Little Lost Lambs, page 18
"Now if there was gold to be had," observed McShea with a gleam of interest. "There would be sense in ye Jack. Is there no gold?"
"Nor siIver," laughed the boy. "Except maybe a crucifix. I believe that there is some trace of the new Jerusalem remaining, at least of the church Don Quiros must have built."
"Daft," muttered McShea, shaking his head, "clean daft. To look for a Spaniard, an' a dead Papist, at that."
The boy made no response, other than to give the skipper a list of things that he wanted to take with him. I looked him squarely in the face.
"You insist on going?" I asked, but I read the answer in his eyes.
"Yes, Mr. Haskins."
"Then," said I with a sigh, "I will go with you. Old John Stuart put you under my care. I can't let you go into Santo alone."
"That's jolly!" cried the boy. "I had rather hoped you might come. But then I had no right to ask you. Because—as you say—it might be dangerous."
"Two men can go where one could not," I answered briefly.
At the time I was ill disposed to go on with the wild undertaking. But Jack Stuart's frank delight at having me for companion and the cheery way in which he spoke of the coming lark—as he put it—made me shrug my shoulders and stifle my conscience as best I could.
"There are two o' ye," said McShea, not without some secret satisfaction, for if I went with Jack, McShea would stand cleared of the business to old Stuart. He could say, and I believe he did, that it was a scheme of the two of us, carried out in spite of his, McShea's, objections.
"I will be coming by Santo in two or three weeks, Mr. Haskins," he added, "and if ye are still among the living, I will take ye on the Madeleine. How will I report ye to the commissioner?"
I explained to the skipper that we had landed the last of the returns at Big Bay, and my duties on the Madeleine were over. He would report truthfully what I had done, I told him, and ask that I be listed for duty on the Madeleine when the schooner returned to the islands and picked me up.
"Aye, Mr. Haskins, that may be," said McShea grimly, "but I'll be bringing another government agent with me, for 'tis not likely ye will join me."
Once the die was cast, I saw to it that we got the best outfit possible from the stores of the Madeleine. McShea had the best of everything on the schooner and he did not stint us—even adding some quinine and sherry of his own to our slender stock.
"Ye will have the fever, 'tis likely," he remarked cheeringly, "an' this will help save ye for the clubs o' the coast niggers."
"Maybe," grinned Quin, "they will build ye a stone cairn at the Papist shrine."
But McShea turned on the mate with an oath, although Stuart smiled. He asked us if we would take one of the schooner's boats. Stuart and I decided that a whaleboat would be too weighty for us to row up the Jordan, and the dinghy would not hold two men with our outfit. So the worthy skipper said good-by more feelingly than I had thought of him, and pulled off to the schooner, leaving us standing on the shore of the cove where the River Jordan emptied into the sea.
When I met McShea again, some three years later, I thanked him for his kindness. He said then that he had hoped to dissuade the lad up to the last and had pulled off to the ship with a heavy heart. There was much good feeling under the gruffness of the skipper. Quin, as I have said, was killed shortly after. An Irishman does not belong in the labor trade. Most of the skippers are Scotch.
I still have the inventory we took of ourselves and belongings on the beach that day. It runs something as follows:
Two able-bodied men, one being English, the other Australian; two rifles with a hundred and fifty rounds of ammunition for the Winchester and Spencer; one makeshift tent, fashioned out of a spare jib of the schooner; one set of blankets; ten pounds of potatoes, with a small stock of bacon: ship's biscuits ad lib. and tea likewise; a handy kettle, matches and an indifferently good compass; also, McShea's donation.
A small outfit, if measured by tourist standards to-day. Yet we hoped to make it serve for a month if necessary.
V.
OF course we were visited and inspected by the natives from a nearby village. They were as treacherous as those of Vanikoro, however, and after seeing that we were well armed and too careful to lay our rifles down, they must have given up hope of a surprise attack—although I expect the sight of so much wealth must have made their eyes water.
