Hell's Hatches

by Lewis R. Freeman

  CHAPTER XVII

  DOWN THE FLUME

  The lights had disappeared from the flume as I turned to go, and, ratherthan take the chance of another fall, I decided to use my small electrictorch in finding a solid footing. The lacquered crimson reflection ofthe fluttering disc of light instantly revealed the cause of theslipperiness I had encountered. The whole end of the pier wascriss-crossed with thick trails of blood, with great spreading poolshere and there where, whoever shed it, had stood or sat. The blood on myhands and raincoat, where they had come in contact with Ranga's reelingframe, proved beyond a doubt that he was badly hurt. That explained hisunsteadiness on his feet, and also the fact that he had avoided shakinghands with me. Very likely, indeed, his hands were unfit to use. Tiredto the verge of exhaustion though I was, my blood leaped at the thoughtof the battle royal the splendid fellow must have fought--and won. I wasexpecting to come upon traces of the fight at any moment as I picked myway in past the ruined mill to the foot of the old grade leading to thetop of the cliff.

  As I left the planking of the pier behind two sets of footprintsappeared in the wet, firm earth of the path at the side of the road.Both were made by bare feet, but the larger ones--plainly Ranga's--werebroken and irregular, and saturated with blood. There could be no doubtthat his feet, like his hands, were frightfully torn. The small printspressed very close to the side of the large, indicating that Rona waseither supporting the wounded giant or being supported by him. From thefact that the smaller impressions were deeply indented, I figured thatthe former was the case--that she was helping him. The girl, evidently,was not badly hurt--perhaps not at all.

  Where the path I was following joined the bridle-road at the brink ofthe cliff, the trail of blood turned off down the foot of the flumetoward the big sugar mill. The battle royal must have been foughtsomewhere in the depths of the dense tropical growth that filled therocky fissure in the cliff followed by the flume. What grim secret theblack hole held would have to wait for the coming day to reveal. My wayhome led in the opposite direction, and there was some question in mymind as to whether or not I had the strength for the full course.

  Fortunately for me the flume had been built along ridges and highground, so that the trail following it had not been exposed to heavyflooding in the torrential rains of the early evening. I found it hardand firm underfoot for the most part, and by no means hard to followwithout resorting to my electric torch. It would have been very easygoing had I not been so nearly all in, but even as it was, by using myabsinthe sparingly as I had done while painting, I managed to keepplugging steadily on toward home.

  At one time something very near a panic seized me for a while, when thethought flashed through my mind that the great quantity of Ranga's bloodsoaked up by my boots and my clothes would undoubtedly leave a trailthat Rawdon's hounds, should they chance to nose into it, would be quitejustified in mistaking for that of the Malay himself. Even if Isucceeded in holding the beasts off with my revolver, my presence there,and in such a state, would call for a lot of explaining. If the Chiefonce became suspicious, I told myself, it would undoubtedly upset myplans to get Ranga away, to say nothing of involving both myself andCaptain Tancred in a serious scrape. I was in a miserable state of funkuntil the cheering thought entered my head that Ranga had probablykilled not only the dogs, but probably Rawdon and the Chief as well.That reflection reassured me immensely, and, buoyed in mind and body, Itrudged on confidently to the foot of the waterfall.

  I had noticed from time to time along the way that the flume, in itsless inclined stretches, was overflowing its sides. The reason for thisbecame evident when I reached the intake, at the side of the pool underthe falls, where I discovered that the gate, usually only partly raised,was wide open. A flow of more than double the normal was rushing out ofthe rain-swollen stream and into the flume.

  I was too tired to speculate upon how this might have happened. It wastouch-and-go with my tottering knees all the way up the steep, slipperypath to the top of the cliff; but, with three or four breathing spellsand the last of my absinthe, I managed it, and came out at last upon thegreensward rimming the bathing-pool under my bedroom window. It wascomparatively quiet here, now that the roar of the falls was deadened bydistance, which was doubtless the reason that I heard for the first timea racket from the other side of the plantation that must have been goingon right along. It was rather a lucky thing that I _did_ hear that noisebefore I turned in. Had I not done so, it is hardly likely that it wouldhave occurred to me that it might be a wise precaution to remove myboots before entering the house, and then to strip off and burncarefully in the kitchen range everything that I had been wearing. Itwas all I could do to keep awake until the irksome job was over, but,since it was evident from the ki-yi-ing and cursing that was floatingdown the wind that Ranga had not made a clean sweep of Rawdon and hispack, I reckoned that it well might be the means of preventingunpleasant complications.

