Twenty minutes later the St. Asaph's brake, wheelers at a swinging trot and the leader cantering in his best form, bowled through Ecclesthorpe-on-the-Moor, and drew up with a clatter and a sc.r.a.pe before "The Royal George."

CHAPTER XVIII.

THE SERANG.

The inn stood midway in one side of the village green, which was already surrounded with walking groups as well as stationary ranks awaiting patiently the opening of the game. For Ecclesthorpe had a name in its county, owning two families of hereditary professionals, as well as a lord of the manor, who, before the war, had kept wicket in three Test Matches, while the workman's club from Millsborough, captained this year by Dixon Mallaby, a 'Varsity Blue, had already a quarter of a century's repute of being hard to beat. So from far and wide those who had not gone to Timsdale-Horton races came always on the third Sat.u.r.day in June to the "Ecclesthorpe Fixture."

As he brought his horses to a stand, d.i.c.k perceived that, while some notice was given to the oddity of his team, scarce a glance was bestowed on its unusual driver. The visiting eleven were the objects of interest to the straggling crowd in front of "The George."

When he had helped Amaryllis down from her perch, he lit a fresh gasper from the yellow packet, and methodically a.s.sisted the ostler to unhitch the horses; but just as the leader stepped free, a smart motor, coming from the south-west, hooted impatiently for s.p.a.ce to reach the door of the inn.

The ostler, leaving d.i.c.k with his detached horses, hurried bandily to shift a farmer's gig, drawn up and abandoned in front of the porch.

d.i.c.k caught one glimpse of the car's driver, and took his wheelers by their bridles.

"Hey, la.s.s!" he said. "Move tha legs a bit, now, an' lead Tod into staable."

By his tone she knew something evil was near, and obeyed with never a look round, but disappeared with Tod into the stable-yard, d.i.c.k following with his pair.

They found empty stalls, unbridled and haltered the horses without a word, and, just as d.i.c.k had found the few he must say to her, there was the ostler in the doorway.

"You be more helpin' like," he said, "'n owd Ned Blossom. I thank 'ee kind, I do--and you, miss."

"Ah'll thank 'ee, owd hoss, to pa.s.s no word agen Ned Blossom. My friend 'e be."

Then, to the vast surprise of Bandy-legs, d.i.c.k pushed a half-crown into his hand, and added, pleasantly as you please:

"Give nags feed an' rub down. And, when Ned comes rolling along to trot 'em home, tell 'im Sam Bunce won't forget Town Moor and Challacombe's Leger."

Crossing the stable-yard with Amaryllis, "Don't walk like that--bit more flat-footed, but don't clown it," said d.i.c.k. "And don't turn your face towards the door of the inn--mind. Know why I made you lead Tod?"

The girl's face seemed shrunken, and shone white in the bluish shade of her bonnet.

"There was a car," she stammered softly. "I didn't look. Was it----"

"Looked like Melchard driving," answered d.i.c.k. "I'd half a mind to take you out into the lane at the back. But it's safest amongst the crowd.

And I must know whether----"

The crowd had grown dense before the open gates of the stable-yard, and d.i.c.k's words were interrupted by the sudden outbreak of a quarrel in the heart of it.

To a running chorus of jeers, expostulation, and fierce incentives to retaliation, there came in sight, pushing his way through the crush, a creature whose appearance immediately struck d.i.c.k and Amaryllis as ominous of danger.

The man, although of middle height and erect carriage, had so vast a spread and depth of chest, development of the deltoid muscles so unusual, and length of arm so unnatural as to establish the effect at once of power and deformity; to which the yellow skin, high cheek-bones, small eyes, and the thin black moustaches, drooping long and perpendicular from each corner of the broken-toothed mouth, added an expression of cruelty so unmitigated that Amaryllis turned sick at the sight, closing her eyes in dreadful disgust; while the European leather and cloth costume of a chauffeur not only added horror to the outlandish figure, but gave d.i.c.k Bellamy almost the certainty that here was yet another accomplice of Alban Melchard.

