The Argus Pheasant

"About two hours, as you said," Carver remarked to his chief. "We'd better start at once."

Jahi bowed to indicate that he had understood. He took some soiled sheets of China rice paper from his chawat.

"Here are skins that talk, mynheer kapitein," he said respectfully. "Dyak boy find him in China boy kampong."

Carver thrust them into his pocket without looking at them and blew his whistle. A few minutes later they began the march to the sea.

While they were speeding through a leafy tunnel with Jahi's Dyaks covering the front and rear to guard against surprise, Carver found opportunity to explain to Peter Gross how he had been able to make the rescue. Koyala had learned Ah Sing's plans from a native source and had hastened to Jahi, who was watching the borders of his range to guard against a surprise attack by Lkath. Jahi, on Koyala's advice, had made a forced march to within ten miles of Bulungan, where Carver, summoned by Koyala, had joined him. Starting at midnight, they had made an eight-hour march to the temple.

"Koyala again," Peter Gross remarked. "She has been our good angel all the way."

Carver was silent. The resident looked at him curiously.

"I am surprised that you believed her so readily," he said. They jogged along some distance before the captain replied.

"I believed her. But I don't believe in her," he said.

"Something's happened since to cause you to lose confidence in her?" Peter Gross asked quickly.

"No, nothing specific. Only Muller and his controlleurs are having the devil's own time getting the census. Many of the chiefs won't even let them enter their villages. Somebody has been stirring them up. And there have been raids – "

"So you assume it's Koyala?" Peter Gross demanded harshly.

Carver evaded a reply. "I got a report that the priests are preaching a holy war among the Malay and Dyak Mohammedans."

"That is bad, bad," Peter Gross observed, frowning thoughtfully. "We must find out who is at the bottom of this."

"The Argus Pheasant isn't flying around the country for nothing," Carver suggested, but stopped abruptly as he saw the flash of anger that crossed his superior's face.

"Every success we have had is due to her," Peter Gross asserted sharply. "She saved my life three times."

Carver hazarded one more effort.

"Granted. For some reason we don't know she thinks it's to her interest to keep you alive – for the present. But she has an object. I can't make it out yet, but I'm going to – " The captain's lips closed resolutely.

"You condemned her before you saw her because she has Dyak blood," Peter Gross accused. "It isn't fair."

"I'd like her a lot more if she wasn't so confounded friendly," Carver replied dryly.

Peter Gross did not answer, and by tacit consent the subject was dropped.

Captain Carver was looking at his watch – the two hours were more than up – when Jahi, who had been in the van, stole back and lifted his hand in signal for silence.

"Orang blanda here stay, Dyak boy smell kampong," he said.

CHAPTER XXV

The Fight on the Beach

Carver gave a low-voiced command to halt, and enjoined his men to see to their weapons. As he ran his eyes over his company and saw their dogged jaws and alert, watchful faces, devoid of any trace of nervousness and excitability, his face lit with a quiet satisfaction. These men would fight – they were veterans who knew how to fight, and they had a motive; Paddy was a universal favorite.

A Dyak plunged through the bush toward Jahi and jabbered excitedly. Jahi cried:

"China boy, him go proa, three-four sampan."

"Lead the way," Carver cried. Peter Gross translated.

"Double time," the captain shouted, as Jahi and his tribesmen plunged through the bush at a pace too swift for even Peter Gross.

In less than three minutes they reached the edge of the jungle, back about fifty yards from the coral beach. Four hundred yards from shore a proa was being loaded from several large sampans. Some distance out to sea, near the horizon, was another proa.

A sharp command from Carver kept his men from rushing out on the beach in their ardor. In a moment or two every rifle in the company was covering the sampans. But there were sharp eyes and ears on board the proa as well as on shore, and a cry of alarm was given from the deck. The Chinese in the sampans leaped upward. At the same moment Carver gave the command to fire.

