One Maid's Mischief

“Yes, master, we are both afraid; but if he says we must go, his servants will follow him right up where the spirits dwell. Look – see,” he whispered. “There is one waving its hands to us to tempt us. Don’t – no, don’t look, master, or you may die.”

The second Malay threw himself flat in the bottom of the boat, and covered his face with his hands.

“Well, I’ve seen worse things than that,” said the doctor, grimly. “Why, it’s a woman; and she’s coming this way.”

“The spirits come in all shapes from the mountains to tempt people,” said the trembling Malay. “Now, they are tigers, now they are crocodiles, and sometimes women and men.”

“Ah, the women are the worst kind of spirits,” said the doctor – “especially,” he added to himself, “if they are middle-aged and jealous of their husbands. Here, get up, sir; don’t lie there; you’re crushing my specimens. That’s only a Malay woman.”

The figure was struggling slowly along, the rugged, rock-strewn bank of the stream making her passage very arduous, for the little river was running now in the bottom of a ravine like a huge rift in the mountain side. The rocks towered up at a swift angle, and a traveller would have found the best road to be decidedly in the bed of the stream.

The woman ashore, however, evidently preferred the dry land, and kept on picking her way toilsomely from rock to rock, now descending into some rift, and anon climbing forth once more into sight, and more than once she seemed to fall.

She was quite a couple of hundred yards away still, and the doctor watched her approach with growing interest, feeling no little compassion for her, as he saw that she was evidently footsore, and struggled towards them in a weary, halting manner, that grew pitiable as she advanced.

At last the piled-up rocks grew evidently so difficult that the woman toiled slowly down to the bed of the stream, where the doctor saw her stoop and scoop up the sweet, cool water with her hand, evidently to drink with avidity. After this she made an effort to continue her course, but she seemed to totter and sink down upon a stone at the side of the stream, waving her brown hand once more as if for help.

“Poor thing!” said the doctor, stepping out of the boat into the shallow water, but only to be seized by the two Malays.

“No, no, master,” they cried together; “you must not go. It is a spirit, and it will kill you!”

“Let go, you silly, superstitious fellows!” cried the doctor, wrenching himself free. “Women are very dangerous creatures, but I think I shall get back safe.”

Then, to the horror of his two men, he waded up the stream to where the native woman sat back, half reclining against the rock, with her feet washed by the running water.

As it is well known, when once the sun is below the horizon, the twilight is extremely short in the tropics; and the fast-coming darkness was deepened by the depth of the rocky ravine, so that as the doctor waded carefully on to avoid a nasty fall, the figure of the woman in her gay plaid sarong was beginning to look filmy and indistinct enough to make anyone of superstitious tendencies doubtful of the reality of that upon which he gazed.

But the doctor was made of too stern stuff to be troubled in this way, even after the promptings of his companions; and wading on, with the water feeling deliciously cool as it plashed musically about his feet, he noted that the brown face looked fixed and strange, the lips parted, revealing the black, filed teeth, and such an air of exhaustion displayed in the eyes, that he hurried his steps.

“What is the matter?” he said, in the Malay tongue; but the woman did not reply, only raised one hand feebly and let it drop.

Black, brown, or white, it was the same to Dr Bolter. Here was a patient asking help in her mute way; and taking her hand, he quickly felt her pulse.

“No fever. Exhaustion,” he muttered, softly, laying her farther back, so that after dipping some of the cold water in the cup of his spirit-flask, and adding a few drops of some essence, he could trickle it gently between the sufferer’s lips.

She made an effort to swallow, and did so, uttering a low moan the next minute, followed by a piteous sigh.

“Drink a little more,” he said, in the Malay tongue; and she obeyed mechanically, as he held the silver cup to her lips. “Poor girl,” he continued, to himself, “her feet are cut and bleeding, and she has hurt herself with falling – Here! hoi! Ismael! Ali!”

The rocks echoed his cry, and the two men approached tremblingly.

“Come along, you stupid fellows!” he cried. “It is nothing to be afraid of;” and after a few more angry admonitions the two boatmen came up and helped to carry the insensible girl down to the boat, when, a snug place close by in the rocks having been picked out, the sufferer was placed upon a roughly-prepared couch formed of the doctor’s overcoat and his waterproof sheet; then a macintosh was laid over her, and she seemed to fall off into a heavy sleep.

“That keeps us here for the night,” said the doctor; and being hungry, a fire was lit, and a capital little dinner of preserved game and fish prepared, of which all partook, and then made preparations for passing the night.

Volume Three – Chapter Thirteen.