We had known better than to try to get any of the Kanakas from the schooner to go with us. But we tried our luck with the islanders. When they heard where we were going they refused point-blank to join us. The interior, they said, was tabu.
Moreover. they declared firmly that they had never seen any village or habitation of the dwarfs—the "small fellow men"—of the hills. Some of them admitted seeing the pygmies, or hearing of them. According to their statements, the strange folk of the interior were hard to see. I did not pay much attention to this talk, but Stuart questioned the niggers closely. While he was doing it, I bargained for a pair of their clumsy dugouts.
This brought Johnny Gorai to to me.
The Santo native who called himself Johnny Gorai must have been fifty or sixty years old, with a wrinkled face shining with grease and a pair of leaky eyes. He wore the braided black and gold coat of a Dutch naval officer—probably imported at price of many pounds of copra from a Sydney theatrical costumer, and a few hibiscus flowers in his wool. Nothing else except a very dirty lava-lava.
He was, he said, a "good fellow pilot altogether." As proof he showed me two scraps of paper, given him by skippers who had visited the island, One read:
Johnny Gorai knows as much about an anchorage as he does about the Book of Prayer. He is useful if you have any trade with the island. Don't forget to keep him covered with a gun.
The other was still less flattering.
Satan is as trustworthy as Johnny Gorai. If he wants to talk to you, make him take out the sheath knife he carries in the hind pocket of his admiral's rig.
The two papers made Stuart smile. Through the "willing pilot," however, we secured two fairly large dugouts at a trifling cost in tobacco. These, being fitted with outriggers, were stable and suitable for one man to paddle.
They would get us and our duffel up the River Jordan, and I hoped, back again. We really needed another man for a guide and a possible interpreter. I made an offer to the islanders again to accompany us, but they hung back.
Johnny Gorai hesitated for some time; then he said that he would go with us as far as the "top-side hills." Evidently he meant the farther summits of the mountains. As this was as far, or probably farther, than the headwaters of the Jordan, we accepted his offer and signed him on at wages of half a stick of tobacco and found for each day of the trip and a new sheath knife together with our tent when we got back to the beach.
These terms were very liberal, and Johnny Gorai made much of them, haranguing his fellows until we stowed our stuff in the canoes and departed. I took the native in mine, being careful to keep him in the bow.
The river was sluggish and the banks were distant enough to insure safety from a spear ambuscade. I had noticed that the islanders had few rifles. But I kept a careful lookout that first day and selected our landing site on a knoll where the palms were thinly scattered, allowing us a chance to repel any raid.
You see Johnny Gorai most likely believed that he could knife either one or both of us and win immortal fame as well as wealth by the exploit. Consequently his fellows would be likely to follow us along the stream to have a hand in the massacre if opportunity offered.
The first thing I did on landing and making camp was to deprive Johnny Gorai of his sheath knife which I found, as the note had stated, in the tail packet of his treasured coat. The islander was indignant.
"What for you white fellow man take 'em knife belong Johnny?" he said plaintively. "Suppose small fellow boys along mountains catch Johnny, kill him plenty quick, my word!"
This, naturally, had no effect in persuading me to risk my life and that of my companion at Johnny Gorai's hand. Jack Stuart, however, was interested in the native's mention of the dwarfs and questioned him further.
The account of the dwarfs in the interior of Santo, according to our friend, was more of a legend than anything else. He believed that they had been seen from time to time in the foothills, although he had never laid eyes on them. But he said quite decidedly that no village of the "small fellow boys" was known to exist.
"Where have they been seen?" asked Stuart.
"No see 'em altogether," said Johnny Gorai.
He explained this remark in the following manner. The dwarfs of the hills had made their presence felt mainly by raids on outlying villages of the coast folk. They had carried off pigs, yams, and fowls and even dogs. When pursued they had vanished back into their retreats swiftly.
"Probably it was merely one tribe of the coast fellows raiding the other," I suggested, pegging down the tent.