Fully twenty Chinamen on the two sampans floating on the leeward side of the proa made the leap to her deck, and of these eleven fell back, so deadly was the fire. Only two of them dropped into the boats, the others falling into the sea. Equipped with the latest type of magazine rifle, Carver's irregulars continued pumping lead into the proa. Several Chinamen thrust rifles over the rail and attempted a reply, but when one dropped back with a bullet through his forehead and another with a creased skull, they desisted and took refuge behind the ship's steel-jacketed rail. Perceiving that the proa was armored against rifle-fire, Carver ordered all but six of his command to cease firing, the six making things sufficiently hot to keep the pirates from replying.

The sampans were sinking. Built of skins placed around a bamboo frame, they had been badly cut by the first discharge. As one of them lowered to the gunwale, those on shore could see a wounded Chinaman, scarce able to crawl, beg his companions to throw him a rope. A coil of hemp shot over the deck of the vessel. The pirate reached for it, but at that moment the sampan went down and left him swirling in the water. A dorsal fin cut the surface close by, there was a little flurry, and the pirate disappeared.

Peter Gross made his way through the bush toward Carver. The latter was watching the proa with an anxious frown.

"They've got a steel jacket on her," he declared in answer to the resident's question. "So long as they don't show themselves we can't touch them. We couldn't go out to them in sampans if we had them; they'd sink us."

"Concentrate your fire on the water-line," Peter Gross suggested. "The armor doesn't probably reach very low, and some of these proas are poorly built."

"A good idea!" Carver bellowed the order.

The fire was concentrated at the stern, where the ship rode highest. That those on board became instantly aware of the maneuver was evident from the fact that a pirate, hideously attired with a belt of human hands, leaned over the bow to slash at the hempen cable with his kris. He gave two cuts when he straightened spasmodically and tumbled headlong into the sea. He did not appear above the surface again.

"Een," John Vander Esse, a member of the crew, murmured happily, refilling his magazine. "Now for nummer twee." (Number two.)

But the kris had been whetted to a keen edge. A gust of wind filled the proa's cumbersome triangular sail and drove her forward. The weakened cable snapped. The ship lunged and half rolled into the trough of the waves; then the steersmen, sheltered in their box, gained control and swung it about.

"Gif heem all you got," Anderson, a big Scandinavian and particularly fond of Rouse, yelled. The concentrated fire of the twenty-five rifles, emptied, refilled, and emptied as fast as human hands could perform these operations, centered on the stern of the ship. Even sturdy teak could not resist that battering. The proa had not gone a hundred yards before it was seen that the stern was settling. Suddenly it came about and headed for the shore.

There was a shrill yell from Jahi's Dyaks. Carver shouted a hoarse order to Jahi, who dashed away with his hillmen to the point where the ship was about to ground. The rifle-fire kept on undiminished while Carver led his men in short dashes along the edge of the bush to the same spot. The proa was nearing the beach when a white flag was hoisted on her deck. Carver instantly gave the order to cease firing, but kept his men hidden. The proa lunged on. A hundred feet from the shore it struck on a shelf of coral. The sound of tearing planking was distinctly audible above the roar of the waves. The water about the ship seemed to be fairly alive with fins.

"We will accept their surrender," Peter Gross said to Carver. "I shall tell them to send a boat ashore." He stepped forward.

"Don't expose yourself, Mr. Gross," Carver cried anxiously. Peter Gross stepped into the shelter of a cocoanut-palm and shouted the Malay for "Ahoy."

A Chinaman appeared at the bow. His dress and trappings showed that he was a juragan.

"Lower a boat and come ashore. But leave your guns behind," Peter Gross ordered.

The juragan cried that there was no boat aboard. Peter Gross conferred with Jahi who had hastened toward them to find out what the conference meant. When the resident told him that there was to be no more killing, his disappointment was evident.

"They have killed my people without mercy," he objected. "They will cut my brother's throat to-morrow and hang his skull in their lodges."

It was necessary to use diplomacy to avoid mortally offending his ally, the resident saw.