Medical Aid

Doctor Bolter visited his patient two or three times, waking up with the greatest of regularity every two hours for the purpose, and administering a few drops of a cordial that he always carried wherever he went, it having wonderful qualities of its own, so the doctor said, and being competent to cure almost every disease, but smelling very strongly of brandy.

His patient slept heavily, and she was still sleeping as the doctor’s coffee was ready just before sunrise.

“Humph!” he muttered; “it’s a precious good job my wife isn’t here, or she’d be as cross as two sticks, for the poor thing is a wonderfully handsome girl in spite of her black, filed teeth, and dark skin. Poor lassie! how she has scratched herself. Why, her feet are cut and swollen and full of thorns. I’ll bet ten pounds to twopence she’s a runaway slave.”

There was no one to take the bet, and the doctor went on:

“Poor lass! she has put me in a fix. I can’t take her back with me, because nothing upsets Harley more than having to deal with the domestic institutions of the Malays; and if they get under the protection of the British flag a slave is a slave no longer. Then, too, there is Mrs Bolter. Bless that woman! what a pity it is that she is of such a jealous disposition.

“Tut, tut, tut! Hang the girl! why didn’t she run to someone else? It’s a pity she doesn’t wake, though, for a cup of coffee would do her good.

“Humph! Yes, she’s a very handsome girl,” muttered the doctor, thoughtfully. “What a pity it is that they can’t leave their pretty white teeth alone, instead of disfiguring them like that, and – Bless me – how strange! Where have I seen this girl before?”

He stood gazing down at her very thoughtfully, but his memory did not serve him.

“It must have been at the Inche Maida’s, and that makes it worse, for we don’t want to offend her – Ah! that’s right,” he said aloud in Malayan.

“How do you feel?”

For answer the girl, who had just opened a pair of large lustrous eyes, gazed at the doctor at first in a frightened way, and then caught his hand in hers, kissed it passionately, and held it to her breast.

“Oh, come, I say, my dear, this won’t do!” cried the doctor. “What the dickens do you think Mrs Bolter would say if she saw it? There’d be the prettiest row under the sun. Now, then, be calm, and lie still. You shall have a cup of coffee, and then I’ll extract some of the thorns from your feet, or you’ll be regularly crippled.”

There was a fresh burst of sobbing here, the girl striving to speak, but her sobs choked her utterance.

“There, there, there,” said the doctor, kindly, “don’t cry, my poor child; you are safe now, and I’ll take you back to the station in spite of Harley and Mrs Bolter herself. Hang the slave customs and all who practise them, I say! Now, my dear,” he added, in Malayan, “loose my hand and I will get you some coffee.”

He tried to withdraw his hand, but the girl clung to it the more tightly.

“No, no, Doctor,” she cried; “don’t leave me, pray!”

“What? The deuce!” exclaimed the little man, starting. “How the dickens did you know I was a doctor? I say; I know your voice; who – ”

“Don’t you know me again, Doctor?” she cried, passionately, and cutting short his speech.

“Know you? What – why? – It is? No. Yes: Helen Perowne!”

The poor girl burst into a frantic hysterical fit of crying.

“Why, my poor darling! my dear child! my poor little woman!” cried the doctor, raising her head to his breast, and holding her there, kissing her again and again as the tears ran down his ruddy face. “My poor little bairnie! This is dreadful! There, there, there, my dear, you are quite safe now,” he continued, patting her and caressing her as a father would a favourite child. “But there; what a milksop I am; crying like a great girl, I declare, when I ought to shout hooray! to think I have found you safe, if not quite sound. Why, my dear child, Perowne will hug me for this. Poor old boy, he has been half frantic.”

“But, Doctor,” she sobbed, “they will catch me again, and drag me back to that dreadful place. Look here,” she cried, with a mingling of pitiful appeal and angry indignation, and she held out her scratched and torn brown hands, and then turned her face and showed her teeth to him. “I have been cruelly used. They made me look like one of his wretched wives, so that I should not be known.”

“But who – who did all this?”

“Murad, and I have been kept a prisoner here at a dreadful place, deep in the jungle, where I saw no one but his wretched creatures. Oh, Doctor, Doctor, kill me, or I shall go mad!”

“Kill you? of course I won’t, my dear. The dog! the scoundrel! the smooth-faced hypocrite! I’ll blow his brains out! I’ll skin him and make a specimen of him to take him back to England and exhibit him as a demon. Hang him! I don’t know what I won’t do!” cried the doctor, stamping with passion. “Here, you two,” he cried, “don’t stand staring like that, but bring the young lady some coffee.”