As the monster drew near, making his way savagely towards the stables, there thrust himself in the way Bob Woodfall, the good-natured champion of the village--six feet two inches and fourteen stone of bone and muscle, good cricket and five years' war record, dressed in country-made flannels, ready for his place in the Ecclesthorpe team.

"Hey, man!" he cried good-naturedly. "Be no manner o' sense bargin'

thro' decent throng like a blasty tank into half battalion o' lousy Jerrys."

Then, quite close, the Malay turned his face full on Amaryllis, and d.i.c.k saw that its right ear had a large gold ring hanging from a hole in the lobe--a hole that was stretched by the mere weight of the metal to three times the size of its thickness.

But on the left side of the head was no ring to match, for the reason that no ear was there to support it. In some unclean strife in Hong-Kong or Zanzibar it had been torn away, leaving, to mark its place, only the orifice in the head, staring in ghastly isolation most horrible of all.

Amaryllis saw the face again, this time in its full lopsided monstrosity, and turned to d.i.c.k, clutching him and hiding her eyes against his shoulder.

Hearing her gasp, a woman in the crowd cried out:

"Howd t' heathen! He flays t' la.s.ses, and he'll curd t' milk."

"Gi' 'im a flap on jaw, Bob Woodfall," cried a youth. "One's all '_e_'ll take."

It was. Bob, perhaps, was too kindly to put his full weight into the blow, and got no chance for a second.

With a savage cry, between a grunt and a squeal, the Malay ran in, clutching with his great h.o.r.n.y sailor's hands. Too quickly for any eye but d.i.c.k's to see how it was done, he had Bob Woodfall by the nape of the neck and the band of his trousers and lifted the long body high above the crowd at full-length of his terrible arms, brandishing it helpless, like some Mongolian Hercules a Norse Antaeus; took three steps to the stone wall of the stable-yard, and would have flung the village hero over it to break upon the cobble-stones, but for a gloved hand laid upon his shoulder, and a soft, high-pitched voice, saying: "_Taroh, plan plan, Mut-mut_!"

And the monster obeyed the voice and touch of his master, restoring Woodfall to his feet with a docility that made him, if possible, more hateful to the crowd than before.

"_Akau baleh_," continued Melchard. "_Dan nante sana_."

And Mut-mut, the crowd yielding pa.s.sage, made his way to the car, and sat at the wheel.

Arrived at the gates of the stable-yard almost simultaneously with Melchard, was Dixon Mallaby; and d.i.c.k observed not only that there was acquaintance between them, but also that, while the parson endured recognition, Melchard sought it.

"I'm ashamed of that fellow of mine," he said. "Yet I cannot help being attached to the ruffian. He would die to serve me; but the ribaldry of an English crowd is too much for his temperament."

"If you don't want him to die without serving you, Mr. Melchard,"

replied the parson, "I should advise you to keep him in better control."

"Ah, well! I owe him so much already, you see. The strange fellow saved my life in the Persian Gulf. Serang--boat's swain, you know, to the Lascar crew. Sharks in the water--horrible!"

The parson thought that even in this the serang had done the world poor service.

Having delicately wiped his face with a ladylike handkerchief in memory of his danger and grat.i.tude, Melchard tried again.

"I saw you arrive with your quaint team, sir," he said; "the unicorn, I mean, not the eleven."

But the parson allowed no outsider to poke fun at the St. Asaph's cricket club.

"Handled his horses in fine style, your driver. Why!" exclaimed Melchard, as if noticing d.i.c.k and Amaryllis with her head on his shoulder for the first time, "there he is--and pleasantly occupied. I mean the fellow with the girl in his arms, and the cut on his face. I wonder how he got it."

Amaryllis heard the voice and the words, and, to keep her breath from gasping and her body from trembling, she caught and ground between her teeth a wrinkle of d.i.c.k's coat.

Melchard, she felt, had taken a step towards her.

"I don't know how he got it," the clergyman was saying. "But something painful, I understand, happened to the other man. The girl is his daughter, recovering from an illness."