by W E Johns
Not for a moment did he relax his vigilance, for he realised that what had happened to the others might also happen to him. He lit a cigarette and tried to reconstruct the scene, and in so doing came up on the trail leading into the forest. This was a clue which he had not expected, for knowing that the Indians did most of their travelling by canoe, he had assumed that the attack had come from the river.
Now that he had something tangible to go on, he returned to the Wanderer, moored the aircraft securely to the bank and made it less conspicuous by throwing reeds and palm fronds over the wings. This done, he went to the cabin, selected a heavy Express rifle from the armoury, filled a cartridge-belt with ammunition and the pockets of his jacket with biscuits. Then, after a final glance round, he set off along the trail, which could be followed without difficulty.
He had not gone far when he was brought to an abrupt halt by a hoarsely whispered ‘Massa.’ He recognised the voice at once, but even so, his nerves tingled with shock.
‘Dusky!’ he called tersely. ‘Where are you?’
Dusky dropped out of a tree and hurried to him.
‘What happened?’ asked Biggles shortly, wondering how the old man had escaped.
This Dusky soon explained. In mournful tones he related how he had gone into the forest to find food, a quest which—fortunately for him, as it happened—had taken him into a tree. The tree was at no great distance from the camp, and the sound of the assault had reached his ears. From his hiding-place he had watched Algy and Ginger being led away into the jungle. He apologised for not going to their rescue, but pointed out that, as the only weapon he had was a knife, he was in no position to take on a crowd of Indians. This Biggles did not dispute. Indeed, when Dusky explained that he had remained in hiding, waiting for him to come back so that he could tell him what had happened, he congratulated him on his common sense.
‘I suppose you’ve no idea where the Indians have gone?’ asked Biggles.
Dusky shook his head, saying that he did not know the district, but gave it as a matter of opinion that the Indian village would not be far away.
‘In that case we shall have to try to find it,’ Biggles told him.
Dusky agreed, but without enthusiasm.
They continued on down the trail, Dusky now leading the way and stopping from time to time to listen. This went on for an hour, by which time, although they did not know it, they were getting near the village.
The first intimation of this came when shouts and yells reached their ears, sounds which Dusky interpreted correctly, as the Indian way of making jubilation over the capture of the white men.
They now proceeded with more caution, and were peering forward through the undergrowth hoping to catch sight of the village when a volley of shots sent them diving for cover. The shots, however, did not come their way, which puzzled Biggles more than a little. Dusky went up a tree like a squirrel, to return in a few moments with the unwelcome news that Bogat and his gang had attacked the Indians, scattered them, and taken over their prisoners. He also announced that there was another white man with Algy and Ginger.
Biggles wasted no time in futile guessing as to who this could be. He was too concerned about Algy and Ginger. He thought swiftly, undecided how to act.
‘How many men has Bogat got with him?’ he asked Dusky.
Dusky opened and closed his hands, twice.
‘Twenty, eh?’ muttered Biggles.
To attack twenty men single-handed—for Dusky could hardly be counted on—would be, he saw, a rash undertaking. With the advantage of surprise in his favour he might shoot two or three of them, but in the ensuing battle, even if he escaped, Algy and Ginger would be certain to get hurt. He perceived, too, that if he failed in an attempt at rescue now, the odds against him in future would be worse, for once his presence was revealed strict guard would be kept. Taking all the factors into consideration, he decided that it would be better to wait for a more favourable opportunity. Perhaps a chance would come after dark.
At this point Dusky, who had again ascended a tree, returned to say that Bogat and his men, with their prisoners, were moving off through the forest. This at once upset Biggles’s plans, for he had assumed that Bogat would remain in the village for a while. To attack him while he was on the march was obviously out of the question, so he took the only course that remained open, which was to allow Bogat’s party to go on and follow as close behind as was reasonably safe.
He told Dusky his plan, and the old man agreed, so after waiting for a little while to give Bogat a start, they once more took up the trail.