  My arduous climb up from the old sugar mill had served a useful purposein one respect. The hard physical exercise had sweated the poison of theabsinthe out of my system and relaxed the near-to-breaking tension mynerves had been under for thirty-six hours. I fell into a good normalhard-workingman's sleep the moment the mosquito-net closed behind me.And the best of it was that, when a pandemonium outside awakened me alittle after sun-up, I tumbled out upon my feet in full possession ofall my faculties. This was a mighty fortunate circumstance, for therather delicate situation with which I was confronted called forsomething better on my shoulders than the usual "absinthe-holdover"head.

  Harpool and Rawdon, it appeared, had experienced a beastly night. Losinga hot scent that had been picked up at the foot of the waterfallimmediately after leaving the bungalow, they had been forced to takerefuge in one of the labour villages during the deluge. Dragged out bythe bloodthirsty Rawdon before the rain had ceased to fall, they hadspent the night "working" the fringes of the bush in the hope ofstumbling upon the trail of the elusive fugitive. The net result of thiswas the drowning of two more hounds and the driving of the baffledbushranger to the verge of distraction. Returning, dead beat, in theearly dawn, they had encountered, at the intake of the flume, a scent sostrong that even the paprika-dosed noses of Suey's victims followed itreadily. Swarming up the cliff in full cry, the hunt came on to whirl ina mad war dance round the bungalow and put a period to my morningslumbers.

  The maniacal Rawdon was the worst difficulty, and I honestly believethat only the Chief's restraining presence saved me from the necessityof winging him with a revolver bullet to prevent his setting fire to thebungalow. That "bloody wombat" had dodged him once from that shack andhe wasn't going to take chances on its happening again. The Chief and Ifinally induced him to leave his "ring of death" intact round thebungalow and come in and search for himself. That gave me a chance for aquiet word with Harpool, whom I did not want to have push on to town forfear he would start a search that might extend to the _Mambare_. Indeed,he admitted he was afraid that his man might have doubled back toTownsville and got off to the Singapore boat, which had doubtless sailedat midnight. He had lost a badly-wanted counterfeiter a fortnight agothat way. The skippers never seemed very keen to co-operate in a searchof their ships. Too many little smuggling games of their own probably.

  I suggested to Harpool that he have a bath, a change of clothes--my togswere about his size--and a snack of early breakfast. Afterwards--sincehis horse was gone--I would drive him down in my trap. In the meantimehe could ring up the Police Station and give any orders he thoughtdesirable by 'phone. (This latter suggestion I made in full knowledge ofthe fact that the line must be down for over a mile. I had seen myselfwhere uprooted trees were responsible for wide hiatuses.) If it was inany way possible without arousing his suspicions, it was my intention todetain Harpool until I was sure the _Mambare_ had sailed.

  The Chief fell in with my suggestion readily, and felt so much bucked upafter a bath and a couple of whiskies-and-sod
a that he did not appearseriously upset when the telephone turned an irresponsive ear to him.Like the straightforward gentleman he was, he accepted at once myassurance that Ranga had not entered the house again, and took no handin Rawdon's wild scrimmages, which carried him from cellar to garretwith no other result than the brushing of a bit more of the bloom off"Honeymoon Bungalow" with the soles of his hobnailed boots. Madder thanever after his vain search, he surlily refused my invitation to remainfor a cup of the coffee that his Chink friend of the night before wasalready preparing in the kitchen, and slogged off down the road,followed by three draggled hounds and two cursing helpers. I was a gooddeal cheered by the thought that it was unlikely that any of them wouldbe getting through to town, without swimming, for another twelve hoursat least.

  Before he left Rawdon turned over to the Chief the little piece of redrag he had been using to put the dogs on the scent with. It was at thistime that Harpool told me of "Squid" Saunders' suggestion, and of thevisit to the schooner in search of a clue. I did not tell him that Irecognized the rag as one which Ranga had used to wrap his little Malayflute in, and that it had undoubtedly been left there the morning thebig fellow helped carry Hartley Allen to the quarantine launch. It wasinteresting, however, to know that Ranga was absolutely guiltless of theoutrage to which he had confessed. I thought I could just conceive how awell-guarded passion for the girl might have prompted that chivalrousattempt to shield her from suspicion; but why had Rona herself committedthe ghastly crime?--and how? It was many months before I was to have ananswer to those questions, and they came from the lips of the lastperson from whom I could have expected them.

