guess.
Our boy hero, of course, was his usual jaunty self. He was perched in the Jolly Bachelor's bows as our spy- boat shoved off, straw hat on head, issuing his orders and cracking jokes fit to sicken you.
'They're there, old 'un,' cries he to Paitingi. 'All right, I dare say you can't smell 'em, but I can. We'll fetch up with them by afternoon at latest, probably sooner. So keep a sharp lookout, and don't get more than a pistol-shot ahead of the second spy, d'you hear?'
'Aye, aye,' says Paitingi. 'I don't like it, J.B. It's gey quiet. Suppose they've taken to the side-creeks - scattered and hid?'
'Sulu Queen can't hide,' calls Brooke. 'She's bound to hold to the mainstream, and that's going to shoal on her before long. She's the quarry, mind - take her, and the snake's head is cut clean off. Here, have a mango.' He threw the fruit to Paitingi. 'Never you mind the side-creeks; the instant you sight that steam-brig, up with a blue light and hold your station. We'll do the rest.'
Paitingi muttered something about ambush in the narrow water, and Brooke laughed and told him to stop croaking. 'Remember the first chap you ever fought against?' cries he. 'Well, what's a parcel of pirates compared to him? Off you go, old lad - and good luck.'
He waved as we shot away, the paddles skimming us into midstream and up to the first bend, with the other spies lining out in our wake and the Dido's pinnace and Jolly Bachelor leading the heavier craft behind. I asked Stuart what Brooke had meant about the first chap Paitingi had fought, and he laughed.
'That was Napoleon. Didn't you know? Paitingi was in the Turkish army at the Battle of the Pyramids31 - weren't you, gaffer?'
'Aye,' growls Paitingi. 'And got weel beat for my pains. But I tell ye, Stuart, I felt easier that day than I do this.' He fidgeted in the bow, leaning on the carronade to stare upriver under his hand. 'There's something no' canny; I can feel it. Listen.'
We strained our ears above the swish of the paddles, but except for the cries of birds in the forest, and the hum of the insect clouds close inshore, there was nothing. The river was empty, and by the sound of it the surrounding jungle was, too.
'Don't hear anything out o' the way,' says Stuart. 'Precisely,' says Paitingi. 'No war-gongs - yet we've heard them every day for this week past. What ails them?' 'Dunno,' says Stuart. 'But ain't that a good sign?' 'Ask me this evening,' says Paitingi. 'I hope I'll be able to tell ye then.'
His uneasiness infected me like the plague, for I knew he had as good a nose as any fighting-man I'd ever struck, and when such a one starts to twitch, look out. I had lively recollections of Sergeant Hudson sniffing trouble in the bleak emptiness of the Jallalabad road - by God, he'd been right, against all the signs, and here was Paitingi on the same tack, cocking his head, frowning, standing up from time to time to scan the impenetrable green, glancing at the sky, tugging his whiskers - it got on my nerves, and Stuart's, too, yet there wasn't sight nor smell of trouble as we glided up the silent river in the bright sunshine, slow mile after slow mile, through the brilliant bends and reaches, and always the stream brown and empty as far as we could see ahead. The air was empty and still; the sound of a mugger slipping with its heavy splash off a sandbank had us jumping up, reaching for our pistols; then a bird would screech on the other shore, and we would start round again, sweating cold in that steamy loneliness - I don't know any place where you feel as naked and exposed as an empty jungle river, with that vast, hostile age-old forest all about you. Just like Lord's, but no pavilion to run to.
Paitingi stood it for a couple of hours and then lost patience. He had been using his glass to rake the mouths of the little, overhung side-creeks that we passed every now and then, dim, silent tunnels into the wild; now he glowered back at the second spy-boat, a hundred yards in our wake, and-snapped an order to the paddlers to increase their stroke. The spy surged ahead, trembling beneath us; Stuart looked back anxiously at the widening gap.
'J B. said not more than a pistol-shot ahead,' says he, and Paitingi rounded on him.
'If J.B. has his way, we'll spring the trap wi' our whole fleet! Then where'll he be? D'ye think he kens more about handling a spy-boat than I do?'
