by Guy d'Armen
Meanwhile, Ardan had cut the straps of the parachute with his knife, and climbed down to the ground, looking for his companion. He had lost sight of her when the Astaroth had shot at them, and he hoped she had not landed too far.
“I mustn’t become lost in this jungle,” he said. “I better mark the trees as I go looking for her.”
He began cutting cross marks into the trunk of the trees, as he moved in progressively larger circles, shouting Milarepa’s name aloud. But no one answered.
Ardan was starting to feel very anxious when he finally spotted the young girl, unconscious, her body stuck between the branches of a tall eucalyptus tree.
It took him a good twenty minutes to climb to her level, using the knife. In the meantime, Milarepa had come to, but as still hopelessly trapped by the parachute and the foliage.
Ardan eventually managed to free her, hacking at the branches with his knife. Judging that climbing down the way he’d come was too dangerous, the young man spotted another, smaller tree with more level branches that would make going down to the ground more manageable.
He and Milarepa crawled along the eucalyptus branches until they could safely transfer to the other tree. But as they did so, Ardan lost his grip on his knife, which fell to the ground below.
Suddenly, they heard a trumpeting sound from just beneath their feet and stopped.
In a stroke of bad luck, the knife had fallen right on top of an elephant, which had been feeding on eucalyptus leaves, and the impact of its weight increased by the height of its fall, had succeeded in hurting the animal.
The pachyderm had quickly spotted the two young humans above and correctly assumed they were responsible for its injury.
Feeling wronged, the elephant decided to uproot the tree in which Ardan and Milarepa were, probably with the intention of trampling them to death once they were on the ground.
The only weapon they had was Ardan’s gun, a small pistol; that would be totally useless against a pachyderm of that size.
While the two young people considered their predicament, the elephant stubbornly continued its assault upon the tree. Even though the trunk was fairly wide, there was little doubt that it would soon succeed in uprooting it.
“Are we doomed?” said Milarepa. “To have managed to escape from Mendax’s clutches just to die trampled by an elephant seems a rather ignominious twist of fate.”
“I agree,” said Ardan. “But I think I have an idea...”
He pulled out one of the cartridges from his revolver, and examined it closely. Then turning towards the young woman, he asked:
“Do you still have the lighter you carried with you when we left the citadel?”
“Yes, of course,” she replied. “But why?”
“You’ll see.”
He used the lighter to light a small branch, which he handed to Milarepa saying:
“Don’t let that flame go out. It’s vital.”
Carefully, despite the elephant’s blows shaking the tree, the young man then used his teeth to take apart the cartridge, removed and threw away the bullet, then the small disk between it and the gunpowder inside.
He inserted the wick from the lighter, and sealed it with a bit of moss. He then tied this improvised firecracker with a thread taken from Milarepa’s clothes.
The last step was to light the wick—now the fuse—and slowly lower the cartridge to the level of one of the elephant’s ears.
When the cartridge exploded, the noise, so close to the pachyderm was enough to panic the animal and cause it to run away at a gallop.
“Voilà!” said Ardan. “We can now get down safely.”
The young people started their walk southward. There was water and fruits, so they were able to feed themselves. At nightfall, they found refuge in the branches of a baobab tree.
The next day, late morning, they came across a group of farmers who told them they were about five miles north of the city of Dacca.
CHAPTER XVII
Shanghaied into the Unknown!
“Piece of cake. We’ll be there by the afternoon,” said Ardan. “Even the sun won’t be much of a bother since we’ll be in the shade almost all the way.”
“There will be Europeans in Dacca,” said Milarepa. “Perhaps you’ll be able to get news from, or to, your father?”
Around 2 p.m., they spied the minarets of Dacca rising above the fronds of the palm trees. They saw the shrine of the so-called “hidden goddess” Dhakeswari, an avatar of Durga, whose name, some said, had served to christen the city. Ardan, who was always fascinated by archeology and the study of ancient cultures, deeply regretted not having the time to stop and spend more time at that beautiful temple with its four spires rising above the jungle.