  Direct and straightforward as ever, Harpool was visibly impressed by mysuggestion that Ranga had probably remained hidden near the fall untilthe pursuit had passed, and after returning to the bungalow and findingit dark, had retraced his steps and adopted the desperate expedient oftrying to escape the dogs by riding down the flume. That reminded himthat they had found the gate of the intake closed when they firstreached it, and that it had occurred to him at the time that thefugitive might have done this so that he could walk down the bottom ofthe flume without risk of being carried away by the water. This wouldaccount for the patch of scent the hounds found at that point. The Chiefsaid that he was for pushing along the path by the flume, but thatRawdon scouted his theory, insisting that their man had jumped back intothe water and gone on wading downstream. The hound-master had carriedhis point, but, to be on the safe side, they had ratcheted up the gateto its full aperture and turned a stream down the flume heavy enough, hewas afraid, almost to carry the sugar mill into the sea. And thatreminded me (though, obviously, I could not speak of it) that I had notheard the roar of the mill's machinery when I paused at the brow of thecliff. There was no doubt it was hung up for some reason. Was itpossible that Ranga had made his escape after coasting right down intothe crushing gear? But of course not. He would never have been able toget away unpursued, even if he had survived.

  I welcomed for two reasons Harpool's suggestion that we ride down theflume and investigate as soon as breakfast was over. It would keep himaway from town until the _Mambare_ had sailed for one thing, and, foranother, it would give me a chance to fathom the mystery that lay at theend of that trail of blood leading down into the rift in the cliff. Itseemed probable to me that both Rona and Ranga, after the former hadovertaken him--probably at the foot of the fall--had started down theflume on foot. Whether there would be any indications of what hadbefallen when the water overtook them remained to be seen.

  The gate was still wide open when we rode along beside the intake, buthalfway down to the coast we met a man from the mill who said that hewas going up to shut the flow off so that a break near the lower endcould be repaired. The wires were down from the storm, he said, makingit impossible to 'phone directions to the plantation office. The breakwas a bit of a mystery, he added. Flume opened right out. There wereindications that some large animal--perhaps a bullock--had been carrieddown--probably washed in at the upper end while the stream was at flood.Funny part of it was, though, that there was no trace to be found of thebullock below the break. Must have been washed right on into the sea.

  Harpool pushed on eagerly after hearing that significant piece of news,and we reached the head of the first steep pitch at the top of the cliffsome minutes before the water had ceased to flow. As I did not care tohave the Chief discover the trail of blood leading down to the sea for awhile yet, I proposed that we tie our horses here and walk down the topof the flume on a narrow board that evidently had been placed there forthe use of workmen when repairs were necessary. It proved ticklishgoing--both on account of the incline and the elevation,--but nothing totrouble seriously a man with a sure foot and a steady head. Harpool, whowas up first, led the way, I following closely.

  If the power of the flying bolt of water in the bottom of the flume hadbeen impressive on the occasion of my first visit, it was a vast dealmore so now, both on account of the greatly increased volume of flow andbecause of my certain knowledge that a human being--perhaps two ofthem--had gone down that chute, where I had been assured that a team ofbullocks could not hold a man--and survived.

  The foot-wide board on which we were walking was nailed to the left sideof the flume. The top of the right side was a rough line of unplanedtwo-inch pine planks. Harpool had only taken a step or two when hebrought up short with an exclamation of surprise and horror. "Look atthat top board on the other side!" he shouted; "raw, red meat all theway from here right out of sight round the bend at the bottom!"

  I looked, shuddered, shuffled my feet uncertainly, and brought mystaring eyes back to the precarious footing. "Push on!" I imploredquaveringly; "my head's beginning to swim as it is."

  The roar of violently falling water came to my ears as we rounded thebend at the lower end of the steep incline, and just ahead was thebreak. The whole right or seaward side of the flume had opened out andthe flood was pouring to the rocks below in a spreading forty-feet-highcataract. The ghastly smear along the top ran on unbroken, right out tothe end of a loose plank, which was kicking spasmodically under theimpulse of the released stream of water shooting under it. The Chief,pointing to a ragged fragment of bloody cuticle, wedged in a joint ofthe line of boards on which we were standing, delivered himself of whatI believe was his only approximately correct diagnosis of any feature ofthe whole affair.

  "The fact that piece of skin and toe-nail were torn off on this side ofthe flume directly opposite the bulge," he said, "would seem to indicatethat the brake our man made of his right arm flung over the top plank ofthe other side must have finally brought him to a stop here. Then hemust have doubled up crosswise of the flume, with his feet against theplace where that skin is torn off and his back against the end of thatplank that is sprung loose. When he straightened out that great rack ofbone and muscle of his something had to give way, and it seems to havebeen the flume. Probably the force of the water, where his bodydeflected it against the side, was of some help; but it must have comejolly near to staving in his ribs where it drove into him at rightangles."