Johnny Gorai denied this. Said the dwarfs had been followed into the hills, but had not been found in a body. It was dangerous, he asserted, to pursue them too far. The hills of Santo were nearly impassable.
"Looks like a nigger story, Jack," I told the lad. "You may be sure that if there was a village of these dwarf chaps, the people on the coast would know of it."
"Maybe not. I have heard of some tribes that had their habitations where they couldn't be found."
"Such as—where?" I asked, rather nettled by the assured way in which he spoke.
"Oh, above the earth or under it," he said vaguely, and I returned in disgust to my tent.
After dinner we took our pipes a short distance away from the embers of the fire, leaving Johnny Gorai grumbling in front of the tent. If any raid was planned on our camp, I was going to be sure that our "pilot" got the full effect of it and not us. Stuart and I had agreed to stand watch in turn, for we were not in exactly safe surroundings.
We were reasonably sure, of course, that the coast natives had not followed us in canoes, and they could not possibly have kept up with us by running through the dense mangrove thickets on the banks. Still, with Johnny Gorai about, it paid to take precautions.
While we smoked, we talked over our schedule of travel. We would go, we decided, as far as the river went without wasting time. Once at the source of the Jordan we would hide the canoes with some of the provisions and make our way to the nearest mountaintop where we could get an idea of the country.
Mind you, we had no conception of the location of Don Quiros' city. I let Stuart do the talking, for I wished him to be author of everything we did. In this manner I hoped that he would become discouraged sooner than if I joined in his plans.
No, I did not think we would find the lost city of Jerusalem, or rather its ruins. Still less did I believe we would find any trace of the men of Don Quiros. Knowing the almost impenetrable vegetation of some of the larger islands, I thought that our search would be made difficult enough to convince Stuart that the task was hopeless.
Of course I said nothing to him, other than to agree to what he proposed. I had come with him because there was no way of turning him—a lad of age and his own master—back from the venture and I wanted to bring him back alive and sound. end.
Yet his plans were sensible, surprisingly so. Only I did not believe the ruins we were looking for existed. He said that Don Quiros had certainly gone up the river; that he had undoubtedly followed it. far from the coast, as the purpose of the wanderers was to found an isolated settlement; that we would be likely to guess, from the nature of the country, where the Spaniards had landed.
The lad's eagerness wrought upon me, and I felt a glimmering of the hope that had drawn him to Santo.
Yet I had no belief in his venture. I did not think we would even see the fugitive tribe that was called dwarfs, not knowing that I was to see this, and stranger things, before I again set foot on the Madeleine.
VI.
SANTO was nearly eighty miles in width and the Jordan well into the interior. Allowing for the winding of the river, Stuart calculated that we must paddle for fifty miles before coming to the headwaters. For this, he allowed three days, taking into consideration the strength of the current which—fortunately—was slight at present, but was bound to increase as we neared the foothills.
I could not have asked for a better companion than the boy. His enthusiasm did not suffer by the mishaps of the journey—rain and an overturned canoe. He worked willingly, in spite of the heat. And he was pleased beyond words at the aspect of the country.
The river wound through wide areas of luxuriant growth, forests of bamboos and plantains, and level, grassy plains. At times we were in the thick growth of the bush, colored plants glittering in our faces, wonderfully hued birds swinging about the treetops. I began to understand why the Spanish explorer had thought that the interior of Santo would provide a second paradise.
It was the beginning of the third day that I noticed a change in Johnny Gorai. The islander had been sullen at first, and after the first night had done his best to leave us, being prevented by an occasional meaning display of our rifles.
Now he began to urge us to return. Finding this useless he became moody, and remained close to us and the canoes. I guessed that we were beyond the limits of the coast natives' villages and that he was in a strange country. As he might be useful to. us, I had no intention of allowing him to slip away. And, indeed, at this point he seemed to have no desire to do so.