Biggles of course had not the remotest idea of where they were going, nor even if they were travelling north or south, for the green jungle hemmed them in on both sides, and overhead. Nor, for a long time, did Dusky know; but eventually the trail crossed another which he recognised as one he had used when collecting chicle for the Tiger.
‘I reckon Bogat go to de Tiger’s village,’ he announced.
‘But that’s up in the mountains,’ Biggles pointed out.
Dusky nodded. ‘Sure. By-um-by we come to old ruins at bottom of steps. Maybe Bogat stop dere; maybe he go up steps to de king.’
‘You’re sure you know where we are?’
‘Yes, I’se sure, massa.’
‘How far is it from here to the foot of the steps?’
‘Half an hour’s march—maybe a little more, or less.’
‘If we’re as close as that, then there must be a risk of our running into some of Bogat’s Indians, chicle-collectors, or labourers.’
‘Tha’s right, massa.’
‘In that case we’d better stay here and do a bit of thinking. Let’s find a place where we can hide until it gets dark.’
Dusky turned aside from the trail and soon found a sheltered retreat.
Here they remained until the light, always dim beneath the towering tree-tops, turned to the gloom of evening. They saw no one, and heard nothing except the natural sounds of the forest. Once, a panther, as black as midnight, slunk past with twitching tail; it saw them, and its baleful yellow eyes glowed, but it made no attempt to attack them, and Biggles was relieved to see it pass on.
Dusky shivered. ‘Dat’s de debbil,’ he muttered nervously.
‘Forget it, Dusky. Devil or no devil, I warrant that he’d find an expanding bullet from this rifle a nasty pill to take.’
‘He put a spell on you, den you can’t shoot.’
‘He won’t put any spell on me, I’ll promise you,’ returned Biggles lightly.
‘I reckon you don’t believe in spells, massa?’
‘No, I don’t,’ answered Biggles shortly.
‘Den you watch out dem big snakes dey call anaconda don’t get you. Why, everyone knows dey bewitch folks.’ Dusky shivered again.
‘I’ve heard that tale before, but I should have to see it before I believed it,’ murmured Biggles cynically.
‘Maybe if you stay in de forest long enough, you see,’ whispered Dusky knowingly.
Biggles did not pursue the subject, and nothing more was said for some time.
‘You know, massa,’ said Dusky after a long silence, ‘I reckon de gang don’t work down here no longer. You remember I said about de gang working at de bottom of de steps?’
‘What makes you think they’ve gone?’
‘Cos I don’t hear nothing. Dem boys would sure be hollerin’.’
‘Hollering? Why?’
‘When Bogat’s men crack dere whips on dere backs.’
‘I see. How can we make sure? Shall I go and have a scout round?’
‘Not you, massa,’ said Dusky quickly. ‘I go. I don’t make no noise. You stay right here. I find out what’s going on.’
‘You’re sure you’ll be able to find me again?’
‘Sure, massa. Dere’s a wide stretch of savannah just ahead—I go dat way.’
‘All right,’ Biggles agreed, somewhat reluctantly, and Dusky glided away, to be quickly lost in the shadows of the primeva
l forest.
An hour passed, so Biggles judged, and he began to get worried, for it was now quite dark, and he was by no means certain—in spite of Dusky’s assurance—that the old man would be able to find him again.
As time went on and there was still no sign of him, Biggles became definitely concerned.
He stood up and whistled softly, but there was no reply. Something—he could not see what—slithered away in the undergrowth.
Staring in the direction which Dusky had taken Biggles became aware of an eerie blue glow, but taking a few paces forward, he soon solved the mystery. It was moonlight shimmering on a thin mist that had formed in an open glade, evidently the savannah to which Dusky had referred. He was about to turn back to the rendezvous, for he had no intention of leaving it, when a movement on the edge of the blue light caught his eye. It was, he saw from the shape of the object, a human being. Moving quickly but quietly to the edge of the clearing, he saw, as he hoped, that it was Dusky; but what the old man was doing he could not imagine. His movements were peculiar. With his arms held out in front of him, and his head thrown back, he was walking slowly across the savannah, step by step, towards the middle of it, in the uncertain manner of a person walking in his sleep.