'But we're to hold steady till we come up with the Sulu Queen—'
'Shaitan take the Sulu Queen! She's lying up in one o' these creeks, whatever J.B. likes tae think. They're not ahead of us, I tell ye - they're either side! Sit doon, damn ye!' he snaps at me. 'Stuart! Pass the word - port paddles be ready to back water at my signal. Keep the stroke going! We'll win him a half-mile of water to manoeuvre in, if we're lucky! Steady - and wait for my word!'
I couldn't make anything of this, but it was plainly dreadful news. By what he said, we were inside the jaws of the trap already, and the woods full of hidden fiends waiting to pounce, and he was forging ahead to spring the ambush before the rest of our boats got well inside. I sat gagging with fear, staring at that silent wall of leaves, at the eddies swirling round the approaching bend, at Paitingi's broad back as he crouched over the prow. The river had narrowed sharply in the last mile, to a bare hundred paces or so; the banks were so close I imagined I could see through the nearest trees, into the dark shadows beyond - was there something stirring there, could I hear some awful presence? - the spy-boat was fairly flying round the bend, and behind us the river was empty for a couple of furlongs, we were alone, far ahead
'Now!' roars Paitingi, dropping to his knees and clutching the gunwales, and as the port paddlers backed water the spy-boat spun crazily on her heel, her bow rearing clear out of the water so that we had to cling like grim death to avoid being hurled out. For an awful instant she hung suspended at a fearful angle, with the water a good six feet beneath my left elbow, then she came smashing down as though she would plunge to the bottom, wallowed with the water washing over her sides - and we were round and driving downriver, with Paitingi yelling to us to bale for our lives.
The water was ankle deep as I scooped at it with my hat, dashing it over the side; the paddlers were gasping like leaky engines, the current helping to scud us along at a frightening pace - and then there was a yell from Paitingi, I raised my head to look, and saw a sight that froze me in my seat.
A hundred yards ahead, downriver, something was moving from the tangle of the bank - a raft, poling slowly out on the bosom of the stream, crowded with men. At the same moment there was a great rending, tearing noise from the jungle on the opposite bank; the forest seemed to be moving slowly outward, and then it detached itself into one huge tree, a mass of tangled green, falling ponderously with a mighty splash to block a third of the stream on our port bow. From the jungle either side came the sudden thunderous boom of war-gongs; behind the first raft another was setting out; there were small canoes sprouting like black fingers from the banks ahead, each loaded with savages - where a moment since the river had been silent and empty it was now vomiting a horde of pirate craft, baying their war-cries, their boats alive with steel and yelling, cruel faces, cutting us off, swarming towards us. There were others on the banks on our beams, archers and blowpipemen; the whist-whist-whist of shafts came lancing towards us.
'There - ye see?' roars Paitingi. 'Whaur's your clever J.B. now, Stuart? Sulu Queen, says he! Aye, weel, he's got clear water tae work in - small thanks to himsel'! These sons o' Eblis looked to trap a fleet - they've got one wee spy-boat!' And he stood up, roaring with laughter and defiance. 'Drive for the gap, steersman! On, on! Charge!'
There are moments in life which defy description - in my black moods they seem to have occurred about once a week, and I have difficulty distinguishing them. The last minutes at Balaclava, the moment when the Welsh broke at Little Hand Rock and the Zulus came bounding over our position, the breaching of Piper's Fort gate, the neck- ornothing race for Reno's Bluff with the Sioux braves running among the shattered rabble of Custer's Seventh - I've stretched my legs in all of those, knowing I was going to die, and being damned noisy at the prospect. But in Paitingi's spy-boat running was impossible - so, depressingly, was surrender. I observed those flat, evil faces sweeping down on us behind their glittering lance-heads and kampilans, and decided they weren't open to discussion; there was nothing for it but to sit and blaze away in panic - and then a red-hot pain shot through my left ribs, and I looked down bewildered to see a sumpitan shaft in my side. Yellow, it was, with a little black tuft of lint on its butt, and I pawed at it, whimpering, until Stuart reached over and wrenched it clear, to my considerable discomfort. I screamed, twisted, and went over the side.
I dare say it was that that saved me, although I'm blessed if I know how. I took a glance at the official account of the action before I wrote this, and evidently the historian had a similar difficulty in believing that anyone survived our little water-party, for he states flatly that every man jack of Paitingi's crew was slaughtered. He notes that they had got too far ahead, were cut off by a sudden ambush of rafts and praus, and by the time Brooke's fleet