They took the eastern road that crossed the Urdu bazaar to get into the city, planning to request an audience from the governor.
They did not attract any attention from the local denizens, being dressed in a fashion very common in that part of India.
Once they got to the governor’s palace, a subadar, or sergeant, directed them to the British officer responsible for the governor’s private guard.
“I’m Captain Harvey. What do you want?” asked the officer, rather coolly.
“We seek an audience with the governor,” asked Ardan, politely.
“The governor can’t be disturbed at this time. I must ask you to identify yourselves. It is clear that you are a westerner, yet you are dressed like a native. Why?”
“You are correct. I am a French-American dual citizen, and my companion is Tibetan. My name is Francis Ardan Jr., and I am the son of the American industrialist, Francis Ardan Sr. My companion is named Milarepa, and she is the daughter of Prince Manjitar, Governor of the Province of Gyantse. We have been stranded in these parts and are looking to be reunited with our respective families. Can you help us?”
Captain Harvey was stunned by these declarations.
“Stranded?” he stammered. “Is that why you’re dressed in native clothes? But how...?”
Ardan recounted their adventures to Captain Harvey, whose amazement and, unfortunately, incredulity, only grew at hearing this prodigious saga.
“This is a yarn that even Hans Christian Andersen would reject, my boy,” the officer finally said. “I’m not saying you’re not whom you claim to be, young man, but you must be crazy... That’s it—you’ve been driven mad by the sun, or the local parasites... I can’t possibly believe in your fairy tale of some kind of pirates’ nest operating out of Mount Everest. It’s a well-known fact that no one can live up there. I’m certainly not going to bother the governor with such wild stories!”
Ardan was prepared to argue further and would have done so, if Milarepa, wise in the ways of the colonial officers, had not put her hand on his.
“We are sorry to have disturbed you,” she said politely. “It is possible that it is as you said. We have experienced many hardships to come here. Do you at least have any information about our fathers?”
Mollified by the young girl’s supplicant tone, Captain Harvey harrumphed a little and finally said:
“I have no information about the current whereabouts of Prince Manjitar, but I read a report that the Isolde, Mr. Ardan Sr.’s yacht, had recently moored in Chittagong.”
Chittagong was a major coastal seaport about 150 miles to the South, on the mouth of the Ganges delta, on the Indian Ocean. They could take a train the next morning and be in Chittagong by mid-afternoon.
That is just what they did after spending a reinvigorating night in a local hotel.
Comfortably seated in a first-class carriage, they were talking, Ardan gleefully anticipating his father’s surprise when, back on the Isolde, he would soon be telling him the story of his Tibetan adventures.
What they did not notice was that their conversation was being intently followed by a Hindu gentleman, dressed with care, who appeared to be looking at the rolling countryside while smoking a cigar, but, in reality, was careful not to miss a word of th
eir conversation.
When he felt he had heard enough, he got up and walked to the third-class carriage.
Captain Mendax was right to post men to watch all the trains leaving Dacca, he thought. These are the two he seeks. They can’t be allowed to reach the Isolde...
Once in the compartment, he spotted four men with sinister faces who were whiling away the time playing dice. At a curt gesture of the well dressed gentleman, they stopped.
“Listen to me,” he said. “These are the orders of Captain Mendax. You will be paid five hundred rupees each...”
A glint of rapaciousness shone brightly in the men’s eyes. For such a princely sum, they would have gladly butchered their own parents.
“I will show you two young people traveling in first-class. Just before we reach Chittagong, I want you get off the train and run to the station. You will wait outside. One of you will pose as a local guide and another will take over and commandeer a cab. They’ll want to go to the harbor. Either way, once you reach a safe place, knock them unconscious, stuff them into bags, and deliver them to the Silvermore. You know where she’s moored, right?”
The bandits nodded.