As Biggles watched this strange scene he became aware of a queer musty smell that reminded him vaguely of something, but he could not remember what it was. At the same time he was assailed by a sensation of impending danger far stronger than anything he had ever before experienced. It was so acute that he could feel his nerves tingle, and presently beads of perspiration began to form on his forehead. This was something new to him, but his response was irritation rather than fear—perhaps because he could not see anything to cause alarm. Alert for the first sign of danger, walking softly, he moved forward on a line that would intercept Dusky somewhere about the middle of the savannah.
He could still see nothing to account for it, but as he advanced his sensations approached more nearly to real fear than he could ever recall. The only object that he could see, apart from the surrounding vegetation, was what appeared to be a black mound rising above the rough grass, and it was towards this that Dusky was stepping with slow, mechanical strides. A sudden suspicion darted into Biggles’s brain, and he increased his pace, and even as he did so the mound moved. Something in the centre of it rose up sinuously, and remained poised. It was the head of a snake, but of such a size that Biggles’s jaw dropped in sheer amazement.
For a moment he could only stare, thunderstruck, while the great flat head began to sway, slowly, with hideous grace, Then Biggles understood, and, with knowledge, power returned to his limbs.
‘Dusky!’ he shouted hoarsely.
But he might have remained silent for all the notice the old man took.
‘Dusky!’ he shouted again. ‘Stop!’
The old man continued to walk forward, arms outstretched, as though to embrace a friend.
A cry of horror broke from Biggles’s lips, and he dashed forward. At a distance of ten paces from the mound, which he saw was coil after coil of snake, he halted, and raising his rifle, tried to take aim. Perspiration was pouring down his face. The stench was now overpowering. The mist caused the target to dance before his eyes, yet he knew that it would be worse than useless to fire blindly into the body of the creature. It must be the head or nothing.
To make sure, there was only one thing to do, and he did it. He ran in close, took deliberate aim at the squat head now turning towards him, and fired.
In the silent forest the crash of the explosion sounded like the crack of doom. It was followed, first, by a wild scream from Dusky, who fell flat on his face, and, secondly, by a series of furious smashing thuds, as if a tornado was flinging down the mighty trees. The mound was no longer there; instead, the centre of the clearing was occupied by seemingly endless coils which, with insensate fury, threshed and looped over and among the rank grass. The end of one such loop caught Biggles in the back and sent him spinning, but he was up again in an instant; waiting only to recover the rifle, which had been knocked out of his hands, he caught Dusky by the scruff of the neck and dragged him like an empty sack towards the edge of the jungle. Behind him, the crashing and thumping continued with unabated fury, and he recalled vaguely having read somewhere that even if it is decapitated, the anaconda, the great snake of the Central American forests, may take twenty-four hours to die.
Dusky began to howl, so Biggles stopped and dragged him to his feet. ‘Shut up,’ he snapped. ‘You’re not hurt.’
‘Oh, massa, oh, massa, I thought dat ole snake had got me,’ moaned Dusky.
‘Come on, let’s get out of this,’ growled Biggles, who, to his disgust, was more unnerved than he would have cared to admit.
Dusky, with many a nervous backward glance, followed him obediently back to the rendezvous.
‘What made you go blundering towards the snake as if you were crazy?’ inquired Biggles, half angrily, half curiously.
‘I didn’t see no snake, massa,’ answered Dusky weakly.
‘Then how did you know it was there?’
‘I dunno, massa. I just knew, that’s all.’
‘So you went up to it? What were you going to do—play with it?’ sneered Biggles.
‘I just couldn’t help going,’ protested Dusky. ‘De snake called me, and I went. I told you dem ole snakes bewitch folks.’
‘Well, that one won’t do any more bewitching,’ replied Biggles crisply. He knew it was useless to argue with the old man, for nothing would shake his inherent conviction that he had been bewitched. Indeed, Biggles, to his annoyance, had an uneasy feeling that there might be something in the superstition after all, for he himself had been conscious of a sensation for which he could not account.