Yet I was puzzled by his moodiness. We were in the midst of a glorious forest where food and light abounded. We had seen nothing of any human occupants of the place. As we worked past the foothills, winding between verdant slopes heavy with the perume of flowers, the stream narrowed and Johnny Gorai became more sullen.
By the end of the third day I calculated that we were some thirty miles inland from the coast. Here we arrived at a waterfall and were forced to abandon the canoes.
Making up light packs we pushed ahead the next day, following the bank of the river. The going was slower here, but the change from the cramped dugouts was welcome. The islander led the way, trying vainly to keep his precious coat from the grasp of thorns.
It was near midday when we came on the fire. It was a heap of ashes, at the bole of a large breadfruit tree, cold and evidently wet by rains. But Stuart was as triumphant as if we had found a door-post of his lost city.
"This is beyond the territory of the coast natives, Haskins," he cried. "The fire must have been made by the 'small fellow boys.' "
"So you believe," I asked, "there are actually dwarfs hereabouts?"
"Something of the kind," he said gravely. "And I can give a guess as to why their village has never been found. Certain races of stunted people exist in the interior of Africa, and as a rule they are tree-climbing men. They are accustomed to make their way about in the trees."
I admit this remark caused me to glance up at the network of branches overhead. Beyond a lazy and beautiful tree snake or two I, of course, saw nothing.
"The dwarfs of Santo," continued Stuart, "have no village. I think we will find that they live in caves underground, or in trees. That means they must be a very shy people—probably harmless."
"I hope so," I agreed. "But the shyest tribes are sometimes most apt to pin a poisoned arrow in the neck of a visitor."
By this time we were among what Johnny Gorai called the "top-side mountains" which rose so steeply on either hank of the river that we were obliged to leave the shore and climb almost sheer precipices. The islander no longer led the way, and I let Stuart choose the going, thinking that in this way he would be more quickly tired of the fruitless venture.
I think he was already beginning to be so. More than once I caught a moody look in his brown eyes as he peered down into the mesh of treetops and up at the luxuriant slopes above us. As we came to a turn in the pig trail we were following, he set down his pack, shaking the perspiration from his arms, and motioned me to his side.
"Ready to—make camp?" I suggested, being more than ready to do the same myself.
"Look there," he said, pointing.
No, it was not the city of Don Quiros—not even a timber of it. Nor was it one of the "small fellow boys." It was a woman seated on a breadfruit tree, watching us curiously.
I slipped off my pack, and stared back at her. She was not a woman of the coast tribes of Santo. And she did not look like a white woman, although she was dressed in a slip of calico, bound around the waist with woven grass. She was barefoot. Her hair was gathered in coils secured by a kind of tenril vine, with flowers on it, and it was the color of sun-touched bronze. It was curly, but certainly not kinky.
She watched us steadily, dark eyes wide with curiosity, slim figure tense, like an antelope half minded to stay and watch, half decided to flee. Stuart whistled softly, and her gaze went instantly to him.
Probably by our artificial standards, the woman we came upon at the bend of the pig trail would not have been called beautiful. Her face and bare knees were scarred by thorns and she lacked the pink-and-white complexion which is so prized in the European cities. Yet there was a charm about her slim person and alert, appealing eyes. I felt it, and I believe Jack Stuart did as well.
Johnny Gorai was staring at her, making a queer clucking noise which drew my attention. I saw that his gaze had shifted and was searching the surrounding treetops. His wrinkled face told a plain story. He was not, it seemed, surprised at seeing the girl. Rather, he was looking around for possible companions. That is the impression I received, and it proved I was not much mistaken.
Life is curious in many ways. Here we had come, at some risk, to find a legendary city and a tribe of dwarfs and we found a young girl becomingly dressed in European calico.
"She isn't a dwarf, Jack?" I smiled.
"No," he said, "but what is she?"
Our voices, instead of startling her, seemed to attract her, for she rose lightly to her feet and came toward us. Actually slipped up to arm's reach of Stuart and ran her hand lightly over the gun he carried—that and the week's growth of beard he wore.
