes that looked so gratefully into his.
"What say you to two more years at Bulungan,mynheer, to straighten out affairs there, work out your policies, and finish what you have so ably begun?"
"Your excellency is too good," Peter Gross murmured brokenly.
"Good!" Van Schouten snapped. "Donder en bliksem, mynheer, it is only that I know a man when I see him. Can you go back next week?"
"Yes, your excellency."
"Then see that you do. And see to it that those devils send me some rice this year when the tax falls due or I will hang them all in the good, old-fashioned way."