“Very well. Above all, try not to kill them. Mendax will be generous if you succeed, but his wrath will be beyond compare if you fail, understood?”
The bandits nodded again, this time with a furtive glance of fear.
When the train arrived at Chittagong in the late afternoon, all went more or less as planned by the well dressed gentleman.
He, himself, followed Ardan and Milarepa as they left the station. Predictably, they turned down the offer of the fake guide to take them to the harbor, and instead hailed a cab. The well dressed gentleman smiled as he saw the coachman was indeed another of the bandits he had hired.
My task here is done, he said to himself. Now I need to send word to Mendax.
Meanwhile, neither Ardan nor Milarepa were surprised by the direction their cab was taking. This was their first visit to Chittagong and they had no reasons to suspect anything was amiss
As they crossed a particularly sinister district, the cab stopped in a dark alley and the other three bandits jumped inside. It was all over in a matter of minutes. Knocked down and chloroformed, Ardan and Milarepa were stuffed into bags, after which the cab continued towards another section of the harbor.
Fifteen minutes later, the two bags were hauled unceremoniously aboard the Silvermore, a small steamer that had seen better days, and dumped into separate cabins. At nightfall, the ship left the harbor for the waters of the Bay of Bengal.
When he woke up, Ardan extricated himself from the bag and found himself alone in small cabin, with a single bunk, no porthole, and a locked door. He could immediately tell he was at sea, but could not remember, at first, how he got there.
This must be one of Mendax’s tricks, he thought. And we were so close to our goal... I hope they didn’t harm Milarepa...
Suddenly, the door was unlocked and a foul-looking sailor walked in.
“You’re awake! Good!” he growled. “Follow me! The captain wants to talk to you!”
The sailor pushed the young man along a filthy corridor reeking of gin, until he was shoved into another cabin—obviously the captain’s.
Once inside, Ardan found himself facing a bear-like man smoking a porcelain pipe. He, too, reeked of gin, a glass of which he held in his right hand. His bulbous nose, wild beard and dirty clothes made him look more like a homeless tramp than a sailor.
Seeing Ardan standing in front of him, the captain took another drink from his glass, smacked his lips, then said in a gravelly, British accented voice:
“I’m Captain Silver. Welcome aboard! You’re going to be my new stoker—that is, until we reach our destination.”
“I’ve been kidnapped!” said Ardan, trying to appeal to the Captain’s cupidity. “But if you let me go and bring my companion and me back to Chittagong, my father will pay you a handsome reward.”
“Wish that I could, boy! Wish that I could!” said the Captain, swilling more gin. “But Mendax is not a man to be casually thwarted. If I did what you suggest, it would not be long before my poor Silvermore would find herself dropped into the arms of Davy Jones...”
“But my father could protect you! Just turn around and you’ll...”
Captain Silver burst out laughing. His face turned so purple that the young man briefly wondered if it wasn’t going to explode.
“There’s no protection to be had against a man like Mendax, boy! No! You and your little friend will stay aboard the Silvermore until I hear otherwise. But since I needed a pair of extra hands as stokers, this is a lucky break. For me, I mean, not for you!”
And he exploded again in a gale of laughter.
“Mr. Van Haarlem,” he shouted, summoning back the sailor who had brought Ardan, “take the boy to the boilers and set him to work right away! Chop chop!”
Ten minutes later, Ardan, now dressed in a stoker’s blue overall, found Milarepa, similarly dressed, in the boiler room. They were again prisoners of Mendax, forced into hard labor and at the mercy of a brutish captain who used them as slave labor.
CHAPTER XVIII
Escape at sea!
For the next four hours, Ardan and Milarepa ceaselessly worked on smashing lumps of coal into smaller fragments, which were then fed into the boilers by two other stokers. One of the two, named Ahmed, was relatively kind and tried to comfort them.