He could still hear the dying monster flinging itself about in the savannah, but he knew there was nothing more to be feared from it.
‘Come on, Dusky, pull yourself together,’ he exclaimed. ‘I’ve blown the snake’s head off, so it can’t hurt you now. I only hope that my shot was not heard by Bogat or the Tiger. Are you feeling better?’
Dusky drew a deep breath, ‘Yes, massa,’ he said shakily, ‘I’se better now. But dat ole snake—’
‘Forget about it,’ snapped Biggles.
‘Yes, massa.’
‘Were you on your way back?’
‘Yes, massa.’
‘Then you’ve been to the bottom of the steps? What did you discover?’
‘Just like I said, massa—dey’s gone.’
‘Gone? What do you mean?’
Dusky explained that he had been right up to the foot of the stairway, to the spot where, at the time of his escape, he had been forced to dig with the gang working among the ruins. These diggings were now abandoned except for one old man who had been left in charge of a store-shed. This old fellow was well known to Dusky; he was one of the forced labourers, and consequently had no love for his taskmasters. For this reason Dusky had not hesitated to reveal himself; but except for the fact that everyone, including the newly captured white men, had gone to some distant place far up the stairway to dig in some fresh ruins, he knew nothing.
‘If he said distant place, it rather looks as if they’ve gone right up to the top—to the plateau where we landed the machine,’ said Biggles thoughtfully. ‘There are some ruins up there, as we know. Had they only gone to the valley where the king’s house is situated, he would have said so.’
Dusky agreed.
‘Then we shall have to go up there, too,’ announced Biggles.
‘We get captured fo’ sure,’ muttered Dusky dubiously.
‘I can’t see any alternative,’ continued Biggles. ‘We can’t just sit here and do nothing—they might be up there for months.’
‘How about de airplane?’suggested Dusky.
‘That’s no use. We couldn’t land on the plateau without being seen or heard. No, Dusky, I’m afraid it means going up on foot, but you needn’t come if you don’t want to.’
> ‘I don’t want to, but I’ll come,’ offered the old man courageously.
Biggles thought for a moment. ‘I’ll tell you what, though. I shall be pretty conspicuous in these clothes. If I could make myself look a bit more like one of the workmen I might be taken for a slave if we are seen. Is there any chance of getting an old pair of blue pantaloons, like those you wear?’
Dusky thought he could get a pair at the store-shed.
‘That old man won’t betray us, I hope?’
‘No, sah,’ declared Dusky emphatically. ‘He like the rest, be glad if you killed de Tiger so dey can all go back to de coast. He’ll help us. I make your face brown with berries, den you look like a no-good Indian.’
Biggles smiled in the darkness. ‘That’s a good idea. Let’s start. There will be less chance of our being seen if we travel by night. Can you find your way to the store-shed? I can’t see a blessed thing.’
‘You foller me, massa; I show you,’ said Dusky simply.
They set off. Dusky was never at fault, but the darkness was such that progress was necessarily slow, and it was some time before they reached the foot of the steps, where, in the store-shed, the old watchman crouched over a smouldering fire. He made no difficulty about finding a pair of ragged pantaloons, and this was the only garment Biggles put on. Really, in the steamy heat of the jungle, he was glad of an excuse to discard his own clothes, which the watchman hid under a pile of stones. Without guessing how much was to depend on them, Biggles transferred his cigarettes and matches to the pocket of his new trousers.
He was in some doubt about the rifle, for it was obvious that he could not carry it without it being seen. In the end he decided to take it, even if it became necessary to hide it somewhere later on. His automatic he strapped to his thigh, under his trousers.
Meanwhile, Dusky and the old watchman, taking a torch, had gone into the forest, and presently returned with a load of red berries. These were boiled in an iron pot, and after the liquid had cooled Biggles more or less gave himself a bath in it. Fortunately, he could not see himself, or he might have been alarmed at the change, for instead of being white he was now the colour of coffee.