  "Perhaps it did," I said. "We can't tell till we find him." I was notanxious to hurry up the search by any means; but I felt that it would bebetter to move on to a place where I could grow dizzy without the riskof plunging forty feet onto a pile of broken rocks. The Chief, withready consideration, hastened forward, and my faintness passed quicklywhen I felt the solid floor of the crushing level of the mill beneath myfeet.

  It appeared that they had knocked off early the previous evening forwant of cane. At the time, the superintendent said, he thought the flumehad been carried away by flood water. He had only evolved the bullocktheory when he went out at daylight and found the blood and meat smearedalong the planks. The bullock must have got wedged in finally, hethought, and the water had piled up behind it and sprung out the side.They had not found the carcass yet, but, as there was a very sharp slopedown to an in-reaching neck of the cove, it was not impossible that therush of
water had rolled it right on into the sea. Neither Harpool normyself thought it worth while to ask him if he had found any bullock'shair among the "meat."

  Going down through the silent mill to reach a lower level beforedoubling back to the foot of the flume, a weird sort of sputtery peepingcaught my ear while we were traversing the boiling-room. Somethingvaguely familiar in the sound caused me to trace it to its source behindone of the big vats. The _virtuoso_ proved to be a lanky Australiansugar-boiler, whiling away the idle hour blowing across the holes in aqueer little bamboo flute. One of the blacks had found it in the lastrun of the _bagasse_--the crushed cane--a while ago, he explained.Someone must have dropped it in the flume. Funny thing that it had beenso slightly crushed in coming through the rollers. He gave it to mereadily when I told him that I was a collector of primitive musicalinstruments. Said he had a much better one--made in Germany and allbound with brass--in his home in Maryborough. I took it on the offchance that I might some day be able to give it back to Ranga. I knewhow greatly he was attached to it, and, since flutes like that were onlymade in one little pile-built village on the coast of Ambon, how hard atime he would have to replace it.

  I played up the superintendent's "washed-into-the-sea" theory for theChief's benefit as long as I could, but finally he circled round and hitthe double trail of footprints that led down to the end of the old pier.The idea that Ranga had ridden the flume alone was so firmly rooted inhis mind however, that he agreed at once with my suggestion that thesmaller prints must have been made by an idle boy from the hung-up mill,who had perhaps trailed the blood on his own account, in the hope ofgetting the bullock meat. As I myself had made a point of keeping on thegrass to the side of the path, my trail of the night was not discovered.

  "The poor devil must have thrown himself over here and been finished bythe sharks and 'gators," Harpool shouted up to me from where, at thefoot of the steps of the old pier, he stood beside the black-filmed poolthat had drained from Ranga's wounds as he steadied himself for a fewmoments before lurching over to the bow of the launch. The Chief alsosaid something more about coming back with a boat next day and searchingthe beach for anything that might remain. I didn't follow him veryclosely, for, just at that moment, a trim clipper bow slid out past theend of the southern point. Knowing a certain old brass-cylinderedspy-glass would be training landward from the bridge that followed, Iopened and closed my arms swiftly in a surreptitious wave of farewell.Good old "Choppy" must have been standing very close to thewhistle-cord, for his reply came instantly. The wind carried the tootsthat must have sprung from the heart of two woolly steam-puffs in theopposite direction, but I caught the message just the same. "All'swell!" was what old "Choppy" signalled in answer to my wave. His"puff-puff" talk was a deal easier to understand than his English.

  I was no longer in Australia when the _Mambare_ returned from her maidenvoyage to Singapore, so her skipper's report came to me in Paris byletter. He had put both of my friends ashore in Macassar, he said, safe,sound and comfortably heeled for "siller." He had become much attachedto both of them in the course of the voyage, and couldn't thank meenough for putting him in the way of giving them a bit of a lift. Hetrusted I wouldn't fail to command him whenever another opportunity ofthe kind presented itself.

  The night that I sent Rona and Ranga off from the pier of the old sugarmill in the _Mambare's_ launch marked the beginning of one of thestrangest and most picturesque friendships the Islands ever knew;picturesque in the striking background the strongest and mostterribly-scarred man in the South Pacific made for the hauntinglyappealing beauty of the most interesting woman, and strange--more thanpassing strange--in that there was none who could say that theirrelations were ever other than those of mistress and servant.