“The Silvermore stays mostly in sight of the Indian coastline,” he explained. “We rarely go farther than Mumbai, or once a year, Karachi. Life is not too difficult, and Captain Silver almost never comes down to the boiler room.”
“What kind of cargo does he carry?” inquired Ardan.
“Usually, rice, or silks. Once in a while, guns for the rebels. But we never get into trouble. Everyone knows Captain Silver, and he knows those officers that will turn a blind eye to his trafficking, provided that he pays them a bribe.”
Ardan tried to work twice as hard to save Milarepa to effort. They were put on the same schedule as the other crewmembers and, although life onboard was harsh, it was ultimately bearable.
During the next few days, whenever he was given the chance to walk about the ship, Ardan looked for a mean of escape, and had come to the conclusion that their only chance lie in stealing one of the two long lifeboats shackled on deck at the stern of the ship. He planned to put his plan in motion at their next stop.
However, his hopes were crushed when they reached Mumbai and they were both locked up in their cabins. Captain Silver was taking no chances!
Another thing Ardan had noticed during his discreet explorations was that the Silvermore boasted two radio rooms!
One was the ordinary room near the prow of the ship, equipped with a standard long-wave radio transmitter, manned by an operator who seemed to have very little to do and rarely even bothered to clean the room or care for the equipment.
That fact had puzzled Ardan, who had gone searching around and had ultimately found a secret radio room, hidden behind a series of fake panels at the back of the hull, where the cargo—presently bales of rice—was kept. This radio room was equipped with a short-wave transmitter and seemed very busy.
Ardan had shared his discovery with Milarepa, who had voiced the opinion that this was what Silver used for his smuggling operations.
Ardan had kept watch of the rotation schedule of the “secret” radio operators and, one night, after midnight, he slipped out of his cabin and went down into the cargo hull. Hiding behind several bales of rice, uncovered a small hole he had previously made in the false wall, which would enable him to spy on what was going on in the secret radio room.
His patience was soon rewarded when a flurry of messages came in; each time the operator ran to the Captain’s cabin to take down Silver’s reply, then rushed back to the radio room to transmit it.
Ardan was familiar with Morse code and could decipher both the incoming and the outgoing messages
as the operator was receiving or sending them.
He was not surprised to find out that the mysterious correspondent as none other than—Mendax!
The air-pirate had obviously just received the report from his operative in Chittagong, who had arranged for the recapture of Ardan and Milarepa, and was requesting confirmation from Captain Silver than the two young people were aboard the Silvermore.
After receiving said confirmation, Mendax confirmed his instructions to keep them alive, and, after having haggled over the amount of reward to be paid to Captain Silver, fixed a rendezvous point at sea for the next day at noon, at a certain position, for the transfer of the two prisoners.
Ardan snuck out of the cargo hull silently and rushed back to Milarepa.
“We can no longer stay here,” he said. “As we suspected he would, Captain Silver has just sold us out to Mendax. We’ll be handed back to him tomorrow. We must escape tonight!”
“How can we do it?” inquired the young woman.
“My plan is to steal one of the lifeboats. But the stern of the ship is guarded at night. One of the men is always on watch. We’re going to have to knock him out to proceed. But I have just the tool for the job,” finished Ardan, showing the young girl one of the shovels he had taken from the boiler room.
When they reached the stern, they discovered that the sailor presently on watch was Van Haarlem, the same man who had treated them roughly when they had first been brought onboard.
Ardan smiled grimly. With a gesture, he instructed Milarepa to remain hidden behind an air vent, while he crawled towards Van Haarlem who was pacing back and forth, smoking a pipe.
Van Haarlem walked all the way down to the parapet, then back to the mizzen mast, and so forth. Ardan snuck behind him just as he was about to turn around and hit him hard on the back of the head with the shovel.
The sailor dropped to the deck, unconscious, without even uttering a sound.
The two young people rushed to the lifeboat and used the pulleys to place it in position to be lowered down to sea level. Then they jumped aboard and released the cables.